Re: TEA (was ttoring butter long-term: what's the best way?)

[Guest guest]

>> If you drink tea uncreamed and unsweetened for a little you really

get

used to it, and it may actually start tasting better that way to you.<<

Nope. Why would I go to all this trouble to get raw milk and cream, and then

not drink it in my tea, especially since it is so pleasurable, delicious, and

satisfying that way? I drank uncreamed black tea when I was vegan, along with

many other little asceticisms. It never tasted better, no matter how expensive

it was or how carefully imported by traveling friends. It was always a

sacrifice. Tea was the first place I added animal products; and tea is the only

thing my otherwise vegan sister drinks with milk.

Soul sister Christie said:

I drink tea the way it is drunk in the British Isles: Strong, sweet,

and white. To me, that's tea.

It's hot, it's strong, it's sweet, and it

has cream in it. That's what I want. It's not that I'm " adding stuff "

to my tea, that IS tea to me.

----- EXACTLY. A nice hot cuppa is a spiritual thing, a ritual, a love-fest

with my ancestors, balm for my soul. It is the nth degree of perfection and

things-as-they-should-be, right there in my cup every morning - strong black

tea, raw milk, no sweetener or perhaps a little honey some days.

I drink other types of tea, green and herbal, all the time, milkless, but have

no interest whatsoever in altering a very fine tradition for at best an

infinitesimal improvement in health value - and at worst a reduction in value.

Perhaps, since black tea is not indigenous to my people, the tradition of

creaming it arose for good reason - say, to offset the acids.

And, again, I'm not a purist. A tablespoon of evap every few months is not

worth a second's worry, as worry's alteration in brain chemistry is certainly

more harmful. I wouldn't drink it if I hadn't tasted it as a child, but it's a

lovely cozy sense memory, and I like it once in awhile, just as I'll eat one of

those horrible Little Debbie bars every year or two regular, and not feel that I

need to change a thing.