practicality

Neil Gaiman blogging about tea made me decide it was time for a tea-post myself, because tea keeps me sane - I usually have at least one cup of tea a day, if not more. He linked two little interesting bits, which I thought worth sharing - the BBC on ho w to make a perfect cup of tea, and an essay by George Orwell on the same subject, although with less pictures. I personally subscribe to the strong tea with lots of sugar school of thought, although I made my tea by the mug in the microwave, because I am a Bad Person, although sometimes I'll use the electric kettle we have. We do own a teapot (which lives up to Orwell's requirements) but it's rare that I'm making that much tea at once.

My personal favorites are Earl Grey - it's my 'morning' tea, and I'm currently wandering through different brands to decide which I like the best - Bigelow's Plantation Mint, and Celestial Seasoning's Sleepytime and Country Peach Passion. I have about six or seven other types of tea, too, most of which I like as well ^^

Also, this is something tasty to do with Earl Grey, and yes, you can do it with bagged tea too - I haven't quite moved up to loose-leaf tea yet (although I have some loose-leaf green), so all I have is bags.

Thoughts on tea, anyone ^^?

EDIT: Just realized this is an appropriate entry to give a salute to the worst cup of tea I've had in my life XD Anime Evolution last summer - we made ourselves a (cooking) pot of tea, to have some caffiene for our costuming all-nighter. The pot was suspect, Vancouver tap water (Northwest water in general, actually) has this awful mineral taste, the only tea bags we had were some Lipton ones that we found laying around (or someone brought? Can't recall), and we had to sweeten it with Marina and Elisha's lemon drops, because there was no sugar. It was awful, but did serve it's purpose.