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Off-Topic => Something else => Topic started by: SueC on August 29, 2019, 11:51:38

Title: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on August 29, 2019, 11:51:38
This is the thread where you can tell everyone how you have your tea - let me count the ways, etc.

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You can thank Brett for the thread title. He was just ad-libbing when he came in with cups of tea for us.  We drink a lot of green tea, and out of the biggest soup mugs we were able to find.  We stopped bothering with normal-sized teacups a long time ago.  What's the point in having a cup of tea and then having to make another immediately afterwards?  This is so much more convenient, and the soup mug size is just perfect for cupping both your hands around.  Brett has his green tea plain, I have green jasmine tea with honey and with milk from the creamy top of the bottle (we have raw non-supermarket milk, straight out of a cow with no subsequent factory processing).  In days past, I used to add a splash of rosewater to my concoction as well, but I've gone off this - our own honey imparts plenty of floweriness to the mix anyway.

I sometimes have Chai green tea, made with our own "doobies" - bits of star anise, cardamon pods, cloves, and slices of fresh ginger, with honey and milk of course... and I always eat the ginger, and sometimes the other stuff as well, during tea-drinking.

Brett sometimes gets mint from the garden and drops a few leaves into his green tea.  He adds honey only when feeling under the weather, and the only milk he has in his tea, ever, is when he has black tea - he has one teaspoonful of milk in that, per soup mug - not even enough to make the tea opaque, it just kind of goes muddy.  When I first met him, I used to joke that one lactating mouse would fulfil all his household's milk requirements.  When I make the tea, I still ask him, "Green tea, or black tea with mouse milk?"

We always start the day by padding across into the kitchen to make tea, and then have that as the start of breakfast in bed (we stopped having breakfasts at the table years ago, except when we have visitors).  It's a really civilised way to start the day, and allows us to ease into the world slowly, rather than experience jarring transitions at this delicate time of day.

Usually, I'm the person making tea in the morning, since I am an early bird, and Brett is a night owl.  Therefore, I am officially the "morning magician" at our house, and Brett is the "evening elf" - because I am useless after dinner, and then he tends to me and brings me anything I'd like.  It's nice how the differences in body clocks have worked for us - each of us gets a pampering, at opposite ends of the day - and each also gets to spoil the other senseless when they are at their most feeble.  It's a lovely tradition.

In summer, we have a lot of iced tea - generally green, with mint, with citrus, with jasmine, sometimes with several of these at once. We make a big vat of it and keep it in the fridge, and it barely lasts the day.

Now over to you for your tea preferences, stories and rituals.  :)
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: word_on_a_wing on August 29, 2019, 16:51:26
"...Let me count the ways..."

This saying always makes this song pop in my head...

Me and tea? what shall it be? Hmm, let's see...

I like to start my weekend by brewing a big pot of chai. In a pot I put in cloves, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, black peppers, and fresh ginger. Fill with boiling water, cover, simmer 20min, turn off, add teabag (I prefer Rooibos) and steep, serve with milk and honey :)
Or if I'm lazy I'll do a teabag, the brand YogiTea have a nice Rooibos chai one 👌
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: word_on_a_wing on August 29, 2019, 17:08:26
Clever thread title...

I'm gonna try out do you 😝

Pictures of Ewes ?
PoE (https://www.instagram.com/p/B1wJX29oyt4/?igshid=nelcgg3170fe)


...ok it's lame, I know it 😜
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on August 29, 2019, 23:18:58
...is that a Cure remix for NZ sheep farmers, @word_on_a_wing ? ;)  Marketing these days is all about finding your niche...

Brett has been threatening to rewrite the whole lyrics of Edge Of The Deep Green Sea to make it about tea and its magnificences - a subject on which he can hold forth for days with no prior preparation.  Thankfully, he has been too preoccupied with his latest Cyberman essay to start on that.  Things like this happen around here, though.  A couple of years ago I wrote Brett a little descriptive poem about himself which had to be sung to the tune of The Blue Danube.  I remember the start of that:  He starts with a B (he's Brett, he's Brett) / and ends in a T (he's Brett, he's Brett)... but would have to look up the rest.  I think we'd been reading Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales For Children, and it inspired this sort of thing.

