“It’s in a cup so you don’t look weird” – Dad.
I was drinking apple juice. Everyone else was having tea. Black tea. The English sort with milk. The sort the sanity of the country, or at least my family, depends on. The sort everyone makes and offers you whenever anything happens, big or small, births, deaths, celebrations, calamities, meetings, visiting family, waking up, getting home from work, going to visit anyone, being visited by anyone. There are so many opportunities to drink tea that some people I know drink it purely because it’s easier than trying to refuse it. Peer pressure on a countrywide scale.
“Nice to see you – I’ll put the kettle on.” It is an integral part of social interaction.
And I don’t like it. I never have. Not really.
I used to drink my own version of tea when I stayed with my grandparents when I was very small. Grandma used to make it very very milky, and very very sweet – for me anyway, everyone else got theirs so strong you could stand the teaspoon up in it (as they say). I never made the jump to grown up tea. (Warm milk with honey still trumps tea any day, by any reckoning. I don’t drink it all that often though because heating milk is a faff, much more than putting the kettle on.)
I also don’t like coffee, unless it’s in icecream or cake or occasionally chocolate. I don’t like green tea either for that matter. That’s about the limit of choice, if there is any choice at all.
I drink herbal tea (“infusions” – my mother refuses to acknowledge it as an alternative, in her mind there is only real tea, or wasted hot water). I like mint and ‘mixed herbs’ and various fruit mixtures. I like drinking squash, hot or cold, although it’s considered a little kid’s drink. I like milk, hot or cold. I like hot chocolate and milkshakes and smoothies and most fruit juices. I even like orange juice with bits in.
But I don’t like tea.
And don’t get me started on alcohol.
Good job I like apple juice – you can disguise it in so many different cups and glasses!
🙂 🙂 🙂
I never drink tea or coffee-for purely religious reasons- so understand where you are coming from Jesska. But milk and honey is a soothing drink before bed, and hot chocolate is yummy almost anytime I feel like a warm drink. I am not as keen on herbal teas as I am on the fruit variety. A handy trick is to carry a herbal-or alternative- tea bag with you and ask for hot water.
Do you have blackcurrant juice available in your stores? A little of that with hot water added makes a delicious drink!
A glass of plain water too is a good drink as far as I am concerned, and our bodies need that don’t they?
I guess you really notice the difference in “Polly put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea” when you go back home for a visit. I thought much of that tea-making was a fictional thing and may have worn out now, but apparently not.Is Germany a tea-drinking people or is it coffee there?
Cheers!
Religious reasons against tea? Wow. Which religion is that? Maybe I should join 🙂
Carrying my own teabags sounds like a great idea – I’ll have to do that 🙂
Um… As far as I’m aware, tea-making is still going strong. Certainly in my family, but also in other places involving groups of people in the vicinity of a plug (and a kettle).
Germany is both.. I’d say overall more coffee in the morning, and tea during the day, but there are loads of people who drink coffee all day.. Luckily the Germans drink lots of herbal/fruit teas so there’s generally several on offer. They drink a lot of sparkling water though – it took me a year or two to get used to the taste of that. For some reason they mostly don’t like tap water…
Hot apple juice, hot blackcurrant juice, hot milk with chai, hot chocolate (brown or white). Never a fan of tea.
Oh yes! All of the above! 🙂