My Mom has to lay of coffee for about a week–doctor’s orders. She may take tea, though. I got a jar of instant tea, whose label directs the user to add 1 1/3 teaspoon of instant tea to a cup of cold water, for iced tea.
I’d like to know: Is there any difference in the proportions if one is preparing a cup of hot tea?
Uh… why would you do that? AT LEAST use a tea bag!
:Sigh: The weather has been quite changeable around here lately. Having instant tea allows us to use the same product for both iced tea (in hot afternoons) and hot tea (in cold morning weather).
So does tea. What do you think iced tea is, if not hot tea allowed to cool?
She’s having to see a doctor and you think instant granules are healthier than leaves? Also (black) tea has plenty of caffeine in it, drinking tea all day isn’t going to lower the levels she’s consuming very much.
Sorry, I’m a tea/coffee snob but, if you continue to use that abomination, I suggest you try different amounts to find what suits.
The proper proportion of instant tea is zero teaspoons per cup. Just use a teabag. And if you have bags left over at the end, well heck, they only cost about a dime apiece.
It takes 2-5 minutes to brew tea. Hot instant tea isn’t going to save you all that much time over brewed tea. And you can brew a pot and then put it into the fridge and have iced tea whenever you want.
Tea keeps very well, so you can use the old, unused teabags for months. Or just get a small package: you can get teas in boxes of 25 bags.
If the coffee is bothering her, she should probably use green tea, which brews even faster than black tea.
Everything in this but particularly the recommendation for green tea. It’s also milder and for someone who is not a tea drinker might be more palatable. A little squeeze of lemon in either hot or cold tea is quite delicious.
I don’t recall him saying that caffeine was an issue. We don’t know why the doc said no coffee but tea was OK.
You don’t even have to make the water hot to make cold tea. Throw a couple bags into a pitcher, fill with cold water, and leave it alone for an hour or two. Bam. Tea.
FWIW, we don’t have a teapot. We have a coffeemaker, and I set it up without coffee grounds to prepare hot water for tea. It turned out the instant tea I got was sweetened, and she didn’t want it. I’ll probably relent and get plain old Lipton tea bags (an old family favorite anyway). The doctor had told her to eschew coffee, citrus fruit juices, and dairy products. (She had ascribed the condition she was in to coffee–perhaps a bad batch. I drink coffee too, but I only have one cup per day and she had 4 or 5 or 6.)
You don’t need a kettle to brew tea. This may sound heathen, but if your mom has a microwave, you can brew tea right in the cup. Most tea bags don’t have a metal staple to hold the string to the bag, so they can be used in the microwave.
I’ve put tea bags with a tiny metal staple in the microwave hundreds of times, there’s no arcing or other metal-microwave oven shenanigans.
For the op, heating the water won’t change its volume. If absolute accuracy is needed, mat the volume: if it makes 8 oz of iced tea, it makes 8 oz of hot tea.
Accuracy of instant tea measurement can’t be a real concern. How are you going to measure 1/3 of a teaspoon? Are you using a leveled off cooking teaspoon, or a random spoon from the drawer?
If you think the precisely made hot tea, or rather, a random recipe of hot tea, meets Doctor’s orders for limited caffeine, then like others have said in this thread, you’re barking up the wrong tree. You were never being absolutely accurate – tea bag or whatever brand of freeze dried tea granules you happen to have.
In general, I kinda measure my instant coffee in the morning, to insure I get not too much nor to little caffeine. But I just dump in however much cocoa, powdered creamer, malted milk powder I feel like.
I personally use Taster’s Choice instant-coffee packets–those little sheaths. I cut one end open with scissors and pour the coffee into a cup of hot water, and drink it while the coffeemaker is brewing coffee or heating water. (I heat the water in a cup in the microwave oven and gather the other items in the meantime.)
That’s the very first time ever in my 42 years I’ve seen anything health-wise blamed on a ‘bad batch of coffee’. Lipton (to me) is the lowest of the low, the company uses the cheapest leaves and some people think they’re drinking a ‘good drink’ - they aren’t.
Also, the doctor seems to want to reduce the OP’s mother’s intakes so he can more accurately assess which are causing her problems. That doesn’t mean substituting one substance for another, it means cutting one substance out and seeing how the patient responds.
Well, it seems that way with my aged parents. I am not a doctor so please consider this some advice from a numpty.
I can’t add anything more soo I’m out of this discussion.
According to the OP, it sounds as if the doctor said that tea is OK for dougie’s mom:
If this is the case:
It sounds more like heartburn or esophageal reflux is the problem and not caffeine. Again, everyone is making an assumption that was never given in the OP.
BTW - a LOT of tea mixes (like instant) or bottle teas contain citrus juice so read the label so you don’t inadvertently continue the problem. Apparently just tea is fine, tea with additives like lemon is not.
Again - it was never stated caffeine was the problem. Given the list of beverages on the not-approved list the problem is caffeine, it’s more something else.
I sounds to me like acid is the problem. Like the others, I’ll chime in with using tea bags. If you have a small sauce pan, it will do to boil the water (decent tea requires hotter water than coffee).
If you’d like to treat your mom, pick up a sampler box of Twining’s tea bags. There is usually one that is suitable for iced tea and the others are a nice change of pace from plain tea. Bigelow’s Lemon Lift is another all purpose one too. They’re both widely available at the supermarket.
Lipton’s isn’t actually the absolute worst tea on the market, but there are plenty that are better than it. Including, incidentally, the absolute cheapest tea on the market, Brenner’s (the Aldi house brand). Given an option that’s both cheaper and better, you should never settle for Lipton’s, unless it’s necessary for the sake of politeness.
Well, sure… except it contains lemon, which is a citrus fruit, which is on the no-no list. Is there enough in there to be a problem? I have no idea, but why take the chance?
Really, this thread is a great illustration of why you need to be wary of internet advice - absolutely no malice intended on anyone’s part, but a lot of assumptions and not-so-wonderful advice.