Tea

It seems I am incapable of doing a post that doesn't have a specific subject. I suppose it's because my life is really rather boring at the best of times. At the worst of times, I'm too busy to think of posting. (Like when studying for that Herpetology midterm last week. Which it's quite possible I failed.)

Anyway, this post is inspired by a blog post by Gail Carriger, one of my very favorite authors. I only wish I could be as supremely civilized as she, but I am in college and it sometimes seems that civilization and college are contradictory terms. (Yeah, someone was smoking pot in my bathroom. Again. Aiiiiiii....)

I, too, adore tea, though not in a terribly discerning manner. This is partly out of necessity, because I found out quite early on that I'm impressively allergic (or overreactive, not sure which) to something in coffee. It makes me parinoid and short tempered and then I don't sleep for three days afterward. Oh, and I get a migraine. It's Dad's genes--he does exactly the same thing, and so he introduced me to tea and how it ought to be made at a very young age. And since I am living in a situation where a lot of my friends do terrible, terrible things to their tea, I thought this necessary.

Yes. I confess. I'm a tea snob. A moderate unassuming mild-mannered snob, but still a snob. I drink black tea for preference, though sometimes green tea.

Firstly, the water must be filtered. The tap water around here has a ridiculous quantity of solutes in it, and this leads to a nasty white rime around the insides of the kettle, and then you get white bits in your tea, which is many kinds of NOT OKAY. The tap water also gives the tea a bitter flavor. Heating it in the dormitory microwave simply doesn't do the trick, firstly because everyone pops popcorn there and the tea always comes out with a skim of grease on the top and a distinct odor of fake butter, and secondly because telling when it's boiled is very difficult.

 The water must be heated to boiling. I have a friend who only heats the water to the temperature he wants the tea to be--lukewarm!--and then sticks the teabag in. It makes me twitch. I have another friend who sticks the teabag in the cold water in the cup and then microwaves the whole thing, which makes me cry and hide under the bed. It must be boiling when I put it in the cup. I'll use teabags (because looseleaf requires extra prep, and is impossible to use in the college cafeteria for a number of reasons), and I do sweeten the tea (trying to compensate for coffee intolerance here!)

Writing it down, I realize that I'm not nearly as snobbish as I could be about tea. I'll drink iced tea, even the sort from a bottle. But still, my requirements of a good cup of tea are enough to prevent me from getting to drink tea at college very often. The dining commons use tap water and don't always heat it to boiling and the tea provided is simply pathetic. Really, the closest thing I can get to good tea are chai lattes, which simply aren't the same thing at all!

All things considered, I'm really looking forward to moving into my own apartment, where I can heat the correct water to the correct temperature and stick milk and sugar in it to my heart's desire...and have my own tea set.