I don’t pretend to know much about the English. Other people usually bag on them because, I don’t know, it’s just what you do, like going to church on Sunday. From what I understand, the English don’t know much about food — you can go to England and expect to eat fish and chips (some kind of biscuit? I don’t know, the language barrier is in my way) or, like, mutton.

I will say this, though: they know something about tea. For example, I just finished an afternoon cup of strong English black tea, along with a peanut butter and jelly bagel. It was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever had. I acquired a taste for afternoon tea while I was in Africa. They were colonized by the British, see, so they have some of those traditions. I came back to the States and tried to continue but found that I despised all that “other” tea, like that herbal stuff? It’s colored hot water that tastes worse.

Last week I came down with this low-level flu that I’m still trying to beat back. I realized that they have a pretty wide selection of teas in our cafeteria so I started trying them out, and I think I’m really going to start getting into tea. I was at the grocery store last night and I found this “Traditional English Breakfast Tea” made by some London company and I was like, “Ah-ha!” I bought it and had a cup this afternoon, like I said. It was good, but I do enjoy it with sugar and cream.

I guess tea is supposed to be good for you. All the boxes I’ve read say stuff about antioxidants. I’m not quite sure what those are, but a quick Google reveals that tea is supposed to do things like “reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses” (what other illnesses are we talking about here?). The same Google also reveals that the amount of antioxidants in a tea varies widely. Some have as much as 215 milligrams and some as little as 10 — so be careful. Just because you’re drinking tea doesn’t mean you’re getting a huge health benefit. I will say, though, that in my own experience I generally feel better after drinking tea, but that could just be the hot liquid. I feel the same after drinking hot chocolate, but hot chocolate leaves me feeling bloated, somehow.

One problem that you’ll run into when making cups of tea is how long to brew them. I only like really strong tea, and while most packages say 3-5 minutes, I find that 11 is about right. Getting the water really hot helps a lot, like three minutes on insanity power in the microwave. I think it brews better and it’s still nice and toasty when you’re ready to drink it. But who has time to sit around for 11 minutes and do nothing while their tea brews? Nobody – you’re going to go find something else to do. And if that something else is sufficiently involved, you’re probably going to forget about your tea. You can always set your kitchen timer, but that seems low tech. I downloaded Tea Timer, a little countdown program. You put in the amount of time you want to brew your tea for, and it puts a counter in the dock — handy! Plus it pops up a message with some clock bell sound effects when your tea is ready, so you can safely get to work on something else for 11 minutes and not worry about forgetting your tea.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 19th, 2005 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.