Things I Like - Food

We've been drinking more hot tea lately in the White house - it's a combination of the cold weather and some great mugs I got as a holiday grab bag gift. And no, it does not bother us to be drinking out of bright red mugs with snowmen on them at the end of March - they are the perfect weight and size for a cup of tea.

While I've always liked iced tea, I wasn't a big hot tea fan until I worked in London for a couple years. For some reason, the tea there tasted better - or was it that the coffee was so bad?? Anyway, I started drinking more tea. And I'm talking about real tea here, not herbal teas.

FYI, herbal tea isn't really tea - it's an infusion of herbs and/or fruit that doesn't contain any actual tea. I've always liked herbal teas but couldn't find any in London. They're very particular about their tea.

Did you know that all tea comes from the same plant? Camellia sinensis.

The four types of tea most commonly found on the market are (in descending order of oxidation) black tea, oolong tea, green tea and white tea, all of which can be made from the same bushes... Two principal varieties are used, the small-leaved China plant (C. sinensis sinensis), used for most Chinese, Formosan and Japanese teas...and the large-leaved Assam plant (C. sinensis assamica), used in most Indian and other teas.
~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea

So the only real difference is the level of oxidation - or to what level the tea leaves have been dried before being processed. Black tea is fully oxidized, green tea is unoxidized. Hard to believe that the simple act of drying can change the flavor so much.

And it turns out that drinking tea is actually good for you. Based on a study conducted by UCLA,

Drinking at least three cups of green or black tea a day can significantly reduce the risk of stroke...And the more you drink, the better your odds of staving off a stroke.
~ Science Centric

I'm not going to give up drinking herbal tea, but I'm definitely going to keep up with the 'real' stuff. btw, the photo above is a Tea V - a porcelain teacup made by Jana Walliser. If you hold an empty one up to the light, you see a woman in a television drinking tea.