tea. yes, tea.

I always get faintly panicky when faced with unfamiliar tea. Back in the day--and by the day, I mean, college--my grandmother and aunt somehow managed to independently buy me these huge tea collections. I was already a junkie at that point, but the sheer variety was overwhelming. Darjeeling, breakfast, mint breakfast, whipped. Okay, not whipped, but seriously, I had sixteen kinds of tea at one point in my life.

Today, I realized, as I tried to add Scottish Breakfast Tea to my collection of Twinnings English Breakfast and Irish Breakfast, Tazo Awake, Twinnings Black Currant, Tazo Earl Grey, some Celestial Seasons of various disturbing types, and plain old Lipton, that I need stop. I didn't, of course.

Not since the dark days of experimentation with white pear tea (God help me, I will never forget that first sip) and hearing in horror about red tea--seriously, what? Red tea?--I thought to myself, don't be afraid. Face your fears and these strange labels. Also, avoid any kind of tea that states it was hand picked by trained monkeys.

Hand picked by trained monkeys. Is there a union for that?

Anyway.

One Taylors of Harrogate Darjeeling (if I am spelling that wrong, honestly, I can't even pronouce it), Barnes and Watson apricot, and Numi Golden Chai Organic ~ Spiced Assume (I don't even know what that means) later, and I realize, I'm a impulse tea buyer. This is why I avoid this section of Central Market, where the handpicked monkey tea lingers and tea can run two hundred a pound. The sheer mindboggling of the moment I calculated that out (yes, sometimes, I do sit around and convert dollar per ounce), and thought, huh, I wonder if monkey-picked tea tastes better, I knew I had a problem.

(for the record, I am planning to buy monkey-picked tea so I can report on whether the tea is, in fact, more awesome due to being, well, picked by monkeys. At fifteen dollars an ounce, I'm just saying, it sure as hell had better be.)

I miss Bencheley, though.

So. Tea.

I sometimes mull the fact that the highlights of my life include tea shopping. It's almost sad.

Comments

[crownglass39.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite monkey picked tead is this (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I4NFHS/ref=wl_it_dp/002-6548499-3663216?ie=UTF8&coliid=IO1NSX1AQKOA1&colid=3GSJY32XDT24Y) which I get from this little British tea place the next town over. I go in and they measure out some tea in a teeny tiny little paper bag and I feel like a druggie getting a fix.

White tea is not so bad, but I run from all varieties of containing ginger even though I LOVE ginger in other foods. I like Chai tea but the name pisses me off because Chai is the Russian word for tea so I get annoyed drinking Tea tea. I know, it makes no sense.

Twinnings Black Current is among my favorites. My new thing now is mixing lime juice instead of lemon juice in my black tea. It's very tasty if you like lime.