So this week in the Tea of the Week entry, I won’t be talking about a tea, but the accompaniments that I take with my tea.

Why?

Well, simply put, I’m still on the box of Barry’s tea.  And now we know that it takes me about 2 weeks to go through about 80 bags.  There will be a new entry on Monday (or Tuesday).

When I make a pot of tea in the morning, I use between 3 to 5 bags (if using bagged tea) depending on the size of the pot.  I like my hot tea first thing in the morning to be sweet.  It’s the only time of day that I will ever take sugar in my tea.  And it has to be raw sugar.  None of that white sugar -that’s cooking sugar.  It also has to have milk (creamer or half & half) in it.  I prefer half & half as opposed to milk (since we drink skim) and milk over powered creamer any day (I get horrible indigestion/gastric reflux from powered creamer – it tastes like soap coming back up).  Now that you know way to much about me….

I have about 7 tea pots that I use throughout the week.  When I’m at church, I have my own electric kettle and tea set up there.  The pots are different ones that I’ve found throughout the years.  One is uber small – it only holds enough for 3 cups, so that’s the last resort pot.  My favourite one is this beautiful metal one I found at World Market about a year ago.  It holds so much tea… so I won’t run out if I’m sharing with the hubby.  If I’m drinking the whole pot myself, well, it’s usually cold before I can finish it off.  And I always do.  Which I don’t know if that’s sad or what.  

In this rotation are 3 different tea presses.  One is this beautiful glass press that holds, I guess, about 40 oz of tea.  Yumm-o!  The other two are taller and only hold around 20 oz.  One is glass the other is polycarbonate – this one goes camping with me (the unbreakable quality of it can’t be beat). and then there’s the saddest one of all.  It’s a awesome shaped pot, but I was experimenting with it and, well, it’s not very pretty.  I was trying to figure out how to use underglazes on something that was already glazed and then re-glaze it…  It’s just so sad looking – it crazed and creeped; it’s spotty and this nasty mucus color, and now it’s chipping off where it crazed, but honestly, it’s one of my favourites.  Why, because it reminds me that everything has beauty.  You just have to look for it.

This is just the morning routine.  I haven’t even gotten to the green or red teas yet.  I’ll stop here and let you “digest” it for a little while.  lol.  digest it.

I’m going to go have another cuppa and laugh at myself for a little while.