Tea stories

[lillibet]

Anyone have any good stories or thoughts about tea? What it means to you, how much you enjoy it, memories it calls to mind, interesting things you've learned or connections you've made?

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

While he drank coffee when out and about, my dad drank tea at what seemed like a nearly constant rate when he was at home. "want a cup of tea?" was almost a reflexive question for me to ask him when I would wander into a room where he was awake. And then I'd flip the electric kettle on and put a teabag in the teacup and then pour the tea after the kettle shut itself off.

When he died, he was out on the road heading to a client. My stepmother had left his teacup ready for his return with a teabag in it. It was a few weeks before she could toss the teabag and put the mug away.

which is why i grew up drinking tea. I've upgraded from plain red rose to upton's irish breakfast tea in an infuser pot when I'm at home, but I still drink the stuff, and "make a pot of tea and get stuff done" is somehow ingrained in me as how one does stuff, alternating with "get stuff done and then have a cup of tea."

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely connection. Thank you for sharing.

[jillbertini.livejournal.com]

I think there's a book I've been meaning to read on the history of tea, called For All the Tea in China, or something like that. It's marked as "to-read" on my goodreads list.

My parents were devoted coffee drinkers, but I had a French Canadian grandmother who favored Red Rose from CANADA. She would tolerate it from the US, but lived close enough to the Canadian border than whenever someone went up there, they knew they had to bring back tea for her.

My mom has a kind of kooky side, and sometimes she pretends to read loose tea leaves, after the tea has been drunk. She did one at a Chinese restaurant where we had eaten dim sum, and while I can't remember the particulars, it was pretty hilarious at the time.

Personally, I like to drink tea in the morning. I love the flavored teas - like Earl Grey. And I've turned into a total tea snob. I like good tea. And I love the ritual of tea. Unlike coffee, which is so much about rushing, tea is about slowing down and savoring. There is a wonderful tea shop around the corner from where I live, and they literally have like 150 different teas. There's something for everyone! My last batch I got from them was a delicate white tea with peach and peony.

What a great question!

[if I still had my paid account, I'd use my cup of tea icon!]

most definitely.

[taura-g.livejournal.com]

I learned to drink tea with lots of milk and sugar from my Grammie.

Whenever she came to stay with us, the evening always ended with a cup of tea and a game (or two or three) of Kings in the Corner.

It was usually a gathering of the women in the family, Grammie, my Mom and my sisters and I. We would talk and chat and laugh until it was time for the youngest of us to go to bed. It is a very comforting and warm memory from my childhood. To this day I still like to end Winter Evenings with a cup of tea.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i make tea-infused vodkas sometimes. they are delicious (imho) when they work out, but they are by far the most persnickety recipes i use. five seconds can turn them from excellent to undrinkable. i love 'em, and if i give someone some as a gift i likely love them too :)

[desireearmfeldt]

I never learned to drink either coffee or tea, until I married an inveterate tea-drinker. And then I still didn't drink tea, but I took to exploring the options for herbal/fruit infusions, and he took to getting me non-tea for Christmas. And then...I don't actually remember when or how I started experimenting with tea, but I drink it regularly now -- usually flavored black or white, as opposed to straight-up, but actual tea. And I serve tea to other people. Before I got so busy with grad school, I had a number of tea-and-scriptreading or tea-and-discussion parties, which caused a friend to associate me with tea -- which I found very funny, as an extremely new and non-expert tea-drinker. Both from my husband and from general literature, I know a fair amount about "the right way" to make tea, although I don't have a lot of sensory evidence about whether or not tea so made is actually yummier (except white tea; I can tell when that's been overbrewed). But I'm not actually very good with fiddly details and timing, so I don't necessarily make it correctly -- I do almost always make it by the pot, rather than by the cup, though.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Unsurprisingly, I have a couple of Gilbert and Sullivan-related tea memories.

My favorite one is related, not to The Sorcerer (G&S's opera about a love potion distributed via a pot of tea served at a party) but to Iolanthe (G&S's opera making fun of the House of Peers).

One of the songs in Iolanthe has a throwaway line about "Here's a pretty kettle of fish". When the MIT G&S Players performed Iolanthe in 2004, I was one-third of Team Music Director and, along with the other prodstaff, received a gift from the cast: a shiny new teakettle filled with Swedish fish.

I have no idea how long it took them to get all those fish in there. Someone else finally took pity on me and, with judicious use of chopsticks, got all the fish out so I could eventually put the teakettle to its intended use.

(This story has an epilogue: One of my fellow music directors later became, and still is, one of my housemates. Theoretically, there are two identical teakettles-formerly-of-fish floating around our apartment somewhere. :))

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

I blame/thank hammercock for my fascination with tea. Prior to meeting her, my association with tea was either Lipton Brisk or that green tea they served in Chinese restaurants.
It was during our trip to London where I was exposed to good black tea and chai. Now, it's become of an evening ritual. When Xander is asleep, we have tea and ice cream together.
I miss the Tea House in Covent Garden.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

I think I drank the most tea when I was in Germany. There it was a daily part of breakfast. I did however get in the habit and now I have something like 30 teas in my tea drawer.

I remember V's 30th birthday held at a hotel downtown (Boston). There we had high tea, but it was more than that. The hotel has a tea sommelier, so for each of the eight teas we progressed through (ranging from a very light white tea to an earthy pu-er) she gave us a description of where the tea originated, how it was processed, how aged, and such. It was wonderful.

I was always pleased to go to Tealuxe just to take a whiff. My favorite buy there is the Kashmiri Chai, a very strong cardamom-y variety. Although I generally drink less bold teas, I loved the rarity of that one and always seem to end up with some every time I'm there!

[thismightbejess.livejournal.com]

I wrote this post ages ago, which started out as an ode to Earl Grey and England, but then turned into navel gazing about high school...

A memory sparked by tea