Our Kenyan housemate is amused by the fact that everyone here uses teabags. "At home, we just put the leaves in the pot and pour it through a sieve." I do try to at least compost our used teabags, but the little tags, staples and strings aren't as compostable. I was inspired by a recent gift of loose tea to buy a little tea strainer and start moving toward using loose tea.
It's no wonder "tea" has become a ritual in some cultures. Japan's lovely tea ceremonies are designed to settle the mind and open the heart. And England's midday ritual breaks to share a cuppa - or sometimes to indulge in a tiny banquet – offer a similar escape from the humdrum. Tea requires a bit of preparation and its own little "tools." Setting it up carefully is part of the transition to the actual quiet$ of sipping it. That quiet is what we want and need, the stopping to take the time.
Grace and I have started our own tea ritual, either walking over to the lovely Volta across the street for a pot of their fine tea and a shared pastry or pulling up a chair to my desk and turning on the electric teapot. We received a beautiful gift from friends in France a little while ago – a tea as lovely to look at as it to taste. We get it out our little tea accessories and a deck of cards and talk about the past week and this week's plans over a game of gin rummy. Tea is both the excuse and the reward for stopping.
The tea I am talking about is not local of course; although we do usually buy it from locally-owned stores. I have learned to make truly local tea, though, from some of the things growing around our house. I went on another wonderful plant walk with the talented herbalist Susan Marynowski a little over a week ago while it was still quite cold and was pleasantly surprised to discover so many wild herbs (weeds) growing around the UF student gardens; the dried leaves of wood sorrel (oxalis), chickweed, and dewberry all make a fine tea. And Susan pointed out that recently fallen pine branches provide for a nice needle tea. These are high in vitamin C and are so aromatic they don't even need to be dried first. Just snip and steep. I'll be on the lookout for these herbs over the next month or so.
I usually associate tea with cold and rain, but these beautiful, cool days are just begging for some relaxing. I am hoping it will be a little while before we need to switch to iced tea.
