Spot of Tea in the Morning

I have never been, nor will I ever be, a true coffee drinker.  The closest I come to coffee is a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks or perhaps a caramel latte.  Black coffee is as likely to cross my lips as a raw onion.  Before my discovery of the wonder that is the caramel latte, I was an avid hot chocolate consumer.  That was my coffee.  I would get it in the morning and try to convince myself that the simple act of getting a hot brown beverage in the wee hours of the day would wake me up.  Mostly I just got a sugar high followed by a sugar crash.  Living in Boston one must consume some form of hot beverage in order to survive.  In an attempt to avoid early onset diabetes I started drinking tea, which warmed me up and also made me feel just a bit more sophisticated.  Unbeknownst to me, there was a whole underground culture of tea drinking and I was about to dive into its depths.

Tea is not just tea anymore.  You can basically get any flavor tea that your mind can imagine.  I once tried the most delicious strawberry tea a friend brought back from Poland.  It was the perfect balance of sweet and tea - just a hint of strawberry in every sip.  This experience was the first time I tried a tea that I actually liked.  Prior to this momentous occasion, I had only tasted standard Lipton teas - you know the ones your mom tried to give you when you were sick, enhanced by a squirt of honey from the bottle shaped like a bear.  There was never enough honey in that bear to make that tea palatable to me.  So, when invited for an afternoon of hanging out and perhaps a spot of tea, I was understandably skeptical of how the tea portion could possibly be construed as something to look forward to.  In fact, I went so far as to tell my friend that I didn't really like tea - did she have any hot chocolate?  Never one to give up (this is the same person who introduced me to sushi), she served me up a cup of the strawberry tea.  Of course, once I became addicted to this wonderful, hot, strawberry drink I came to find out that it was only available in Poland....go figure.  Short of demanding a box every time she visited her home country (and trust me I thought about it).  Never one to give up hope quite so easily I set out to find some darn strawberry tea - after all, how hard could that be?

Turns out, pretty darn hard.  Two years later I found strawberry tea in the tea section of my food store....in San Diego.  Prior to that discovery there was Teavana.  Teavana can be an intimidating place for the uninitiated.  This is an industrial tea store, they only sell tea, teapots, teacups, tea strainers, etc.  Nothing else.  And they are very serious about it.  You can't just walk in and say, I want a quarter pound of regular tea.  There are fruity teas, dessert teas, spicy teas, flower teas and straight teas.  And within each of these categories are a myriad of tea options.  You say straight tea, well you can choose from Monkey Picked Oolong Tea, Silver Yin Zhen Pearls White Tea, or Copper Knot Hongcha Black Tea - just to name a few.  There are at least three different strawberry teas to choose from here and each has a different strength and different health benefits.  And once you choose your strawberry, you can also choose another tea to blend it with and the process starts all over again.  And different teas have different preparation methods.  Some should be steeped for 2 minutes in 175 degree water, while others should be steeped for 3 minutes in 195 degree water.  And we aren't talking tea bags here, these are tea leaves, which means you need to buy the strainer and a measuring spoon if you don't already have one.  Teavana is for hardcore tea drinkers for whom that Lipton cr*p won't do.  They might as well say tea bags are for wimps.  But after a few visits I began to feel comfortable in what is a haven for tea drinkers.  And like the good little tea drinker I was becoming I even went there seeking medicinal remedies for my cold ridden husband.  A peppermint and white tea combination was recommended and darn me if it didn't work.  The peppermint cleared out his sinuses and the tea soothed his throat.  Move over Niquil, there is a new cure in town.  But, like many people, I tend to run in cycles, and soon I tired of my strawberry tea and since summer had come around I abandoned my hot tea habit for something less boiling.  My love for tea would soon make a resurgence in the most likely of all places - a sushi restaurant.

As I am sure you are all aware, my love for sushi knows no bounds.  Lunch, midday snack, dinner - there is never a bad time for sushi.  But, as yummy as it is, on a freezing cold day, sushi is not the food to warm you from the inside out, at least not literarily (sushi always warms my heart...).  On one particularly freezing day I needed a boiling hot drink to thaw me out.  And so, once safely ensconced in my neighborhood sushi restaurant, I ordered a green tea for the first time.  It was love at first sip.  Green tea is not a blow your hair back tea.  It is mild and peaceful.  When coupled with sushi it can scale back on the saltiness of soy sauce or spiciness of the chili sauce  It doesn't interfere with the taste but instead lets you to enjoy the flavor of the sushi while allowing you to relax from the inside out.  At first, I was a green tea with sushi only person.  And then one day I had an epiphany - why must I only have this wonderful drink with sushi?  Why can I not enjoy a relaxing cup of green tea in the morning while in front of my computer?  And so another green tea drinker was born.

It was only well into my cup a day of happiness green tea habit that I came to realize the health benefits of my favorite AM drink.  Green tea, along with being very relaxing, is an excellent source of antioxidants.  It might help boost your immune system (I for one have been pretty healthy since I started drinking it regularly) and it can help you maintain a healthy blood sugar level.  It is also known to help lower cholesterol.  Isn't it nice when you can benefit from something that you also find so enjoyable?

Along my travels I have discovered many an enjoyable tea, along with my favorite green tea (I mostly drink Bigelow Green Tea as that is what they stock in my office), I had the wonderful fortune of coming across Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride, which is the best interpretation of a sugar cookie in tea form that I could ever imagine.  And don't even get me started on The Republic of Tea's Coconut Cocoa tea - expensive but awesome.  So, the next time you are looking at your can of Folgers, stop for a moment and contemplate the possible nirvana of a cup of tea flavored subtly with cocoa and coconut.  So sit back, relax, and sip some tea (with or without your pinkie finger extended - it is up to you).