My Descent Into Madness *or* You Want A Cuppa? The Kettle's Hot.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

(If you get to the end, you can see where this all started. It’s all so circular, like the Childe Cycle or Finnegan’s Wake. Only it won’t be taught in school to torment generations of impressionable children. Not that it makes all that much difference. It might help you, but it’s already too late for me.)

Oh great. Blends. Blends of tea. It’s not just tea, it’s kinds of tea.

Growing up it was Lipton’s. That was it. For hot tea we used hot water, for iced tea, Mom made a (cooking) pot of hot tea, then threw in some ice and more water and stuck it in the fridge for a while.

I still have that old, beat up pot. It’s the closest thing to a Family Heirloom I’ve got. If it went to the Antiques Roadshow, I figure they’d tell me something like “It’s an old pot. You could probably get something like 25¢ for it in a yardsale. Go away and quite bothering me.” It’s not even big enough to go on your head to finish a John Chapman costume. It’s still a good pot, though.

I read the side of the Lipton’s Tea box one day. Orange pekoe. Great. I thought it was tea, and there’s oranges in it. (I could read, but I didn’t know squat about tea.)

So then I’m older, and I have to buy my own tea. There’s a whole shelf of the stuff. (Local grocery, what do I know? A shelf? Yeah, that looked like a lot.) Not just Lipton’s. But other brands. And other types. Let’s experiment, shall we?

But where to start? I read the sides of the boxes. Black tea. Orange pekoe (which I know is tea by this point). A blend of black tea and orange pekoe. It’s all the same stuff. (I’m a suburban American kid with no tea tradition.) Go with the variety pack. This one is pretty, it had a ship on it.

Irish Breakfast- this tastes like tea.
English Breakfast- this tastes like tea.
Earl Grey- this tastes like tea with something in it. Bergamot. Huh, I wonder what that is. (I didn’t check for a long time.)
There might have been Darjeeling in with the rest, but the bags were all packed together. It tasted like tea.

The variety pack was gone. I needed more tea. (I probably had a cold.) The Earl Grey was pretty good. I’ll get more. I don’t see the package with the ship, but this one looks good. (I don’t know what brand it was. Probably cheap.) It was better than the last batch.

I’ve been getting Earl Grey since then. Different brands depending on which store I’m shopping in at the time. Some are good, some are better. And it lets me do a great Captain Picard impression in the kitchen. (You can easily tell us apart though. I have more hair.)

I even picked up some green tea once. It tasted like hot water. Maybe I made it wrong. Maybe it was too subtle for me. I’m not a subtle guy. The green tea experiment was a bust. No big deal, it’s not like I hang out with my friends swilling green tea, smoking big cigars and playing pinochle. (No, I’m not going to learn to play pinochle.) (Or smoke cigars, come to that.)

Now, I’m a big, bad grown-up. I should know a thing or two.

Wine? No, thank you. It’s grape juice gone bad. Too many choices and I don’t know where to start. And I don’t care. I’ll take a pass on wine. Thanks.

Beer? Never got the taste of beer. Either too bitter, or watery. I know there’s a wide range of beers out there, but like wine, I don’t care. I’ll take a pass on beer too, thanks all the same.

Tea? Yeah, I like tea. Maybe I can learn something about it. Thank you SDMB. One little throw-away post in IMHO, and I have a direction to go in tea experimentation. (My post was throw-away. Everyone else’s was quite useful.)

Have you noticed that about this place? (And I do think of this as a place. A murky salon made of electrons.) You throw out an idea, a thought or a question and someone knows something and they throw that out. Then the idea grows, and like many growing things it can mutate wildly. You never know where the most harmless of threads will turn out. You can pretty much bet on a bad pun and sex jokes, that’s a given. But around here there’s someone who knows something about anything. Quick! I need to know about llama husbandry. Someone will come up with something. It’s like growing crystals. You need a little gobbet of gunk and the most amazing things can accrete around it. (How many people thought they’d see a sentence with both “accrete” and “gunk” in it when you got up this morning?)

