Well, I’m about to celebrate my seventh anniversary as a tea drinker. Not just a run-of-the-mill tea drinker, but rather a green tea sipper to the max.
Someone told me that drinking green tea is a healthy habit, and will cause you to live forever. Of course, being a Christian I was already aware of that, but for health reasons I thought, why not give it a try?
It’s now time to be totally transparent with you. When I started this new trend of beverage, I was certain that the taste of green tea was on parallel with swamp water … but not as good. It’s funny how your palate adjusts to tastes over time. Today, I love my green tea.
Back in my early days at CFOR Radio, we had a coffee machine in the main lobby. Management should have been thrown in jail for exposing staff to such deplorable, disgusting mud that would make an outhouse rat gag.
Back in the day of my ill-spent youth, I took my coffee black and mud is the best descriptive word for it. Everything that came out of that machine, except the hot water, was of a powdery substance.
The question that has gone through my mind over the years since, is this: If the coffee was that bad, way did we keep pumping thousands of dollars in quarters into that machine? If I could retrieve all those quarters I squandered on that coffee brew, and had a nickel for every Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray or Rudy Meeks record I ever played, I’d be a very wealthy man today.
Now, after seven years on this green tea binge, I consider myself a connoisseur of the finer things of life.
Here are a few tips for the novice entering the exclusive world of tea drinkers. I realize the danger of giving a $5 answer to a 5-cent question … but here goes.
The making of a perfect cup of tea depends much on the temperature of the water being boiled. The temperature will vary depending on the kind of tea you’re making.
Since we’re discussing green tea, let your water boil until the bubbles are the size of fish eyes. A glass kettle makes seeing those fish eyes much easier. Also, by no means, don’t leave the bag in your cup, and never squeeze the bag before you take it out of the cup.
Just think, you’re getting all this information free of charge. I hope you feel better. This is not an extensive list of dos and don’ts, but you can find many more tips from the same source I did, from Google. (What would we do without Google?).
Wikipedia tells me that after water, tea is the most consumed drink in the world.
Now, go and spread the good news to all of those misled coffee drinkers.
P.S. Before your next trip to the grocery store put “green tea” on your shopping list. You never know when I’m coming over for a visit.
Rusty Draper is well-known by many as the long-time morning man at local radio station CFOR, as a pastor and raconteur who never misses an opportunity to chew the fat.