You have quite a propensity for rhyming yourself! :) And your tea also sounds very nice.

The graphic you provided would make a fine album cover! :cool



Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on August 30, 2019, 01:31:26
More tea themes:

The Waterboys dedicated a whole album to it:  This Is The Tea.  The title track seems to be about camping, it goes: Well, that was the river / and this is the tea.

Robert Plant likes a cuppa too, why else would he have covered the song called Tea Of Love?

Echo & The Bunneymen have Seven Teas - now that's a good day!

Dr Who has a story called The Tea Devils.

There is that old classic novel, The Old Man And The Tea.

And a much beloved late 1990s Australian drama series, Teachange.

There actually is a band called The Tea Party (and Brett is going, "And a fine band they are too!").

Sailors usually go to tea.

There's the decision you have to make every morning:  The devil or the deep blue tea?

And if you're feeling alone, remember, There's plenty more fish in the tea!  :angel
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on January 07, 2020, 12:40:04
This is Brett summing up the tea situation at our house:

(http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/the_cure_mug_front.jpg)

(http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/the_cure_mug_back.jpg)
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on June 29, 2020, 01:25:14
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4d/c8/24/4dc824adad7c119230ee5c26fa807594.jpg)
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on July 02, 2020, 03:08:45
...more on tea, this time from our naughty, offbeat Helen Razer, who used to be a Triple J host, writing in Crikey in 2018.

Quote from: undefinedThe secret to taking your mind off civilisation's inevitable decay

Afternoon tea is one of the most satisfying and direct routes to denying the horrendous state of the world.

Helen Razer
Aug 14, 2018

(https://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Sheri-Silver-Unsplash-afternoon-tea.jpg)
Not the author's actual petit-fours. Image credit: Sheri Silver/Unsplash

The world, as we know, is largely down the lav. I may often remind you of this state in print, but I am wont to forget it regularly in life. I urge you to do this as well. We must not gaze too long into the neoliberal sewer of the present. Before it gazes back, we must practise what a youngster might call "self-care", or what I call "disavowal of the devastating truth". You may choose your delusion as a craft, novel or physical exercise. I prefer mine served on china.

Afternoon tea is my most direct route to denial. When I sense that our very public problems — wealth inequality, nativism, sexism, climate change, etc — will never be resolved, I make a scone in private. When the world looks especially bleak, I find a tea room. A tea room that serves afternoon tea. Afternoon tea.

from https://www.crikey.com.au/2018/08/14/the-secret-to-taking-your-mind-off-civilisations-inevitable-decay/
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: Ulrich on July 02, 2020, 15:49:22
Quote from: undefinedThe secret to taking your mind off civilisation's inevitable decay

Oh well, I guess I need stronger stuff than tea for this...  :?  :1f635:
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on July 03, 2020, 16:38:23
Maybe coffee would be helpful?  (...perhaps intravenously?)   :winking_tongue
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: Ulrich on July 03, 2020, 18:03:52
Quote from: SueC on July 03, 2020, 16:38:23Maybe coffee would be helpful?  (...perhaps intravenously?)

Yep, to climb up a mountain on a hike (or to not fall asleep in front of the telly)...

but, to take my mind off the decay of civilization, it's got to be mindbending drugs or so.  :persevere:
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on July 04, 2020, 10:25:24
Well, this isn't mindbending drugs, this is just a little thing your can sing in the shower to cheer yourself up:


Or if that's too cheerful and you would benefit more from a nice bit of cynicism:


Or you could just go put on Disintegration and have a good wallow; that's sometimes very beneficial.