As ideas grow and change, so do the people around here. Exposed to enough novel ideas they grow and expand. Or get banned. Except me. I sprung fully formed from Fenris’ forehead, girded for battle. (Lookie there, a Classical allusion and a stinkin’ lie all in one sentence. I’m a professional, don’t try this at home.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Tea… I have a direction to go in my experimentation… (It’s alive! Alive! Bwa-hahahaha!)
[ul]
[li]Earl Grey (“And it’s revolting! It’s like drinking perfume.”- fierra), the tea I like now. I’ll have to try Twinings and Jackson’s of Piccadilly’s versions.[/li][li]Lady Grey, sounds girly with the “Lady” and all, but what the heck. I like the Earl, maybe his wife has something goin’ on too.[/li][li]Lapsang Souchong (“The Dark Smokey Elixir of Happiness”- Larry Mudd), I’ll have to give this a whirl. You can’t have too much happiness. And when it comes as a dark, smokey elixir, all the better.[/li][li]Russian teas? (“can turn out dark enough to be mistaken for coffee”- Nightsong) Russian Caravan? Sounds tempting.[/li][li]PG Tips, if it’s good enough for Puddin’, it’s good enough for me.[/li][li]Darjeeling (“the Champagne of Teas”- LindyHopper) I think I’ll work up to “Champagne”. I’m more a Mad Dog kinda guy.[/li][li]Oolong, just because it’s fun to say.[/li][li]English Breakfast, because breakfast is one of the three or so most important meals of the day. Did I hear there was a Scottish Breakfast tea too? How about Welsh? I could tour the whole island through their tea.[/li][li]Irish Breakfast, because I wouldn’t want to snub a whole country, even if they haven’t done anything for me lately.[/li][/ul]
Off to Jungle Jim’s with me. (The singing Elvis lion is worth the trip. Shibb knows.)

Maybe after I work through some teas, I’ll start on fine cheeses. Is it true you can get cheese that’s not already sliced and individually wrapped?
-Rue.
This started out as a response to Ukulele Ike’s post. Then I lost my train of thought and it spun wildly out of control. I think I started to get it all back, but it didn’t fit where I wanted it to go. So here it is. Amazing, isn’t it? It cracks me up when people apologize for a “long” post and I click on the thread and it’s only, like, five paragraphs long. Pffft. What’s that? Long? No, I don’t think so. Of course they usually wind up being five coherent paragraphs, so there’s that. That’s a little peek inside the Mind of Rue. Be sure to wash up on the way out.

2

Also:
2 1/2 weeks to [url=“http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=97233”] Dope on Wheels. Or Yahoos on Parade. Or MobileDope.

Today, it’s really 2 5/7 weeks, but it’s more than two weeks and less than three. So, I’ll call it 2 1/2. Even if that is fundamentally wrong.
-Rue.

3

It’s a wee bit chilly this morning and I’ve got Lemon Lift tea in my desk drawer, right next to the Swiss Miss. I’d like to have a mug of tea, but I look at my mug - it’s rather groady and I don’t think the smelly soap in the ladies’ room will cut thru the groad. So I’ll have to go thru my morning with a tea-hankerin’.

And then you had to bring up the other thing that I can’t experience…

I hate Mondays… Thanks, Rue! :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Well, tea just doesn’t do it for me, usually. But especially not at breakfast. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee, followed by the taste of it, is the only thing to get my RPMs up to speed.

Except for iced tea, which I find particularly refreshing in the summer, I associate tea with being sick. The only time I ever drink tea is when I have a cold.

I rarely have colds, ergo, I rarely drink tea. For some reason I find it neither tasty nor comforting.

Beer, on the other hand, is both tasty and comforting. Which, I believe, is also a sentiment shared by the British.

5

Rue, what you dissin’ a whole tea culture? Man, not even an honorable mention for any Asian (ok, jesus, PC people, don’t get your panties in a twist, east asian or can you call it oriental since that’s would fit in with rugs?) tea? There’s that stuff that the monkey’s pick in China (ma lao mi), there’s stuff that your spoon will stand up in (pu’er cha), there’s green, there’s black (well, it’s called “red” in Chinese), there’s even silver. The Japanese do all sorts of stuff although some of it tastes like tea soup to me, and you have to like study for a few years how to whisk it properly. Come to think of it, some asians put tea in their soup.

