How to Make the Tea

How to Make the Tea March 28, 2017

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I’m pretty sure that this can’t really be a blog today. I am struggling into an awake state without caffeine and am going to have to miss my favorite thing of the week, the thing that keeps me sane, Tuesday Morning Bible Study, in order that I can go have whole vials of blood wrenched from my body. I do just love sitting there watching the life being literally sucked away from me.

Anyway, turns out, writing depends on caffeine. If you don’t have caffeine, you can’t think or right, sorry write. This is a universal truth recognized by all humanity.

There are lots of different ways to acquire caffeine, into the body. You don’t have to be weird and shoot it up like heroine, (I actually don’t really know what I just said). It can be surrounded with all the soothing ritualized idolatry of Self Care. I mean, isn’t that why a nation stands ready with mug in hand, so that the Day can be endured, somehow? It’s pure self care, from start to finish. Sorry to be so ugly about it.

So what’s the best way to have all the caffeine? I would say it depends on the time of day and what sort of person you are. Matt has this big silver gleaming machine now. He puts water in, and sets his cup there, and then pushes a button and coffee, I guess, just falls out into his person. This is crass efficiency in all its glory and is the pinnacle And embodiment of the American way.

So, of course, it doesn’t work for me. I don’t drink coffee. It makes me jittery. It sends me flying way high and then crashing only a few hours later. Also, I have to load it up with sugar to make it bearable. No, for me, strong black tea is the only thing.

So what you do is you take your pot–like a round pot that you can brew tea in, Not just a cup with water in a microwave–and you set it on the counter next to your hot pot. That’s a different item. It’s like a kettle. The hot pot is for making the water hot. You don’t actually make the tea in the hot pot. It’s very foolish to leave the Tea Pot on the opposite side of the room from the Hot Pot. The two should be close together. So you fill the hot pot half way or so, and turn it on. And when it begins to make noise, you pour about three tablespoons of water out of the Hot Pot into the Tea Pot, clap the tea pot lid Back On and swoosh the water around. Meanwhile you’ve turned the Hot Pot back on. When it, the Hot Pot is coming right up to the boil, But Is Not Actually Boiling, you pour out the water from the Tea Pot, put in your tea (more on that in a moment) and pour the hot water from the Hot Pot straight over the tea in the Tea Pot. You clap the lid back on quickly and top it with a cozy. Then you let it sit there for at least three minutes.

Or you can just shout to one of the three children who know how to make tea, ‘Make Tea in the ______ Pot,’ and try not to think about the fact that you know the water is at a full boil and that they aren’t going to warm the tea pot because they never listen to anything you say. The blank before the pot above is because you have to specify which one. Do you want the red pot which will be enough for two people? Or the blue pot? Or the metal pot? I like the metal one because I hate to share and it holds its heat well with its proper cozy. But from 10 o’clock on I am generous and allow the red pot.

Now, the tea. Look, I know it should be loose. I do. And I like it better. But there’s only so much purity you can demand before everyone else cracks. Since I only make about an eighth of the tea I actually drink, I can’t expect that it will be loose leaf. Instead we lay in big boxes of Bewely’s and Irish Gold. It’s what we can get in the store without having to order online or drive around town in an distracted search.

What I’ve done, and you really might want to consider this, is I’ve trained my husband to silently place a tray with the metal pot, a small pitcher of full fat milk, and one of four approved cups on my bedside table at five in the morning. He comes in in the dark and leaves without a noise. But somehow I know that it’s there and I crawl desperately towards life and wakefulness. After that Elphine, later in the morning, hauls a large tray of tea up to the school room so that we can stay awake through the morning, which task is repeated in the afternoon at least twice, only this time downstairs. The last cup is sucked down a little before 5 and no more after that or no one can sleep. But at least everyone has been awake for the whole day.

So there you are, Caffeine. Life. Hope. Antioxidants. Hope. I already said that. Have a nice day, or something.


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