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Tea time

Cindy on February 17th, 2009

There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (Letters)

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of magazine articles touting the medicinal wonders of tea, but I don’t need to be persuaded. While I still rely on strong black coffee for my morning jump-start, I’m primed for the pleasures of tea by the time my workday winds down.

Unlike coffee (tea’s rich but nerve-racking cousin), tea is a soul-soother. Whether you prefer the delicate jasmine aroma of Earl Grey, or the spicy citrus bouquet of Constant Comment, one cup is enough to transform the dismal hour between four and five o’clock into an uplifting occasion.

I can’t pour a teapot without remembering my paternal grandmother, Robina Scott, who grew up in rural Scotland, then immigrated to this country in the 1920s.  A lifelong tea drinker, Grandma Ruby taught me the grown-up custom of “taking tea” when I was a child.

To a five-year-old whose parents drank coffee, tea rituals seemed wonderfully prim and sometimes a little exotic. According to Ruby’s native Orkney Island folklore, reading tea leaves was a reliable way to forecast a person’s future. Following old-country custom, she would interpret the various shapes of leaves left in a cup, then predict weather conditions, the health of an ailing relative, the sex of an unborn child, or even the arrival of a love letter.

But my grandmother never took fortune-telling seriously, nor was she a British purist who insisted on using loose tea in a metal infuser or strainer. At my urging, in fact, she’d generously stock her kitchen canister with Red Rose tea bags after I had pilfered all the collectible dinosaur cards from the box. As surely as I can spell brontosaurus, I can still picture the floral-print housedresses Ruby would wear when she “put the kettle to boil” and rolled great masses of dough for her perfect apple pies. During my weekend visits, I was always allowed to make my own cinnamon-sugar strips from her leftover pie dough.

“Use a bit less o’ the sugar, dearie,” Ruby would scold. “And don’t eat the dough before it’s done!”
While the pies baked, Ruby and I sat at her kitchen table, dipping and steeping our tea bags until the water in our steaming cups turned amber. Sometimes we talked between sips; mostly we stared quietly out the kitchen window and watched the sparrows, our silver spoons breaking the reverie as they chimed against cup and saucer.

As my grandmother liked to remind me, tea had Oriental origins but was a British import to the early American colonies. As most of us recall from our grade-school history classes, it was heavily taxed by the monarchy and eventually incited the boisterous Boston Tea Party of 1773. Since then, our country has harbored a stubborn preference for coffee.

A mug of coffee is quick, feisty, and all-American — easy to consume on the run in disposable cups.
Tea, on the other hand, requires that we sit down long enough to assemble its various accoutrements. Drinking tea entails a fussy battery of saucers, spoons, bags, lemon wedges, and pots with lids, not to mention the optional milk, honey, or sugar. Which is why most waiters don’t cater to tea drinkers; they think we’re a high-maintenance bunch and would rather not be bothered with our hot-water refills.

But there’s another revolution brewing here. Researchers claim that tea, especially green tea, is naturally laden with antioxidant properties that promote good health. A survey conducted by The Tea Council in Great Britain reported that drinking four or five cups of tea per day “may have a beneficial effect on high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure,” and may reduce the incidence of certain cancers.

If Ruby were alive today, I doubt these new-age health claims would have impressed her. The real merits of tea, as we both discovered years ago, are tied to its soothing, soul-filling rituals. — Cindy La Ferle

Tags: Boston Tea Party, caffeine, coffee, Constant Comment, domestic arts, Earl Grey tea, grandparents, home and family, leisure, Orkney Islands, reading tea leaves, relationships, Scotland, social customs, social rituals, tea, tea rituals
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