h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is three pints of TOH Yorkshire Tea daily not enough? I like tea but dislike Texas.

As long as you keep the perc for tea, I can't see a problem with that. But if you once make coffee in the same machine, the tea will taste odd for days afterwards.

Microwaving is good for instant coffee. i know the whole premise of instant coffee is bad, but sometimes I can't afford anything else. As boiling only occurs around nuclei, actual boiling doesn't take place in a mug zapped to just beyond the point of boiling. When stirred after microwaving, localised boiling around the spoon occurs with the result that the liquid goes nice and frothy. it tastes much better than kettle-boiled instant coffee and is easier to do than adding the water at just below boiling point.

Microwaving is also good for hot chocolate. It also gives interesting results for cheese on toast.

I haven't tried microwaving bread for years - I found it to make the bread slightly rubbery and elastic, which is surely not the right way for bread to behave. Digestive biscuits topped with a little butter given 30'' on low power are nice. If you've got some refrigerated cooked sausages, wrap them in bacon and cook until the bacon's done. Retrieve by wrapping in a slice of bread, one side of which is covered in ketchup and brown sauce.

And for a treat to go with your tea get one large plastic container type thing. Put a layer of cream crakers along the base. Pour over with custard, another layer of crackers, some custard, crackers and top with whipped cream - Custard Slices. (kindly given to me by our local Tupperware vendor). You may also like to flavour the custard with, for example, vanilla.

Am I the only one of us here to actually use real Tea Leaves???

But I must admit I got a taste for the `Orange Pekoe` tea when I was in Florida a few years ago.

How to make perfect Tea.

1. Go to Whittards of Chelsea (a shop that can be found in most major shopping arcades. Mine is in Milton Keynes)

2. Get a Caffitiere.

3. Put the tea in the bottom of said coffee-making item.

4. Add BOILING water.

5. Wait for 2 minutes.

6. Push down the plunger and pour into a pre-warmed teapot.

7. oh, and the milk goes in to the cup first.

Go to Whittards of Chelsea (I went last time I was back home in Lincoln)
Decide whether a: you want some leaf tea or
b: you need to eat
I'd like to fiddle about with my little spring-action tea infuser thing but can't afford posh leaf tea. At the end of the year it's always a toss-up between fags, coffee, food and new guitar strings. Tea is seventh on my list of things to buy if I win the lottery.

A percolator for tea and one for coffee is available at my table. But then Im a pedantic person. I havent found the microwave oven to be a front line solution for anything, but I must try the cheese on toast test.

I would just like to point out here that I have in fact committed a second cardinal sin in regards to tea-drinking.

An admittedly classic example of American consumerism, the company that makes Kool-Aid, has developed several "fruit Teas" which are not only instant but make Tang look like a nine course meal.

I'm drinking the Kool-Aid company's infernal version of Raspberry tea right now, and am suddenly wishing I had stuck to Lipton's Iced Tea combined with red wine. If I keep doing this I will eventually discover the original taste for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, at which point I will have been hit squarely in the head by a very large brick coupled with a twist of lemon and will fall unconscious, at which point you will no longer have to trudge through my pedantic ramblings.

Have you started writing your chapter for the sixth book yet? Just checking. It's the perfect thing to do while waiting to have your actual guide submissions rejected.

Who cares? It's only a stupid liquid leaf stimulant. Drink hot chocolate! The best way to do this is to melt lots of chocolate into a mug, add a tad of water and suck with a straw! But you are obviously all creatures of habit, so go back to your floral teapots if you care that much.
Love,
Colette Stardust

Tea bags serve a wonderful purpose: To make you stare angrily into your microwaved mug of Early Grey at your desk at work, damning the tradition of providing all the nasty, smelly coffee free of charge to any employee who wants it, yet which completely ignores the tea drinker (if a pot, kettle or "hot pot" for plain hot water is provided at all, it invariably reeks and tastes of old coffee stains).

Thus, your anger is slowly replaced with a wistful "Hmmm"-like smile and the thought of going back home, putting a kettle to boil, chatting with your mother or maybe two friends that are family in the kitchen while it boils, the pot-warming ritual, the soft little dropping-tinkle-tap-tap as the loose leaves (earl grey, or english breakfast if you like) hit the pot and the "wooosh" of the boiling water, while you prepare to tuck the whole thing under a tea cosy (tenderly, like your very favorite doll-baby), then smiling at your guests -- as if the short 2-3 minute wait while the tea leaves fall to the bottom of the pot is some sort of club secret. And then you know you'd like nothing more than the spend the rest of the morning sitting at your kitchen table, sharing that pot of tea until its all gone and you've just got that funny little pile of flat soggy leaves at the bottom of your mug. And although you know your mother is chewing on her leaves on the sly, you choose not to notice or embarress her, but rather, put the pot on to boil again.

And with that happy diversion in mind, you're not quite so angry at the wrinkled tea bag at your desk at work, and you can get back to doing whatever is is you were doing before you started to dream of real tea.

Subtle reference? I would have thought that was quite blatant actually. I don't do subtle *grin*.

If you microwave bread after putting butter on it, it tastes nice.

no margerine and marmit THAT tastes nice

Wow! I kinda drifted away for a minute there... Purple Prose on the Net - whatever next?

By the way, even though the Pope has abandoned limbo for Catholics, I think waiting for a rejection slip for your article must be a bit like limbo here on Earth. The internal volume of my teapot has shrunk by 2% with tea-crud it's been so long now. I reckon all the articles submitted after a certain time of night are in the filing cabinet next to the leopard-cupboard.

Back to TEA - always pour out the old water in the kettle and fill it up with fresh is my tip, kids...

I choose to take your drift as a compliment Norman. Watch your step! I just got tripped up by a one eyed, one horned, flyin' Purple People Eater.

Drift... how true. Logical thought was never my forte.

No, as my old English teacher used to tell a largely disinterested class, purple prose is found in a purple passage, which, far from being a hallway decorated with dubious taste, is any section of a novel which the author has invested extra time and effort on to produce a highly descriptive result. And you can call me Spiny.

Having spent many years meddling with the PH of water, I can recommend a level of 6.3 to 6.8 for that magical cuppa. However, I can no longer drink the stuff due to a restricted passage. No the less my experimentation will continue.

It's important for all all tea experimenters to realise that one must start (or, in th case of really strong tea, finish) at the extremes. Insipid, milky, tea is pointless. But really good billy tea should be brewed and stewed and bible black. Drinking it this way should make the eye lids flutter and speech slurred. Regrettably teeth never recover their lustre, but thereafter all non-stewed tea takes relatively delicious.