For the Tea Drinker

I love tea.  Well, not all tea.  I love iced tea, I hate green tea, I love British blend tea, and I despise lukewarm tea of any sort.  My absolute favorite is the iced tea my grandma makes, even though she adds sweetener to it.  It's the tea I grew up on.

I used to be a full-packet-of-sweetener kind of gal.  Any time I ordered iced tea from a restaurant, I'd empty the packet into my cup and add even more when the server topped it off.  We never call the sweeteners by their brands; only by the color of the packets.  I switched to yellow when it came about, but because of my grandma, I started off partial to blue.  Then eventually I discovered raw sugar and went with that for a while.  But my juvenile taste buds matured about five years ago and I haven't voluntarily sweetened my tea since.

My aunt makes great tea.  It's strong.  Like, put-some-hair-on-your-chest strong.  Two packets of black tea and one of green, then steep in hot water until it's the color of coffee; cool to room temp on the counter and serve over ice.  If you're bold enough to drink this tea at all then there's no reason to sweeten it.  It's grown-up tea (and not the kind with rum and triple sec and all manner of other craziness) (in case you're wondering, yes I did need to Google 'Long Island Iced Tea' to figure out what's in it...I don't dabble with that stuff).

My favorite hot tea du jour is currently Suzette's Jasmine Orangerie.  It's loose-leaf tea that comes in a tres chic little red bag.  The flavor is light and floral with notes of orange.  Follow the directions on the bag to the letter; brew it any longer than two minutes and it starts to taste a little mucky.  I'll let you know if I find anything I like better, but I still have about a dozen teacups' worth of Orangerie left in the bag.  Talk to me in a couple weeks.

And now I think I'll brew another cup before the Blackhawks game starts.  It's part of my tradition.

~AF