Tag Archives: tea

Not my cup of tea

It used to be that I wouldn’t drink coffee past five or so in the afternoon, because the caffeine would keep me up at night. Every once in a while I’d make the mistake of ordering an espresso or something like that after dinner, and come two or three in the morning, I’d lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, wondering why it’s been taking so long for me to fall asleep, all while my heart felt like it was trying its hardest to escape the confines of my chest.

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But I’m at the point now where I can drink coffee whenever I want. Which, coincidentally or not, happens to be every waking minute of the day. My caffeine intake used to be something that I’d monitor pretty carefully. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of overdoing it, and the resulting caffeine-induced panic attack left me careful not to exceed three cups in a row.

I’m not worried about that anymore. I get up in the morning and make myself a pot. Sometimes my wife will pour herself a cup, and I although it would be nice to say that I’m thinking of her, that I’m making extra coffee in case she’d like some, really I’m just brewing as much as my machine will make at once.

Maybe she’ll have a cup, maybe not, it doesn’t matter. That whole pot is just a warm-up. I’ll down everything over the course of an hour, an hour and a half, and then I fill it up all over again. This I’ll just leave on the warmer for as long as the machine will run without automatically turning itself off, usually something like three hours.

I’ll be downstairs and I’ll have a cup. I’ll make a sandwich and I’ll have another. I used to be really picky, if not a little pretentious about my coffee. I’d buy whole beans from select markets, I bought a coffee grinder and insisted that cups be brewed individually, throwing out words like oxidation in regards to a recent grind, all nonsense I’d read about on the Internet and convinced myself was all necessary for not just a perfect cup of coffee, but for the whole experience. It was an experience.

Now I’ll come home from work and I’ll see that quarter pot of room temperature coffee left out from way earlier in the day. Whatever, I’ll turn the warmer on, maybe even microwave a cup if I need a super immediate fix. Coffee beans, I don’t really care where they’re from, a gourmet roaster, sure, Dunkin Donuts, sounds good. Really I’m just looking for convenience, pure bulk. This means giant bags of vacuum packed beans at Costco, or loose by-the-pound roast that I’ll shovel into a brown paper bag from a giant bin at the grocery store.

I just want to have a lot of it, whatever it is. Because every once in a while I’ll be in the unfortunate situation where I really want coffee, but I don’t have any. Like just right now. I don’t know how it slipped my mind, but I was out on Long Island visiting my in-laws, and I knew that I needed to get some more coffee on my way back. But I didn’t. And I needed some.

I weighed my options. It was late. Did I feel like walking around to the myriad Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts by my place? Which one might be open at this hour? Should I go to the grocery store and buy some beans? Or would that turn into a full-blown shopping trip? What were my options?

Maybe there was some emergency coffee lying around somewhere, some Folger’s Crystals, something. In the back of one of the kitchen cabinets, I found a sealed box of tea bags, earl grey. Would this help? Could I get what I get out of coffee by drinking a few cups of tea?

It was worth a shot. But everything about the tea making process took forever. The waiting for the water to boil. The waiting for the tea to steep. The waiting for the boiling tea to cool down somewhat. It’s so much easier to press a button on the coffee maker, like I don’t have to be conscious of each painfully long step.

And then I finally got to drinking my earl grey. What is that taste, bergamot? It’s like citrusy and floral. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s nothing like drinking a cup of coffee. I’d never tried tea with milk, but I figured it was worth a shot. It made the drink a little smoother, but I don’t know, it wasn’t like a cup of coffee with milk.

I finished that cup and poured another dose of hot water over a fresh tea bag. Nothing bothers me more than watching someone try to make a second cup of tea out of a used tea bag. Sure, it turns brown, but there’s no way that whatever’s in that cup is anything close to a full-strength cup of tea. It’s like, if I ran hot water over some used coffee grinds, I’m sure I’d get something, a cup of hot brown liquid, but nothing that I’d like to actually drink.

