Since time immemorial, tea drinking has been a common practice for a majority of people in the world.
In fact, tea has been regarded as the world’s most consumed beverage, next to water.
But the preference of a good tea, whether it be green, black, yellow, white, red, oolong, or whatever color or flavor it is, still depends on the processing of a tea bush called Camellia sinensis, which includes oxidation, heating, drying, and infusion of other herbs, flowers, spices, and fruits.
Tea is only comparable to wine when human culture celebrates the wealth of nature. Tea is a remarkable example of the soil’s generosity and diversity. It has been celebrated for 2,000 years, as a healthy beverage and a symbol of humanity.
This extract from a poem by Lu Tong (790-835), a Chinese poet known as a “tea lover,” celebrates the pleasure brought on by successive tea infusions prepared in a Yixing teapot:
The first bowl sleekly moistened my throat and lips;
The second banished all my loneliness;
The teaspoon could become a thing of the past after the invention of a mug that can stir liquid by itself.
All a drinker has to do to work the clever cup is gently swirl it.
This sets in motion a ceramic ball positioned at the bottom of the mug that stirs the contents.
The device was invented by two French designers, who recently displayed it at the London Design Festival.
Florian Dussopt, 23, said: “The cup aims at introducing a new way of drinking tea or another warm drink without using a spoon.
By now we have all heard about the amazing health benefits of chinese green tea. Long used medicinally in China, it has become increasingly popular around the world. Is there a difference between tea grown in China, and tea from other places? What are the origins of tea, and how did it become so popular?
How Tea Begin
Tea is thought to have originated in China at least 2,000 years ago. Because of the time that has passed since then, mystery surrounds the actual beginning of tea-drinking.
Coffee isn’t the only caffeinated beverage to get the gourmet makeover. How to properly tackle tea.
Long before shorts, talls, pumpkin lattes, and frothy half-caf frappuccinos, America was a nation of tea totallers.
Colonists drank black tea with abandon, renouncing it only when Britain’s unjust taxes inspired the Founding Fathers to dump their tea into the ocean. Tea didn’t completely disappear, but it was eclipsed by another caffeinated beverage. “Coffee was closer and cheaper in the 1800s,” says Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. Unlike tea leaves, beans could be obtained from the Caribbean or from Latin America.
Green tea can help beat superbugs according to Egyptian scientists speaking March, 31, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology’s 162nd meeting.
The pharmacy researchers have shown that drinking green tea helps the action of important antibiotics in their fight against resistant superbugs, making them up to three times more effective.
Green tea is a very common beverage in Egypt, and it is quite likely that patients will drink green tea while taking antibiotics. The medical researchers wanted to find out if green tea would interfere with the action of the antibiotics, have no effect, or increase the medicines’ effects.
With names such as Hummingbird Nectar and Peaceful Peninsula, the organic teas and tisanes of Angela Macke are blended with both taste and good health in mind. The former registered nurse-turned-master gardener became interested in the many health and medicinal benefits of tea several years ago. She grows most of the ingredients of her 36 blends of black, green, white, and oolong teas, and fruit mélange, chakras, and tisanes on her 12-acre property in Michigan. Macke, the founder of Light of Day Organics, will be in Delaware on Saturday, April 5, to host a tea workshop sponsored by The Global Village Collection, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Andrews House, 39 West Winter Street.
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