The Tibetans boil stems over an open fire for hours and then churn it with yak butter (su you cha), which is a lot better than it sounds, although i have to admit it sounds pretty bad, and it might even smell pretty bad until you get used to it, and I’ll even admit the first couple of times I was being *really really really * polite when I deigned to sip that stuff, but now it sorta grows on ya. There ya go Ray, finally, the answer to all those pencil necked beer guzzlin’ or high falutin’ wine drinkers, give 'em hell 'cause a real man drinks hot yak butter tea. You could try with no cholesteral margarine I guess, but somehow I don’t think it would be the same. And you need a tea churn and I don’t suppose your mother left you one of those things either, but I bet she would have if she knew you were going to turn into such a tea guy. Well, okay, when you finally decide to get serious about tea, then we can talk about setting you up with some righteous stuff.

6

Once upon a time there was a guy. Just some guy, I don’t know who. But this guy was walking along the road and saw an innocent child. The innocent child was looking into a field of wildflowers.
“Hey, Innocent Child, whatcha doin’?” asked the guy.
“I’m lookin’ at the bunnies,” poilitely responded the innocent child.
“Stupid kid!” growled the guy. “There’s birds and butterflies and stuff too.”
“I like bunnies,” said the child.
“Well, I’m off,” said the guy. “I have to exploit monkeys to procure plants for my beverages.”

The end.

This story has nothing to do with anything except to remind you to keep a clean cup in your car, next to your spare pair of shoes (in case it rains and the shoes you are wearing get all damp and uncomfortable) for dirty cup emergencies. Even if you’re not sick.
-Rue.

7

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

8

Coffee is better.

Runs away quickly…

9

When I was a wee laddie, and there were monarch butterflies the size of Volkswagen Scirrocco’s flying about, I’d have my hot cut of Pathmark Tea with milk. And sugar. I felt all grown up. To me, all coffee is burned coffee. Sure I’ll indulge in the beautiful cold-frothy-slushy-milky confection that is a Frappuccino[sym]ä[/sym], but I don’t drink hot coffee, it all tastes the same.

Then, there’s tea. A sublime panoply of choices. Shall I dip into the bag OF “Angel Falls Mist” herbal tea that looks a lot like dried flowers that my dear love gave to me many years ago, so that I can be magically transported back to days of wine and roses, merely be inhaling it’s medicinal scent?

Shall I go to my cache of East Indian Tea Company Sassafras Root Tea so that I can experience the cleansing pleasure of a violent sweat ?( sassafras root is a homeopathic diaphoretic. If you don’t know what homeopathic diaphoresis is, ask Esprix :smiley: ). Sassfras tea is one of those amazing pleasures in life that is altered drastically by pace. If I sip it along and make a cup last for a half hour or so, I’m filled with warmth and a slightly logy feeling that’s best described as how one feels after being forced to watch a " Joanie Loves Chacci" marathon on Nickleodeon. However, if I dash it back with force and fervor, the aforementioned diaphoresis occurs. Ahhhh, the pleasures.

I’ll always have the stand-by, Lipton decaf around. I’ve taken in the last year or so to placing a bit of a stick of cinnamon into the hot tea as it’s first made. I won’t go mixing up a nice herbal with the cinnamon, I do it with my decaf. None of this powdered stuff for me, a nice crisp stick, snapped in half.

When I get out the boxes of Celestial Seasonings, I always feel as though I’m living a commercial in which I should be wearing a thick creme colored cable-knit fisherman’s sweater and slippers and corduroy pants, kneeling next to my emaciated wife whose name is invariably Alma, or Collette, and handing her a steaming cup of Lemon Zinger while we both gaze fondly into the roaring fireplace. I like Celestial Seasonings okay, some of their flavors are a delight. Their peppermint tea is terrific and truly is a soporific for all pains belly-related.

I just really wish there wasn’t a picture of a cute bear wearing a nightshirt and carrying a candle on the boxes. If I need to imagine a cute bear walking around in a nightshirt and carrying a lit candle, I’ll close my eyes and imagine gobear. :wink:

Dr. Chang’s is pretty good stuff, HIS peppermint flavored teas have more peppermint oil in them. Green tea, at least the stuff I have had access to so far in my life ( which at this point spans almost 4,800 years ) is basically ooogey stuff that floats in hot water, making the tea look like EXTREMELY watered down urine. I know it’s supposed to have great curative properties.

