It's summertime in the Philippines and it's just too hot to drink coffee (hot coffee) except for when it's before 9 am. Only someone more insane than I would any drink any kind of coffee other than iced coffee after that hour of the day.
I switched from hot coffee to iced tea and plain ice water when the weather started to become unbearably hot. Lukewarm water, or even chilled water from the dispenser, just doesn't cut it.
There are some things in life where I will accept no substitutes. Coffee and tea are two of these things.
This is the second of two articles I wrote for my main site. This one was originally published in April of 2008 and I've moved it here (with minor rewriting) because this site is about coffee and tea and the other is not. Keep in mind when it was written as I made references:
Recently, I was reminded by Claire (A little piece of me) that while some people like lemon in their tea, others do not. She, like me, does not like lemon in her tea. She needs "proper" tea, whatever the heck that means.
When non-dairy creamers were introduced either in the late 1950s or early 1960s, people didn't know that one of the ingredients isn't good for you at all. The use of non-dairy creamers peaked in the 1980s, but there are people who have always used one form of milk or another instead of buying into the non-dairy creamer routine.
The bad ingredient I'm talking about is partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (or fat).
Out of nothing more than curiosity, I decided to search for both "Christmas Coffee" and "Christmas Tea". I was astounded by number of results; more than 7 million for "Christmas Coffee" and more than a million for "Christmas Tea". I never would have thought about either had I not been thinking about getting a late-night cup of coffee and that's it's nearly Christmas day (within the hour).
Personally, I really can't tell the difference the taste of green tea as opposed to black tea or any other kind of tea. I've had a little experience, not good, with using green tea for dieting. I'll relate my experience along with other details about green tea.
For years, doctors have been telling people to reduce their consumption of drinks containing high levels of caffeine, picking on coffee as the number one source. While over-indulgence in things that contain caffeine can have adverse effects on your health, how much is too much is open to interpretation.
I always knew that tea was a healthy drink, but I didn't know it had healthy external uses as well. One of the external uses is in the treatment of sweaty feet, which causes foot odor.
There are so many ways to make iced tea, it's probably impossible to write about all of them. I'm going to try to cover the ways that I've done it, my mother and siblings have done it and the way I've seen other people do it. I'll start with the picture you see on the left.
Unlike coffee, the many kinds of tea are not produced from multiple species. The different varieties of tea come from one plant, the camellia sinensis. I'm not talking about teas (like herbal tea) which do not come from the tea plant; I'm specifically talking about the varieties made from the tea plant.
