T is for tea

Tea is my everyday drink. Hot in the mornings and when it’s cool weather; iced the rest of the time. Both of my grandmothers drank tea, and I picked it up from them. Of course, when I was little, I needed four or five spoons of sugar. These days, I take just a bit less than one spoon per cup for black teas, and a half a spoon or so for flowery herbals.

My go-to grocery store tea, the one I have almost every morning, is Tazo Awake. I need a strong black tea to get me going in the morning. I also have teas from Adagio (Yunnan Gold and Assam Melody are particularly good), the local Storehouse Tea (a really nice vanilla), and a bunch of other places. One whole shelf in our kitchen is taken up by our tea collection.

After my fourth cup, in the early afternoon, I switch to decaf. Tazo Honeybush is a favorite, but I also like Stash decaf vanilla honeybush, Constant Comment decaf, and a recent addition, Bigelow Orange and Spice.

I brew my own iced tea out in the sun with plain old Lipton. No idea why, but that tastes the best to me for iced.

I just never developed a taste for coffee. I love the smell of it, and I’ll have a cup every once in a while when I’m in a situation where asking for tea would be a major hassle, but it just doesn’t appeal to me the way tea does.