My Life with Tea

[osprey_archer]

Via seascribe: Oh, I want to know about your favourite kind of tea. I see all your lovely tea pots and tea parties, and just talk to me about tea! What kind you like, how you take it, what tea goes best with what biscuits.

TEA. TEA TEA TEA. I like this question a lot and may get somewhat long-winded!

My favorite kind of tea is Twinings Lady Grey tea, the kinder, gentler cousin of Earl Grey. They share a similar gentle citrus scent, but Lady Grey doesn't have the harsh aftertaste that Earl Grey does. I drink it black: no milk, no sugar, no lemon.

This is the kind of tea that I drink most days, in the morning if I get up early enough. "Early enough" means at least an hour before I have to be anywhere, partly because it takes a long time for it to cool down enough for me to drink it. (My friend Emma can drink tea more or less directly after steeping. This may be a sign that she is secretly a cyborg.) But also it makes the day feel off-kilter if I'm rushed over my tea: as if I don't have enough time to get everything that needs doing, done.

So if I don't have time in the morning, I'll put my tea off until afternoon or evening.

The one problem with Lady Grey (indeed, with the entire Grey family of teas) is that its caffeinated, which means that if I drink it after six o'clockish I will be bouncing off the ceiling when I ought to go to bed. (I know that there are decaffeinated versions, but that is cheating.)

Therefore one of my ongoing quests is to find the perfect non-caffeinated tea. I like Stash's ginger-peach tea (although I'm not fond of either ginger or peach tea on their own) and their Christmas in Paris blend, and I also adore the honeybush caramel tea my lovely penpal poeticknowledge sent me from Revolution Tea.

The one problem is that, except for the honeybush caramel tea, none of these go very well with chocolate, and everything I like to dunk in tea has chocolate. I especially love McVitie's digestive biscuits with dark chocolate coating, because they remind me of England and they're just the right size - three bites per biscuit.

Oh, or biscotti! I made tons of biscotti last week, because I was done with papers, out of McVities, and had nothing to do but drink tea and read Sutcliff for three days. I make biscotti with almonds and chocolate chips and they are delicious.

Comments

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

I love the particularness of your tea ritual! I HAVE to have tea to function in the morning, and I do my best to have time to linger over it while I do my catching up before the day starts too.

Housemate drinks rooibos tea, but I don't know how well it would go with chocolate things; I'm afraid my favourite thing about tea is the caffeine.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think the honeybush caramel tea is actually rooibos. I'm not sure if honeybush is a completely different herb that's also in the tea, or if it's just another word for rooibos.

[motetus.livejournal.com]

I like this post because TEA. Although I'm not too enamoured with Lady Grey, it's a bit too light and fruity. Hell, Earl Grey is a bit too delicate for me first thing in the morning - I prefer something strong like Assam, and Earl Grey in the afternoon.

Mmm, your biscotti sounds amazing. Are they fairly easy to make?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, they are! I don't have the recipe on me at the moment, but it's based on this Joy of Baking recipe (http://joyofbaking.com/biscotti/AlmondBiscotti.html). I just toss in chocolate chips on top of the almonds to make a full cup.

And usually I use chopped almonds instead of whole almonds, but I don't know that it matters so much.

[island-of-reil.livejournal.com]

My get-into-work-in-the-morning ritual involves making a cup of rooibos. I get a huge bag twice a year from Atlantic Spice (http://www.atlanticspice.com/store/FullView.asp?URLStr=43-8) on Cape Cod — once by mail order, once in person.

When I was visiting York, I got a small amount of almond and orange tea from Hebden Tea (http://hebdentea.com/fruit-infusions/almond-and-orange/). It smells wonderful, and it tastes as good as it smells. I am very tempted to order more, but it'd be kind of extravagant.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

This is the problem with getting tea when on vacation. Somehow it's always the somewhat obscure tea you can't get anywhere else that is the best.