[Emmie9999]

I've read a few threads and references on here from time to time about coffee..WholeLatteLove comes to mind as a recommended site. I do love coffee, but I also enjoy tea. Are there any tea fans out there? Do you buy fancy varieties of tea? Can you tell Salada from Assam, or English Breakfast from Irish Breakfast? Did your new kitchen budget include a line item for an electric tea kettle? I'd love to hear your favorite sites and suggestions!

[kelly]

I think Tigratrus needs to step up here- he has a whole tea-making room!

[Emmie9999]

A whole room?

::blinking::

I thought I was doing well having a whole shelf in a cabinet for tea...a room...wow.

[kelly]

Well, he'd probably argue that it's a 'breakfast' room or something, but I never saw him eat any breakfast in there, only make tea.

Tigger's Tea Room.

[Tigratrus]

Ha! Tea FTW!

Points of fact:

1. Tea is FASTER. With an Instant Hot I can make a cup of perfect tea in about 10 seconds. Try that with your, admittedly fragrant, but generally quite Bitter Beans!
2. Tea is good for you! Packed with Antioxidants IIRC
3. There are any number of good non-caffeinated versions of tea, they simply use different leaves.
4. Ummm... It requires less paraphernalia to make good tea?
5. Tea has panache... And millennia of history behind it.
6. Did I mention the Instant Hot?

My main favorites are Tzo Chai, good old English Breakfast, or just plain Liptons.

Coffee... If it has *lots* of sweetener and milk I'm ok with it, Raspberry Mocha from our local coffee house is good stuff.

James

[kelly]

Told you- it really is a Tea Room. How could you fit that much love into a tea cabinet??

[Emmie9999]

Alas, we have no Instant Hot, but an electric kettle is probably in my future. Faster than the stove top, certainly.

I have found that I love coffee, but there are a few too many stimulants in it for me. A friend of mine, who went to a yoga teacher training course, learned coffee has 7 or 8 stimulants in it besides caffeine...guess that's why I can drink tea almost all day long, but any more than an AM cup of coffee and I'm jittery and unable to focus.

Tazo teas are awesome! Where I work, we have 1369 Coffeehouse and Tealuxe, both of which make awesome chai and neither of which I get to frequently enough.

There are also multiple uses for tea...I learned tonight, using lapsang souchong tea leaves makes an awesome smoking agent for cooking spareribs in the oven. Can't do that with coffee, I must admit!

[kelly]

I have an electric kettle that I adore- a bodum that I got on clearance for $19 a couple of years ago and it's easily in the top 5 used items in this house. Even in our new kitchen, we chose to skip the instahot out of a desire for a very clean look at the sink. The Blue Bodum is in the tall pantry with the coffee maker, toaster, micro, etc...use it when I'm making rice, pasta, hot cocoa, boiling veggies, what have you. Use it all the time.

Ibis Cordless Electric Kettle

[Emmie9999]

That's a sharp looking kettle!

[Tigratrus]

I have to admit that Electric Kettles are a *lot* more energy efficient than an instant hot too... The Instant Hot was definitely a splurge choice when we did the Breakfast (Tea!) Room. It *does* make perfect tea nearly instatly, but I think Susan was the main one that wanted it, both for the instant hot and as a source of filtered water.

We have it installed over the small side sink so we can use it to do speed thawing of frozen things too, and I use it to clean stubborn gunk off things sometimes.

But uhh... Yes, that's right, it's main purpose in existing is in *fact* to make tea.

TEA TEA TEA TEA
TEA TEA TEA TEA
TEA TA TEA TA TEA TA TEA

::image of viking with steaming cups descending from ceiling::



James