Let's Try Something New Today

I sometimes wonder how many tea connoisseurs are out there beyond myself. I know, one, maybe two, people who like (simply adore) it as much as me. This is not my usual type of post. There's not really any particular recipe here, but there are a number of thoughts on some really great things that can be done with history's most beloved beverage and an invitation to stretch your boundaries if you've never really gotten into tea.



Despite Heather's comment to me earlier this week that tea is inferior to coffee due to it's lesser caffeine content, tea is far more popular than coffee the world over. It's also a far, far older drink and has about a bazillion different applications. If you live in the South, you are more than familiar with our "house wine": Sweet, iced tea. A friend of mine from college was from New Jersey. After spending a semester in southern Virginia, he went back home and ordered sweet tea. The waitress serving him simply replied, "There's sugar on the table". My very good friend, Sally, who is as English as one can be, once asked me why on earth I would want tea cold. I then explained that it got HOT in the South.

Of course, no matter how you take it, tea is actually a fairly loose term. It can come as Green, Black, White, Herbal, Fruit, Rooibos, Chai, Flowering, or any combination thereof. My staple tea is an acai fruit tea, but I drink peppermint tea when suffering from allergies, and lemon when I have a sore throat. I also sometimes combine a cup of unsweetened tea with a cup of juice and heat it up for a really lovely beverage of my own creation. Because juice is already so sweet, you don't have to add anything.

Speaking of sweeteners, I am very particular about how I do my tea-sweetening. This is the formula...

Sweeteners (for one cup)
-Sugar From Packets= 3
-Each packet contains a teaspoon, and I like a tablespoon of sweetener with my tea
-Sugar Poured From a Canister Onto a Teaspoon=2
-I usually pour rounded teaspoons, so 2 usually makes up a tablespoon in the end
-Honey=1 tablespoon, however you manage it

This is me in Oregon with some huckleberry honey. Yes, that honey is purple like you wouldn't believe.


This is the section of my counter that is devoted to tea. Honey, sugar, teapot/cup combination, seventeen kinds of tea (two from Holland and a cup of freshly-made hibiscus tea), and various paraphernalia, what more could a girl need?

Am I obsessed with tea? Maybe, but I was kind of set up for it from the start. My mum drank tea regularly when I was a kid, so I started early. Then, while I was in college, I spent a semester in England. The stereotype about how much tea is drank there is 100% true! Anytime we came back from anywhere (shopping, class, clubbing, walking), we had tea. It was also drank with every meal because it's a lot cheaper than milk. Obsessed or not, though, tea is delicious, healthy, versatile, historical, and well worth a try. I hope you find something you like out there; there are certainly enough options to choose from.