Toward the end of the second cup, I started to feel it, the buzz that started in the base of my neck, shooting subtle pulses of pleasure and relief as it spread upward around the top of my skull. I was seriously worried, because even though I know tea has caffeine, I didn’t really expect to feel anything. It’s like, I drink Coca-Cola, but I never detect even the slightest hint of caffeine.

But no, this was good. I was enjoying this. Everything was going to be OK. Would I change my daily routine and maybe add tea to the mix? Of course not. This was a desperate times, desperate measures emergency maneuver, nothing more. Still, I couldn’t deny that a part of me was enjoying it, just ever so slightly. I felt like Captain Picard, after a long day, I’d walk into my ready room and tell the replicator simply, “Tea. Earl grey. Hot.”

But yeah, tomorrow, definitely I’ve got to get more coffee. A lot more. No, even more than that.

Tea time

I’m trying out tea time. Ideally I’d like to have it at four o’clock every day, so I can be like “Four o’clock! Tea time!” saying that out loud in a ridiculous British accent, but really ridiculous, like if a British person were in the room with me when I said it, they’d be like, “I do say, you really are a bloody idiot,” but I wouldn’t let any Englishmen get me down, I’d continue, say something like, “Nonsense, I insist,” and I’d point them to my kitchen where, and again, this is the ideal situation, four o’clock, “ding-dong!” I’d get a miniature grandfather clock and put it in the corner, miniature enough that I wouldn’t have to make a standalone space just for the clock, I could put it on a shelf, somewhere inconspicuous enough that if you walked in the room, maybe you’d notice it right away, maybe you wouldn’t, that would be the idea, but as soon as the clock strikes four, you’d know. You’d know what time it is. Tea time.

Hurry up then! I’d snap my fingers in the air. Again, four o’clock, definitely on Saturdays, definitely when I’m not at work and my friends aren’t at work, I’ll invite everybody over, tell them to show up at, “three forty-five on the dot!” in, again, in that crazy accent, and maybe they’d get it, my more astute friends, they’d think to themselves, “Blimey, that Rob, that devil, is he planning a tea time?” and they’d get into it, they’d start thinking their own thoughts in that same quasi-British accent, and they’d throw around words like chums, and mates, and flat, all together, in a really English way, they’d think thoughts like, “Fancy Rob hosting a tea time for his chums and his mates at his flat?” and would that even be a question or just a statement? I always imagine all British sentences ending in a question mark, even if it’s not a question, with one exception: an exclamation point reserved exclusively for times when one is simply shocked by another’s callous behavior, to the point where they can’t hold it in anymore, they just have to shout out, “My word! I never! I do say!”

Maybe it’s a Tuesday. Maybe I actually have to work that Saturday. When we can’t demand perfection, sometimes we’ll have to settle for second best, a six o’clock tea time, seven, eight, (but never later than eight.) Still, I’ll be standing there in the foyer, really just a kitchen, but I’ll call it a foyer for tea time, and I’ll raise my hand in the air, snap, and I’ll present trays of cucumber sandwiches, toasted English muffins, which I’ll call crumpets and scones, and my friends will be so impressed by the cucumber sandwiches that they’ll then look at the English muffins and think to themselves, “Huh. I never knew British people called English muffins crumpets and scones. I thought that was something else entirely. But then again, look at how authentic those cucumber sandwiches look. Rob’s got to know what he’s doing here.”

The earl grey tea will be served piping hot. The cucumber sandwiches will be devoured so quickly that the bread won’t have time to get soggy from the lemon juice. I’ll be dressed semi-casually: jeans, but a proper tuxedo shirt, kind of a throwback to the whole proper English thing. I’ll be playing classical music in the background. We’ll all sit around the drawing room (again, just my living room, but repurposed for tea time) legs crossed over the long way, the hard way, the English way, and we’ll be nibbling on scones and sipping on tea and laughing at this and that.

I do say! You simply must come over for tea! Four o’clock, (see above) at my flat! Bring your mates! Cheerio!