Tea!

 

     On Monday I invited a few ladies around for tea. The drinking kind not the English eating kind! Tea in a cup not something that isn’t tea, on a plate!!  I’m not an avid tea drinker. I think I prefer coffee but nowhere near anything resembling a connoisseur of either. Monday evening was to be a TasTEA evening! Sorry about the pun, bit cheesy – so maybe it was English tea after all!!

     As I said I don’t drink much tea and I find ‘normal’ tea, i.e. not herbal or fruity teas, quite strong and they leave a really ugly stain in some cups and mugs. But I have got into a habit of having a cup of Rooibos tea with breakfast in the mornings. Rooibos, pronounced Roy, as in the man’s name, and Boss, the guy you make coffee for, with the accent on Roy, is a South African tea which when directly translated means Red Bush. And just in case you think you can pronounce it any which way you want because you don’t care, please just have some respect for a different culture, country, language and spelling – sorry that was a reactionary comment to a totally different situation that cropped up this week! It’s Rooibos – Royboss!

     Anyway as I was saying, again, I have a cup of Rooibos with breakfast in the morning, no milk, no sugar. It’s caffeine free, a low tannin content, rich in polyphenol antioxidants, contains no colourants, additives or preservatives and no calories!! My father used to think it smelt awful, but it didn’t take long before it was the only tea he would drink and he too preferred it without milk. It’s quite acceptable to drink it with milk and sugar of course!

     But to get back to the TasTEA evening! The idea was to taste teas! And in particular a tea perhaps the ladies hadn’t tasted before. The evening was also billed as being on a shoestring so I didn’t go and buy up every un-tea sounding tea on the supermarket shelf, but settled on a few herbal, a few fruity and then found the Twinings Selection boxes.  I think most of the ladies tried something reasonably new but I don’t think they went all out! Most of them knew of, and had at some time had Chamomile – the ‘sleepy’ tea, and some of them tried Camomile & Spiced Apple “a moment of calm”. I don’t think anyone touched the Peppermint tea, which is apparently good for muscle & joint pains, soothes indigestion, helps cure hiccups, helps stop diarrhoea, eases IBS, relieves morning sickness, and is an anti-spasmodic for constipation – but please see your doctor etc. etc. In fact Chamomile (or camomile, apparently the spelling with the ‘h’ “more accurately corresponds to the ultimate Latin and Greek source”- Wikipedia) and Peppermint seemed to be the panaceas for most ailments, as we ladies discovered while doing a Tea Quiz! And I think the red box of Pomegranate Tea was quite understandably ignored!

     It was nice to have the Twinings Selection boxes with Blackberry & Nettle, Cranberry Raspberry &  Elderflower, Pomegranate & Raspberry, Blackcurrant Ginseng & Vanilla (surprisingly very nice!) and Cranberry & Sanguinello Orange in the Fruit & Herbal Selection. The Green Tea selection had Apple & Pear (not that enthralling at all!), Cranberry (I don’t like anything with Cranberry!), Mango & Lychee, Pineapple & Grapefruit, and Orange & Lotus Flower.

    

 Anyway we had a nice time together, some of us with our dainty cups of pure tea, no milk and some of us with our comforting mugs and the teabag string hanging out!

     We ended the evening quite relaxed – tea does that to you – and with a challenge. Did you mother ever tell you, or have you ever said to your children, “How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t even tasted it!” Some people do that with Christianity. They say they don’t think ‘church’ is for them, but they haven’t ‘tried’ it! There’s a verse in Psalm 34 verse 8 that reads: “Taste and see that God is good!” It’s not going to cost you anything, taste!

     And now I can either save these teas for another ladies’ get together, or taste some more flavours myself!  I think I might, maybe try a Blackberry & Nettle………???

P.S. Twinings offer free samples! 

P.P.S. Nah! the Blackberry & Nettle is a little too fruity for me!! :)

The day before the day before Christmas

It was the day before the day before Christmas (or the day before Christmas Eve) (or the 23^rd December). The Christmas tree was ablaze with twinkling lights – when someone pressed the right button to get them flashing and not static; the Christmas cake was iced – that is, the packet of marzipan had been rolled and jam-glued to what we all hope is a moist rooibos-tea boiled fruit cake, and the packet of instant icing had been rolled and strawberry jam-glued to the marzipan with the off cuts biscuit-cutter-pressed into a snowman and a star, and the snowman had been ‘painted’ a little pink in strategic places with the strawberry jam – all because Asda had not had any Christmas cake decorations for sale a couple of weeks ago;  boxes of a mince pies were stashed in the cupboard - it is a well-known fact that shop bought mince pies are always better tasting than home-made ones, somehow they seem to be so perfect and melt-in-the-mouthilicious, the Christmas puddings were still in their plastic covering, and the cooking instructions carefully re-stuck to the lids and ready to be ‘steamed’ in the saucepan ……. once the Christmas lunch brussels had finished cooking and the saucepan washed of course; ‘Aunt Bessies’ instant Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes were in good supply in the freezer and the packet of fresh carrots were waiting to be washed, scrubbed or peeled and cut neatly ready for cooking; there was enough gravy granule mixture to make a tasty lumpless gravy to go with the chicken which was to be delivered in the next few days as a Christmas gift – hopefully without the feathers and gizzards; and odd shaped items wrapped in glitzy Christmassy paper with star shaped tags bearing the recipients name, were arranged in between the tall, short, long, and square Christmas cards on the bay-window sill.

So on this day before the day before Christmas with all things ready for the annual celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. and Grandma was comfortably sleeping on the sofa in the lounge, Daughter was cuddled under the Grandma patchwork quilt fast asleep, Father was snoring under the duvet, and the dog, with her head tucked into her belly, hugging the curve of her bed, eyes closed and breathing heavily, was blissfully content on her sheepskin bed in the warm kitchen .....  I made some mince pies – with shop bought fruit mince, of course!

(Photos to follow when phone has recharged and downloaded the sleep pics, and if I remember to take a photo of the one or two home-made mince pies left.) (I wanted to get this posted before the day before the day before Christmas actually ended!)

Happy Christmas everyone!!

(pictures a little blurred to protect the identity of innocent people involved!!)