Every day I’m facing the same dilemma: shall I have tea? Or coffee, as usual?
For years I was on the health train and drank herbal teas only. My selection was vast and I had a few favourites: fresh nettle tea that I grew in the garden, and damiana tea, bought from a local health food store. I referred to it as ‘tomb’ tea (which freaked people out haha), as the scent reminded me of the earthy smell of the catacombs underneath the Vatican in Rome which I visited at the age of about 9, fascinated by the sight of the tombs of the Popes, I must add.
And I loved my trusted little book about herbs, Herbally yours, by Penny C. Royal. Tea was my thing.
But a major life change meant I needed to change – everything. From being a health freak I threw everything upside down, and tea, became coffee. (Not that coffee doesn’t have its benefits!)
So for a long time now, coffee is my go-to drink. I still have some herbal teas on the shelf, as well as Ceylon. But coffee it is, morning to night. And on the rare occasion that I do have a cup of tea, I usually follow it up immediately with a coffee!
If you’d like to find out about the history of tea, you can find out in FOOD VIEWS from around the world. This is what Katie Stone wrote in one of the book’s stories, All the tea in China – and beyond.:
‘The Tibetans welcomed the beverage, finding it highly beneficial in aiding their heavy diet of yak meat and barley. One of the traditional forms of tea here was known as ‘brick tea’ – compressed lumps of black tea, boiled extensively to extract its full flavour and strength and mixed with generous amounts of yak butter and salt. In the later 17th century, the Mongols also adopted this custom but mixed their tea with horse milk instead of butter. … But it wasn’t until Charles II married Catherine of Braganza in 1661 that tea became a national obsession. As a Portuguese princess, Catherine was a ‘tea addict’, … Tea – in all its shapes and forms, varieties, and blends – is the brew through which we live our daily lives. It connects cultures, marks celebrations, honours rituals. It will be here for as long we are.‘
You can buy FOOD VIEWS from around the world on Amazon – click for your nearest paperback outlet: US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE, JP, CA, and AU (also available as Kindle edition: US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, JP, BR, CA, MX, AU, and IN).
And what do you know: all this tea talk made me have a cuppa!
BiograView 