I Love Tea!

Today was another one of those days that my coffee (same stuff I have every morning) just tasted like bad flavored sludge, so I ended up dumping it out and made myself a cup of hot tea instead.
I do not know what it is, but some days coffee tastes better to me, and some days tea tastes better. I have some of the different flavored teas, but today I just made a plain cup of black pekoe tea, and it was just what i wanted.

 

For a while now, I have been trying out the different flavors of the Teeccino herbal coffee, plus chicory coffee, and I think that I just got “coffeed-out” of the taste , regardless of where it came from.
So, I ordered a small packet of Lipton loose tea from Amazon last week, and have been enjoying a hot cup of tea here and there , instead of the herbal coffee, or regular coffee.

Spoiled girl that I am , I also ordered a pretty new mug with flowers on it from Amazon, so I can have my designated tea cup and designated coffee cup. I had some amazon gift cards saved up from the surveys, so that always means I can splurge on something that I want and not break the bank doing it.

It is a 16 oz mug, so will hold a nice sized cup of tea.

 

Absolutely ! I have my Desert Rose here, but my old Fiesta is still in Idaho, so I will probably never see it again. I love them both, and I used to drink my coffee from the Fiesta mug also. I love the Desert Rose cups, but I like a larger one for tea, or I would use mine.

 

My mother was British, so I grew up drinking hot tea...always with cream and sugar. The teas I recall being around the house were from A&P grocery stores (The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company) and Red Rose for special occasions. It was always brewed from loose tea. There was never a tea bag in the house until she started working. (The tea in tea bags is made from the dust left when loose tea is processed. Tear open a bag...you'll not see anything that resembles a tea leaf.)

There was a period in my life where I was really into Asian teas. I just looked at my legacy notes: I've tried 18 different varieties of Asian teas from 4 different sources, in addition to the handful of traditional black teas I've tried. I love some of the names: Cloud Mist, Dragonwell, Golden Dragon, Golden Monkey, Green Gold, Gunpowder (rolled into tight BBs), Silver Needle, Snow Buds, Tuccha Pu-erh, White Hair Monkey. The most unique one is the Pu-erh, because it is shaped to look like a bird's nest, then it's fermented:

​

I still brew Dragonwell and Gunpowder when I get Chinese carryout...I can't eat Asian food without chopsticks and tea.

For me, Asian teas are taken as-is, with no sweetener and certainly no dairy. Traditional black tea always gets cream & sugar. Coffee (which I never had until my work life, even though my father drank it) rapidly morphed from cream & sugar to just a little bit of sugar due to my early work conditions.

 

My mother-in-law from my first marriage was British, and she and her sister both came to America as war brides. I am pretty sure that she always used loose tea, at least for a long time ; because I remember that she knew how to read the tea leaves in our (dainty) tea cups. I know we had milk and sugar in the tea , too, and it was a special kind of thing to do together.
I think that in later years, she started getting tea bags, but in order for her to read the tea leaves, she had to have been using loose-leaf tea, and just putting it in the bottom of the cups to steep.
I don’t remember her having a teapot, just the little teacups.

This is her on the left, with her older sister, probably late 40’s or early 1950’s, in Washington State.

 

Pardon my Topic diversion: There were a lot of British women who came to the states as brides of American and Canadian soldiers. In 1946 they formed a club called The Trans-Atlantic Brides and Parents Association (TBPA.) My mother hooked up with them when we moved to the DC burbs in the early 60s. I don't recall there being a chapter in Indiana.

They have a Facebook page. I cannot find a regular webpage for them, but there are lots of articles if you search.

Back on Topic: I wonder how many people without a British connection grew up drinking real tea (not the herbal stuff.)

 

I'll order unsweet tea and add just enough sugar to take the edge off. I can sweeten 3-4 glasses of tea with a single packet. I cannot describe the feeling when I've been served sweet tea. I really don't like thinking about it.

 

They don't make 'em like that anymore!

And yeh, they're tiny, alright. Swept up, uh, I mean made 'specially for tea bags.

"George, have you seen my dust pan tea leaf collector?"