Something from Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow:  "I sit down on the sofa.  First come the images from the day.  I let them pass.  Then come memories from when I was a child, vacillating between slight depression and mild elation; I let them go, too.  Then comes peace.  That's when I put on a record.  Then I sit down and cry.  I'm not crying about anything or anyone in particular.  The life I live I created for myself, and I wouldn't want it any different.  I cry because in the universe there is something as beautiful as Kremer playing the Brahms violin concerto."

(/substitute whatever moves you)
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: Ulrich on July 04, 2020, 10:55:30
Thanks, I prefer the Bob Geldof track, kinda funny. (I have the cd somewhere, should dig it up.)

Anyway, fortunately I don't think about the decay of civilization all day, so hopefully I can enjoy my coffee or tea (& scones).  :happy
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on July 04, 2020, 12:39:42
Quote from: Ulrich on July 04, 2020, 10:55:30Anyway, fortunately I don't think about the decay of civilization all day...

You don't?   :1f632:  :1f637:  :-D

...and you have scones in Germany???  Have you been baking?

...Brett would like to know why you're eating scones when you could be eating Brezen.  He's very envious that you can go down the road and buy Brezen whenever you want.  :yum:

And the right shape and everything.  I can never get the shape right, even when I do a reasonable approximation of the taste...

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2Fd%2Fd2%2FMuenchner_Brezn.jpg%2F1200px-Muenchner_Brezn.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: Ulrich on July 04, 2020, 15:58:13
Yes, that is a good thing, a brezel along with coffee or tea.

(Don't think we have scones, one day I might visit the UK again.)
Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on July 05, 2020, 00:51:56
You don't have to wait to go to the UK for scones, @Ulrich.  :)  Here's a wonderful Aussie twist on scones - moist, bright-orange, delicious pumpkin scones... easy to make, so the boy scouts / girl scouts learn to do them here too.

(https://img.taste.com.au/9_mZHxDt/w643-h428-cfill-q90/taste/2016/11/pumpkin-scones-75500-1.jpeg)

These have been served up savoury with some chives on - recipe here:  https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/pumpkin-scones/688b4546-aeff-45da-85bd-f397317e0c7a?nk=89c1d7972b9085e253dd5b437b0ac25f-1593902066

Of course, traditionally we have them with strawberry jam and cream, like this:

(https://www.clairekcreations.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/20150304_DSC_4398-399x600.jpg)

Quote from: undefinedIngredients

    2 cups self-raising flour
    1 cup cooked mashed pumpkin
    2 tbsp raw sugar
    2 tbsp butter
    1 egg
    2 tbsp full-fat milk

Instructions

   1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C (356F) fan-forced and line a baking tray with baking paper.
    Sift the flour into a large bowl.
   2. Add the sugar and whisk it through then use your fingers to rub in the butter until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
   3. Add the egg, milk and pumpkin and fold them through.
   4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, flour your hands and pat it out to about 2-3cm thickness.
   5. Use a floured, round cookie cutter to cut out rounds and place them on the tray so they are just touching.
   6. Gently pat any excess dough together then let it rest a few minutes and pat out and cut out more circles.
   7. Bake the scones for 10-15 minutes or until golden.
   8. Transfer to a wire rack to cool or gobble them up straight away with jam and cream.

from https://www.clairekcreations.com/pumpkin-scones-the-old-fashioned-way/

...I never bother to sift the flour - that's from the days when people would sift out the weevils and various other bits of extra protein.   :angel   Some people swear that sifting the flour makes the scones lighter, but I personally think that's an old wives' tale...

Something to enjoy with a cup of tea.   :)

Title: Re: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Tea
Post by: SueC on October 26, 2020, 22:54:51
Does anyone else sing odes to tea when the tea is being brought in, or is it just us?

Here comes the tea
Here comes the tea
It's all right
Here comes the tea

...borrowing from the Beatles tune Here Comes The Sun...

...and in more formal moods, borrowing from Here Comes The Bride...

Here comes the tea!
Here comes the tea!


Returning to The Beatles:

All you need is tea
La-la-la-la
All you need is tea
La-la-la-la
All you need is tea
La-la-la-la
Tea is all you need


...etc...