When travelling, I’ve found that we Tea Lovers suffer sometimes. In the South one is met with derision and distain when ordering a hot cup of tea. If they root around long enough, they find a moldy half-box of Kroger’s store brand tea bags that are half-covered in pork grease. This has to suffice, since unless I am travelling with my Steadicam cases, I don’t have my own private stash. When I am shooting a job, I always have my own stash of tea bags, NutraSweet][sym]ä[/sym] brand sweetner and a travel mug. Life gets easier that way, especially at 3:18am on the West Side Highway when the wind chill stands at 3 degrees below zero. However, the servers of the world would do well in the gratuity department if they could just keep a decent stock of the basics on hand.

I’ve never cottoned much to the Earl Grey’s or the English Breakfast’s. They’re too acidic for me, they have too much of what I call " tongue tang". I prefer a tea that greets me with a gentle smile and a soft caress, perhaps a sweet and brief yet flirtacious lick along the curve of my neck. The kind of tea that both warms the belly immediately and hints at future warmings of a less wholesome nature. That kind of tea.

When I read “A Clockword Orange” I realized that there was a tea culture out there that rivalled anything the coffee culture could present. It was powerful, seductive, entrenched in mystery and shrouded in violence. I could become a part of that culture, I knew it- even at the age of 13. I just had to be willing to be DIFFERENT. Not a coffee drone, but a proud tea-swilling homme. I also had to be willing to wear one false eyelash and apply my supportive cup on the outside of my white painter’s pants, but this was less of a problem than initially thought.

Now, as I transition effortlessly into early middle age I find that tea is more than just a hot spot in my belly. I’m glad that I’ve not bought into the cheap sensationalistic imagery of coffee- either P.C. like Starbucks or touchy-feely-we-will-indeed-have-the-kind-of-sex-that-your-mother-would-approve-of-after-we-drink-our-fake-cappuccino-flavored-drink, or the dishwater-thin toadying approach of the mythic “Juan Valdez”, pimping his native coffee to a country more interested in Columbia’s OTHER exports.

Nay, I find tea to be the real answer. I’ve been working dilligently with the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board and Kitchen Research Team for the last few months, trying to finalize the new " Straight Dope Tea Selection". This monthly offering will open up new vistas to we tea mavens. Coming soon to an Internet Cafe near you. :smiley:

10

This makes more since, because all the best black tea’s look red. (By All the best I mean the teas I like the best YMMV)

I have a story about a cup, it goes something like this:

One day there was a cup. It was a good cup (Really it was a mug, but don’t you wouldn’t want to call it that to its face.)
It lived in an office, and was owned by the Evil Gartog!. He abused the cup, not washing it between drinks, using it for tea and coffee and calling it rude names.
One Monday, after a lonely weekend, the Evil Gartog! returned to the office. Not only was he evil but stupid, Evil & Stupid Gartog! wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to wash his cup.
Later that day Evil & Stupid Gartog! discovered the error of his ways speing the afternoon sitting on the toilet.

What is the moral of this story? Always treat you cup with care.

[sub]Leave the mokeys alone[/sub]

11

Just for clarity, it’s the tea that has the curative properties, right? Not watered down urine?

Since you’re pushin’ 5K, sometimes I expect, your mind wanders.
-Rue.

12

[slight hijack] It is just MY computer, or is the vast majority of Cartooniverse’s post in that new mathematical font that we got recently?

I get:
“When I was a wee laddie, and there were monarch butterflies the size of Volkswagen Scirrocco’s flying about, I’d have my hot cut of Pathmark Tea with milk. And sugar. I felt all grown up. To me, all coffee is burned coffee. Sure I’ll indulge in the beautiful cold-frothy-slushy-milky confection that is a Frappuccino” and then gibberish gibberish gibberish gibberish for the rest of the post, interrupted by a smiley or two…
Just me?

I have noticed this in some other posts, but ignored it…

[/slight hijack]

13

[slight hijack] It is just MY computer,

Should be: [slight hijack] Is it just MY computer,

14

I don’t know what you’re getting, but I’m getting more or less standard English. Maybe you need to switch to decaf??

:wink:

15

Decaf?!? Perish the thought! Never!!

No… must be my comp… I have some weird Korean/English conflict going on that usually ends up in apostrophes being displayed as Korean characters… not a big issue, as I can deal with that. But here (on the SDMB), sometimes large portions of posts come out in that weird math font…

I may have to reformat soon…

Darn Korean!!:mad:

16

Standard English? What’s that? Sounds like just another blend to me. Standard English, indeed - as if we only have one. And then you have the brass neck to go on and suggest decaf!

