tea addicts

I will stand up and be counted.

Hi, everyone. My name is Joe, and I'm a tea-holic. [HI, JOE!]

I don't count my cups per day. Minimum 2 in the AM, 3 in the afternoon, but it can often go beyond that.

Joe

There is nothing wrong with that!

Frank

Yup. That's me. I don't think I've done more than 5 or 6 cups in a day, and I don't do that often because I have to watch the caffeine. If that wasn't an issue, I'd drink a lot more.

Agalena

I usually drink 7 or more cups a day but rarely feel the caffeine because those cups are from multiple steeps with no more than 3 setups of leaves. The last time I felt a buzz was in one sitting when I greedily went alone to a new gongfu teahouse that opened on the fringes of New York's Chinatown; they pack a Yixing pot very aggressively and I drank 6 steeps.

/Lew

By 5 or 6 cups, I actually meant 5 or 6 new sets of leaves with 2-3 steeps each. That will wire me pretty tight. And if I'm under a lot of stress, I need to cut back considerably. Sigh! I've developed more of a tolerance than I used to have though.

Agalena

LOL. I suppose I might be a tea addict. I have been accused of it, even by my doctor. I don't keep track of how many pots, cups or mugs I drink in a day. I have started buying my Scottish Breakfast by the pound. I have a "tea emergency" kit in my purse. I don't always worry about proper brewing anymore if I don't have the time. I just pour the hot water over the tea in the T-sac or in the pot infuser or the teabag, wait until it reaches the color I like it to be and drink it. I drink several types of tea every day. My last two cups of tea before I go to bed are usually Russian Caravan. LOL. Yeah, I might be an addict.

I usually drink 1/4th a cup before I leave work. Why so little? I'm overly sensitive to caffeine on empty stomack. In the evening, I drink one or two cups of fairly weak tea, or sometimes I don't drink tea at all.

My main addiction is drake's glazed apple pies, I eat anywhere from one to three per day, usually all in one sitting. There's too much sugar in them, three at once have a noticeable drugging effect. I'm addicted to their taste, not to sugar, though.

I'm also a recovering book addict. I used to read all my spare time, anything from Heinlein to Dostoevsky. It was bad enough to affect my sleep, health, mood, etc.

addiction sucks in any guise.

-AK

I am definitely a tea addict. I drink 12 to 16 12oz. mugs of tea every day. Thus my average comes close to a gallon of tea per day.

When I am working at the computer or reading a book, I always have a mug of tea close.

H. L. Law

snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (Tag! You're It, Sweetie!) wrote in message news:...

Having many cups of tea doesn't make me feel I am an tea addict. I always feel days are too short because I start drinking in the morning and continue until I go to bed. I always maintain a stock of 13 different kinds of estate tea and 4 kinds of blend. In the morning when I woke up, I always start with a strong buzz. I blend my own tea- Keemun,Darjeeling,Lapsand Souchong and Bangladeshi strong CTC(A full mug with milk and sugar).Then i drink Yunnan tea, after Yunnan I drink little lighter Nepalese or Sikkim black tea, then feel for another blend I usally try irish blend, fresian blend or Pure Assam.By this time i have my lunch and try some lapsang Souching with light crakers and cheese. Then i try Keemun mao feng or Keemun Hao ya "A". Then I take it easy with some Makaibari darjeeling(Thats my only estate I prefer) after that its almost four or five p.m. I take a strong Bangladeshi CTC tea with milk and suger. Then I come back home after work and have a cup of wonderful blend with my wife-Keemun,Cylon,lapsang and bangladeshi CTC. Then i drink some chinese black tea-Red peony, Panyang Golden Tribute ,Sichuan black or something like this(By the way, my little two and half years old daughter also share some sips with me) Then I have my dinner and take some blend again depend on my mood. Then little bit later I take some Japanese or Chinese green tea.I am not attached with Oolong yeat thought I have three kinds in my stock. I never count my cups neither follow any time frame. I just follow my heart and drink. Am I a tea addict or a tea lover?

Ripon (From Bangladesh)

Hi Everyone,

You know its possible to consume really as much tea as you want without worrying about caffeine. Its pretty obvious too, just buy Decaffeinated. Celestial Seasonings even makes Decaffeinated Green Tea!!!

Following Joe's example, I'll go next.

My name is Martha, and I, too, am a tea-oholic.

My mother started me on the road to addiction. I don't blame her for my problem,though, because I've known for some time that I have this addiction and it is up to me to quit. I can, too; any time I want to do so, I can quit cold-turkey...not a problem, really.

Wait a moment...the kettle is whistling. I'll be back in a second or two...just want to take it off the heat. Well, okay, make that about 5 minutes. I've got my teapot waiting with some Extra Fancy Formosa oolong in the infuser, so this will take more than a few seconds.

