I was raised on Lipton tea. My mother saw tea as the solution for everything. No matter what the problem, she'd suggest a cup of tea. I liked tea, especially since I was an asthmatic kid and tea helped me breathe better.
When I was a teenager, my friends and I would shop at an import store and buy Darjeeling tea. Delicious! Later I was exposed to herbal teas. Didn't like them so much, I like tea-flavored tea, black tea. Green tea, well to me it tastes pretty much the same as black tea, maybe a little milder. Of course, it's the same plant, just processed differently than black tea.
Then I went to China. What an eye-opener that was! The only drinks we were offered were tea, beer and warm orange soda. So I mostly drank tea as I tend to get loopy on a diet of beer with every meal including breakfast. We did have one woman who drank the quart of beer given to us at each meal. She was hammered through the whole trip. I wonder how much she remembers?
The Chinese people at the hospital where we trained drank tea all day long. They all brought jars to work, like a mayonnaise jar for instance, with a pinch of tea in the bottom. Boiling water was available everywhere, so they just kept filling their jars and drinking tea all day. It got weaker as the day went on of course, because they never put in any more tea leaves.
We went to the tea market in some town, Suzhou I think. Wow! I bought loads of tea to bring home. It was very inexpensive and it was all very fragrant and tasted marvelous. I remember some dragon well tea, and some tea pearls. You put one pearl in a cup and add boiling water, then the compressed tea leaves loosen and float. That tea lasted a long time, and since I went back to China three more times, I had plenty of fabulous tea to drink for years.
I ran out of my Chinese tea eventually, of course. Then I found an Indian grocery store in Riverside county somewhere -- maybe Rubidoux. It sold Indian herbs and spices, and of course lots of different kinds of tea. I regularly bought their Lipton tea in a green box. It's the kind of Lipton sold in India, NOT the kind sold to unsuspecting Americans. The flavor difference is amazing. The Indian Lipton tasted rich, had a good ruddy color, wonderful fragrance. I felt cheated by all the American Lipton tea I have drunk over the years.
I no longer live near that grocery store. I'm in the mountains in Northern California. Someone on JWS mentioned Punjana tea, so I ordered it. Lovely tea, with a good color, robust taste and wonderful fragrance. And it is reasonably priced. I can order more expensive teas, but why bother when the Punjana is so reasonable in cost?
So, I'm going to go make a cup of tea and have a couple of ginger biscuits with it. I would call them cookies, but the label says biscuits.
What do you like to drink?
(Don't get me started on coffee.)
(Narcissist, whatever your name is, be sure to say something negative about tea drinking.)
