tea meme

I took this meme from penguin unearthed.

When it comes to tea, I mentally divide it into two types: green tea (of which I buy loose leaf Japanese organic) and black tea. (And of course there's herbal tea too, so that's three types.) On an average day, I drink all three, but I have a clear preference for which comes when...

• Your first cup, when do you drink it? My first and usually second and third cups are of green tea, made in an infuser. I usually have my first cup at about 9.30 in the morning - either after I've arrived at work or university or arrived home from taking the boy to school. I don't drink tea first thing. I have a fresh juice first thing and some time later, something to eat and some time later again, I feel ready for my green tea.

• How many cups a day do you drink? Between two and six (of green and black - I don't drink herbal tea every single day.) It depends where I am and what I'm doing. On a busy, outdoors kind of day, I might only have one cup of green in the morning and one cup of black in the late afternoon. On a sitting-at-the-computer kind of day, I'd drink three cups of green and 1-2 cups of black at  my desk and possibly another black or herbal in the evening.

• Teabag or leaf? A mixture, but at home I drink nearly all leaf. I've drunk leaf green tea for years now (I can't remember when I started drinking it - it feels like forever, but must be some time in the past 12-14 years). Until a year or so ago, I nearly always used teabags for 'ordinary' tea, though I did have some loose leaves I'd bought in department stores in London, which I mostly only drank on guest occasions. Then someone gave me some T2 loose leaf and I was hooked. Since then I've been exploring black teas and have a selection which I make in a small teapot.

• Milk or sugar? Neither. Until two years ago, when I more or less gave up dairy, I used to have one cup a day of strong tea with milk and one sugar. I found that if I drank more than two cups of that, it could interfere with my sleep at night! When I stopped taking milk and sugar, I discovered I could have black tea at night and it made no difference to my sleep. I don't understand it, but it's true.

• Your favourite way of brewing? In an infuser or in my teapot which is one of those which has a built-in infuser.
   

• With whom do you prefer to enjoy your tea? With the friends who I prefer to spend time with whether we're drinking tea or not! I don't have any special tea-drinking friends, though one very longtime friend does come to mind - she's a very-weak-tea drinker and a great conversationalist and in our younger days we'd spend literally hours on end sitting about drinking tea and talking.
  


• Your favourite tea? Green tea (but only the real Japanese thing) and currently a looseleaf black tea I was given for Christmas - can't remember the name of it (I threw out the packaging and put it into a lovely tea cannister I was given at the same time.)

• Where do you prefer to drink your tea? I love having afternoon tea in hotels. Haven't done enough of that lately.

• What does your favourite cup look like? I don't have one in particular but what I do have a preference for is very thin china, fine-bone china as opposed to chunky mugs. And I don't like drinking from cups which are a colour, especially a dark colour, inside. I much prefer white so I can see what the tea is like. (The green tea has to be a pale lime green, best assessed in a white cup.)

• English Breakfast or Earl Grey? I don't like Earl Grey but I do like T2's Girlie Grey, which is a version of Lady Grey, which I believe is a mixture of Earl Grey and something else. I like English Breakfast but prefer Irish Breakfast.

• Favourite occupation while drinking tea? I'm most often online when I drink tea these days but my favourite occupation would be talking with friends.

• Formative tea experience? I'm surprised that my answers to this make me sound rather rigidly obsessed with certain tea rituals. Until a couple of years ago, I'd have said I wasn't much of a tea person at all. (I don't drink coffee, never have.) I didn't start drinking tea until I was about 22 and for most of my adult life I haven't been particularly interested in tea - I could easily go a day or more without thinking of it, in contrast to most of my friends who were dependent on it. I suppose my formative tea experience was having a job which had scheduled tea breaks -  I needed something to drink on the tea break so I started drinking tea!
   

Comments

[Jacinta]

Mmm tea . I prefer Orange Pekoe. I just put some leaves in the bottom of a cup and fill with boiling water. Easy.

[ssusoz]

I do that quite often too - tea leaves straight into cup and add water. Trouble is, you can't control the strength of the tea that way if, like me, you need to leave it to sit till it's cooled down a bit before drinking. Still, I often can't be bothered with an infuser.

[Susan]

What a wonderful meme!

I've been starting to drink a bit more green tea lately. I do love afternoon tea in a hotel, which is something I've only done a few times--not so many hotels or tea houses doing a good job here in the States.

Do you like to eat anything with afternoon tea?

[ssusoz]

Afternoon tea in a hotel has to include food - sandwiches and cakes and pastries. And when I drink tea at home, I nearly always eat something sweet with it (in the afternoons) - either a bun or biscuit or cake or een bread and honey.

[susoz]

How could I forget Devonshire tea! Scones, jam and cream - my favourite afternoon tea and what I always order if it's on the menu.
In south London there is a wonderful cafe called Tea Time which specialises in jams and cream with scones - heaven!