I was drinking tea by the time I was 18-months old. I grew up in the South (US) where summers can be so hot that milk will sour on its way between the carton and a baby's bottle. Mother fed me tea throughout my childhood, either iced or as cambric tea (with crackers) when I was feeling poorly. When I was 8, or maybe 9, she started letting me have a cup of grown-up tea with her in the morning. (That's a cup of hot Lipton with sugar and just a splash of milk.)

My addiction was in its early stages throughout childhood and into my teen years, despite a lapse when I got sidetracked in junior high by Coca-cola. This was in the days before canned tea, when it wasn't cool to bring a thermos of tea to school.

When I was seventeen-almost-eighteen, though, my love (need) for tea was taken to new heights--or dragged to new depths, depending on your point of view. I had skipped school to go down to the French Quarter, where I visited a fortune-teller. (She lived around the corner, a few doors down and one flight up from where Blaise Starr used to do her strip act.) This fateful day would be my undoing as a tea addict, for it was the day I was introduced to the good stuff. I remember it like it was only yesterday, instead of nearly 40 years ago. I'll bet all of you have had such a life-altering moment in your addiction that you can recall with such clarity, haven't you?

The fortune-teller held court in a one-room-with-kitchenette apartment which was tricked out in heavy velveteen drapes, beaded lampshades, watered-silk on the walls and thick Persian rugs underfoot. There were a couple of deep pillows on the floor, one of them covered with what looked like tiger skin. The other one was a tapestry-like material. She motioned for me to sit on the daybed, in front of which was a tray set on low stacks of books. She pulled up a chair from beside a marble-topped dresser and sat across from me. She handed me a deck of cards and told me to shuffle them while she made some tea for us.

I had been feeling a little spooked by the surroundings and the intense way she looked at me, but when she said "tea" I knew the afternoon would go well. I even believed my mother would never know I had skipped school. I was wrong, on both counts.

Pardon me, the timer just buzzed. I have to go take care of my tea. Back in a moment.

(c) 2003 Martha McLemore

This reminds me -- tea can be an effective measure of one's accomplishment.

I'm a pianist, and often take a cup or mug to the piano when I'm practicing. I can tell how hard I've been working by how cool the tea has gotten when I take the next sip.

Joe

I don't trust myself around porcelain tea cups when I'm at the piano. :-)

ZBL

Zephyrus replied:

I get the feeling that Joe knows his way around a piano. Although in my case, even though I am pretty familiar with a computer keyboard I have still managed to slosh some tea onto it which caused a short which in turn caused such a long string (of "g"s, if I remember) to be fed into my computer that it brought it down. Impressed my sysadmins, who previously thought that it was impossible to do in that manner.

But piano playing involves grace in a way that computer hacking does not (or, based on personal experience, forbids)? His tea cup is probably safe.

Right now I just brewed a pot of Pouchong (Bao Zhong) from Taiwan's redoubtable and blessed Wen Shan region, grown by a colleague's father's friend. It's a year and a half old and fading, but still not bad. Ten Ren sells something like it. It is kind of pricy (even when bought through the grapevine, like I did). But, you get your money's worth with multiple infusions.

Good health to you all. Winter just snickered at us in Madison. I look out my window on the 7th floor and see a whirlwind of leaves.

Rick.

Rick wrote,

Well, when it comes to tea, the cup sits on a small table next to the piano. I wouldn't dare put it ON the piano (having paid $6K to get the piano refinished

Joe

I was referring to the safety of the cups from me. :-) There are times and composers (Samuel Barber leaps to mind) that make me feel like breaking/dropping something . . .

I am yet but a student, so please excuse my silliness . . .

Took a side trip to the Grand Canyon on my way out to the kitchen to drink that pot of tea.

I've been told that the best way to make a long story short is not to tell it in the first place. Seems I've passed that point already, but I'll try to keep the rest of the story short.

The woman I visited all those years ago took a tin of tea from one of the dresser drawers and spooned long wiry leaves into a thin-walled cobalt-and-gold teapot. She added boiling water and let the tea steep for about six minutes. The she poured the tea into tall glasses, added big dollops of cherry jam and handed one of the glasses to me. It was the first whole leaf tea I'd ever had and was what started me down the path toward my tea addiction. She called it caravan tea, so I'm guessing it was a Russian caravan blend. It was so full of exotic (to me at the time) flavors and wonderful aroma.

I've had all kinds of teas since then, including several different Russian Caravan blends, but I've never been able to duplicate the flavors of that first real tea.

Despite youthful forays into the underworld of soft drinks and going the herbal tisane route during my hippy years, I've never gotten over my love of teas...nor do I wish to, either.

(c)2003 Martha McLemore