::stops to recover composure::

You know, in England we burn heathens like you. :stuck_out_tongue:

Rue DeDay: add this to your experiment - a pot of tea made with two bags of Darjeeling and one of PG Tips. It’s the best goddam brew you’ll ever taste. Just don’t forget to warm the pot!

17

Astroboy stands between FairyChatMom and the surging mob… and speaks:

Do what you will to the girl, but leave ME alone!!!

:confused:

Yeah, that’s it…

18

Tea is a wonderful, wonderful thing. On our (pathetic) little bevvie stand at work, we have one variety of coffee. This is the drink most oft consumed by the uneducated masses with whom I work… but surrounding that bit of coffee are a plethora of varieties of tea… very nice.

May I offer my few comments on this delightful beverage?

My favourites are Earl Grey, Tetley’s Orange Pekoe (not all Orange Pekoes are created equally!), and a black tea that was brought back to me from Germany… I am still trying to find out what type it is, as it is very tasty. It’s loose, so I have my little tea ball to make it with, adding a sort of ceremonial quality to the experience. I also adore chamomile, though that to me falls into an entirely different tea experience - the herbal, non-milk adding teas.

Tea in a styrofoam cup, or a paper cup, or with cream instead of milk, are just icky.

I have a 16 ounce Tim Horton’s mug that comes to work with me every morning, filled with strong tea and milk. And I have (sort of) patiently trained my husband to understand that he cannot use my mug for coffee. Ever. Ever, ever, ever… :slight_smile: Even when my mug has been scrubbed, or run through the dishwasher, the taste of coffee lingers and interupts my tea experience. Must be the plastic, as that doesn’t happen with my china mugs. And yes, tea does taste even better in china, but alas, china falls over in the car.

19

Well, it’s Monday morning, we are on vacation, my kids are watching Sagwa on the Days Inn TV set. I logged on to see how badly I lost to Milossarian in SDMB Fantasy Footie, and see what my pal Rue had to say today. I don’t have coffee (too lazy to make the free instant stuff) and I sure don’t have tea. It’s still warm out, but it doesn’t look very nice out today. Perhaps it’s because I am licking my psychic football wounds (I was too cowardly to check the Pick’em league results, I know it ain’t pretty). Now Barney is on in the background so I will have to log off, because I can’t have any of that shite on my vacations. We will go and play with myriad other cousins. Okay, only several other cousins, but if Rue can toss out $5 words like accrete without flinching I can overuse the English language as well.

And this reminds me, you should add the middle eastern version of coffee, which in my mind is truly just a cardomon tea, to your quest. Ideally you should have fresh dates to eat while drinking it, though. And you’ll never find it in Cincinnati, not even at Jungle Jim’s.

20

There once was a boy. He grew up and became, tentatively, a man. This story is about the man, I was just giving you some history first.

His parents and sister would drink tea with reckless abandon. Not that the abandon was an ingredient, it was their mannerism, just so we’re clear. They would make giant tanks of sun-tea. They would make individual cups/mugs of regular/hot tea. They would imbibe tea when out at Oriental food establishments. This man, however, would not. He never cared for the taste and, when residing at his parents, would prefer chocolate milk (Nestle’s, not Hershey’s) or simply water when out in said establishments.

One day, a mere four years ago, the man was Out West with friends who were quite well learned and they poured him a cup of jasmine tea. The man, respecting his friends and wondering, finally, what the big deal was that his family had been enjoying for years, deigned to try the tea. A few, say, a half-dozen cups later, the man is buzzing quite pleasantly and virtually vibrating out of his chair. Good stuff, that jasmine tea.

Today, the man is sipping green tea from a Friends coffee-house-size mug, for he has a cold. The man has learned to enjoy new and exciting beverages…but he still prefers NesQuik[sym]ä[/sym].

Actually, for my addition to this tea-fantistica, I picked up some Korean “three-in-one, complete tea” when I was in SanFran after LA-Coldie-Spiny-Dope. It’s pretty darn good and has sugar and cream included (hence the 3-in-1.) Be sure only to buy the Owl brand, though, the other one sucks.