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

I've started making a different kind of tea for winter. It's one I got the recipe for from an Indian woman I used to live with, and it gives a lovely warming effect on a wintery night. It's not the sort of drink you'd take periodically through the day, one in the evening is about right for me.

It contains Darjeeling tea, cinnamon, star anise, cardamom, cloves, and black pepper. You don't want much pepper; it should bring something to the mixture, but not make you think "I can taste pepper". It should do its thing sneakily in the background.

I don't drink tea milky (or sweet), but I add a bit more milk to this one than I normally use. It works well with all the flavours.

The interesting thing about this brew is, it's infinitely variable. Depending on how long you brew it, a different on of the flavours steps to the fore.

Now, I said I don't take sweet tea. But I thought a bit of sugar would work well with this, with all its spicy notes. So I took down the box of sugar lumps that's usually kept for visitors, and put two in.

Boom! Time travel! All of a sudden, it is a Winter's day in 1984, I'm home from school sick with some illness I don't recall, and Rupert the Bear and the Frogs' Chorus video is on TV. The simple addition of sugar made the tea taste like a particular medicine I had to take, and triggered that image of that specific day 29 years ago, which I have probably never thought of once until yesterday.

(As soon as it tasted "medicinal", it tasted "BLECH!" I'll be taking it unsweetened again from now on.)

Oh, and ginger! Mustn't forget the ginger in it.

*takes notes* I always order the chai after a meal at the Indian restaurant - they can do it far better than I would ever hope to. Sounds like you have to have lots of tries before perfecting your ideal taste.

Was just going out shopping. I might get a special china teapot to make it in. But then again, I suppose I could use my pyrex measuring jug.

I want to get one of those infuser thingies...the ones that look like an incense-shaker for a little six-inch-high-priest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tea_infuser_01_Pengo.jpg

the Germans call it a Tee Ei (tea egg) and the one I really like is this

http://www.karstadt.de/WMF-Tee-Ei-TeaEgg/30184408.html?src=94L342000

I have this one in my office
http://www.tchibo.de/tee-ei-blume-p400025692.html

That first one could pass for a cunningly converted sex toy.

Maybe it's like Transformers for adults.

[Amy P]

I'm not doing the Jomo thing, you don't need to leave one here Amy.

Guess that what happens when you're reading on automatic

Then again, you *have* been posting nearly daily anyway

Well every second or third day, maybe. But if I promised to post every day I would not find time to post for weeks at a time. That's the contrariness of life.