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

I went to a very nice restaurant last week and I ordered some Earl Grey thinking "This is a nice restaurant. I'm sure they'll make it properly". Boy was I wrong. They gave me a cup of luke warm water and an already opened bag of Earl Grey sitting next to it. Oh yes, and a small package of half and half.

I'm deeply ashamed.

Too right!

>If you do not have a freaken kettle then how do you boil freaken water?

Like the average American, in a mug in the microwave.

After all, if we're not making tea properly, what do we need a kettle for? The coffee machine doesn't use a kettle.

Because Teasmade machines simply aren't as good

I'm a Briton who's lived on the American northeastern seaboard for a decade. I know a few Americans who make A Nice Cup Of Tea, complete with loose tea and teapots. Electric kettles are now becoming easier to find, which is a boon. There are a number of suppliers of speciality teas. But it is in diners and mid-range restaurants and some of the chain bookstores that the awful tea is served, and that's easy enough to avoid.

There is plenty about both American and British food, histories and cultures to despair of, and plenty about both to rejoice in. Both have far more regional and class variations than might be imagined, and both have areas devoid of cultural diversity and areas teeming with myriad cultures blending and creating fascinating new ways of doing things.

As for the "socially correct" way of making a cup of tea, I've always put the (soy)milk in first - I was brought up to understand that it was milk first in tea, milk second in coffee; the milk first in tea rule being to a) preserve bone china by not introducing boiling liquid into a fragile container, and b) to do some esoteric thing (denature?) the proteins in the milk, which apparently is what gives black tea with milk its distinctive flavour.

"Electric kettles are now becoming easier to find"

What, don't you have these in America?

Yep fords I found that hard to believe as well.

I all ways put the milk in last. It allows better control of the Tea's strength. It is easier to put more milk in if it is too strong than to make the Tea stronger if it's too milky.

I understand the boiling of water in the microwave, it just seems long winded. An electric Kettle can used for more than Tea making.

If we need hot water to boil pasta and stuff we put the kettle on because it's a million times faster than heating the water on the cooker. Every country I've been to people have had kettles so it's not just a British thing.

"As for iced tea, they say that Americans drink 80% of their tea iced. What a vile concept. Where do all these people live? Not here. Oh, except Thai iced tea, now that's a different story..."

Well Texas is one place where the iced tea drinkers live, and I assure you that some people obsess over good iced tea as much as many of you seem to obsess over good hot tea.

With temperatures that reach 40C in the summer, cold drinks are usually favored to hot ones. Now there is the disgusting sweet thing called instant tea. AVOID! AVOID! AVOID! This is the taste that comes to mind instantly when I read the phrase, "almost but not quite entirely unlike tea." (I'm imagining sweet raspberry Nestea).

But real iced tea is always brewed hot. This is for two reasons. One, because only hot water brings out the flavor of tea, and two because granular white sugar will not dissolve well in iced liquids. Try it.

If you go to a place that serves only unsweet tea and add sugar to it, all you will achieve is to coat the bottom of your glass with a moist sugary sludge that will rush into your mouth all at once when you reach the bottom of your glass. YUCK!

For this reason, sugar is added when the tea is hot. Thus when you go to a restaurant, you must specify whether you want "sweet" or "unsweet" tea.

Although many people do like hot tea here, drinking it in public sometimes give one the connotation of pretending to be more cultured than one is. Thus, the students of Texas Agricultural and Mechanical college ( A big college in Texas that attracts a large number of students from rural areas) call their citified rivals from The University of Texas "TEA SIPS".

Tea sips are thought to sit around in dark coffee shops talking about Kafka and Nietzsche and other things rather than doing any real work.

As to tea pots. A common wedding gift is a metal whistling tea pot that is used to boil water on the stove. Mostly people use it to make instant coffee. Little ceramic tea pots that can be filled with loose tea and hot water are rarely found in American homes except on curio shelves and often they have roses or kittens painted on the side.

We've got a ceramic teapot out of the supermarket and a swish glass and chrome one from Ikea. I like the Ikea one best

Instant tea? Bleurgh!

A metal whistling tea pot is actually a kettle. If you have one then you are lucky, they are still sought after here. I would not say we are obsessed with Tea nor snobby wit it but Tea is still regarded as the national drink, I would say that Beer and Lager are the top ones although I am Teetotal. Coffee is more than likely neck and neck with Tea now what with all the Starbucks that have opened here. Cornwall appears to have escaped the notice of Doctor Evil's empire, so far.

"All English food is awful and bland or with horrible spices that are really hard to like unless you grew up with them."

Egad.
a) You have either no or a sadly atypical experience with English food.
b) My experience of over a decade in the US tells me that you can get plenty of awful, bland, and usually grotesquely fat-laden food in the vast majority of "American restaurants" - especially those calling themselves "family restaurants", and that the Standard American Diet genuinely is SAD. I was horrified on my first visit to the US to discover how appallingly sweet most supermarket-bought foods here are - it's because high fructose corn syrup is in almost everything. In both our nations, there is a frighteningly large chunk of the population dining on the most egregious fare. In both our nations, what we generally pass off as "traditional" foods simply aren't - they're the result of post-WWII intensive farming and marketing techniques and the resulting over-reliance on an ever-decreasing pool of salt, sugar, and fat-laden processed crap. In both our nations, there is a thriving resistance to this Borg-like assimilation of our traditional foods, and there are plenty of people making and eating fabulous and delicious meals.

b) All cuisines are peculiar unless you grew up with them.

"So, my theory is NOT that Americans are not making it right, but that tea sucks and english just don’t realize that its actually possible to drink something with (good/bold) flavor. They just like what they grew up with."

Here speaketh the true child of the salt, sugar, and fat-laden crap generation. A lack of appreciation for subtle flavours can be remedied by a healthy diet and cutting out the "soda" (pop). It's rather like smoking - once you give it up, you begin to taste things properly.

"America being such a blending of all cultures, they get to experience everything and pick what they like the best."

Britain, of course, having only had its first wave of immigrants several thousand years ago, and having had none since. Sadly, all too many Britons are under the impression that cultural diversity began with Windrush, but the truth is always more complicated, and any good social history of the nation will reveal that Britain has always soaked up foreign flavours.

"I also must say I know a lot of tea drinker who like tea. I personally hate most hot beverages, but tea especially."

One should hope that tea drinkers like tea, or what would be the point?

"BTW no American has a freaken kettle or tea pot, I figured they haven’t existed since the 19th century, good lord. Plus, they're especially not going to have one if they're on vacation so i laugh HEARTILY at this entry. Heartily."
Manymy friends here have teapots, usually bought abroad or in Asian (read: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc.) markets - the only places where they're available around here for less than your firstborn child and signature in blood - or received as gifts. They're all American. They're also all well-travelled, well-read, and at least 30 years old.

"remember, America started with the British anyway."

The modern nation state of America sort of did. And this has what to do with the article?

"Although many people do like hot tea here, drinking it in public sometimes give one the connotation of pretending to be more cultured than one is. Thus, the students of Texas Agricultural and Mechanical college ( A big college in Texas that attracts a large number of students from rural areas) call their citified rivals from The University of Texas "TEA SIPS"."

Sad, isn't it, that one of the things both countries have in common is an unhealthy fear of intellectual curiosity.

That plonker seems to have done a runner, but well said anyway WebWitch

>"Here speaketh the true child of the salt, sugar, and fat-laden crap generation."

Well, here is a good point.
This is the era of Yes-it's-fast-but-is-it-food?; and all this mass produced and ready when you want it sameness that has to appeal not to the discerning taste, and not even to natural hunger, but more to habit/addiction, the blood-sugar roller coaster, 'convenience' (if we only knew!), and an unnatural pace and style of life. What we have is not so much food and drink, but more the illusion of food and drink, to satisfy our illusion of hunger and thirst. Taste is abandoned for illusion as well! The MacDonalds (and others) "loaves and fishes" phenomenon is based on a magic formula of salt, suger, grease, and advertising, and these all combine and undergo a transubstatiation into "fast food" that beggars the Sermon on the Mount(Yes, I'm mixing my metaphors). Remember when they discovered in the lab that the KFC ("The Colonel's) secret recipe of "11 different herbs and spices" was in fact: salt, pepper, msg, and flour. . . ?

Of course nobody has the time to make a cup of tea. And of course when you have the time, you still revert to the fast food ritual. If you can drink tea in a styrofoam cup and think of it as tea, then this whole conversation, which has tickled on for years now in this space, is moot.

But I continue to enjoy it.
I'm going to put the kettle on now and make myself a nice cup of tea, but I'll be back.
Cheers,
Nightowl

Does the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation own McDonalds now? Because their burgers are almost but not quite unlike meat...

Bullseye!My hat goes off to you Fords.

They're rare, but when I think of them they're good 'uns

Ryoga...thanks for explaining the whole Texans and Iced Tea thing. It's so true. I don't know how it is for the rest of the country, but as a Texan, I see iced tea drinkers everywhere, it's almost an obsession here. The "fancy" restaurants even offer you fresh brewed "sweetened" or "unsweetened" iced tea. Most people like sugar in their tea. I personally like my iced tea unsweetened.

I told my friend from Newcastle how to make Iced Tea..which Ryoga is right...you must brew it with boiling water to bring out the full taste of the leaves. I'm not sure if he's tried it yet, but it may be worth it to see his reaction to it.

As for those rednecks at A&M...a few of them are tea sips themselves - like my sister - though I don't think they'd ever mention it in public.

For those of you who go to A&M, Rachael comes home to Earl Grey every day. Hahaha...take that, Sister!!