The persuasive philosophy of tea.
During a raft trip through the Grand Canyon, our group was divided; there were the tea drinkers and the coffee drinkers. The coffee drinkers rose early, brewed some thick battery acid, and once on a frenzied caffeine high, broke camp and loaded the boats. They got things done. The tea drinkers weren't slackers, no, but would sit with their little
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tea papers dangling from their camp mugs and watch the morning mist over the water. I think coffee drinkers become tea drinkers because they're tired of getting things done. Which is not such a bad change to make, when you think about it.
I currently live with a reformed coffee addict, and thus the tea craze has hit our house. My husband now likes to wax poetic about the nuanced flavors of Ceylon tea or the robustness of his Irish Breakfast. Our tea collection runneth over. Every time I pull a cookbook from our upper shelf, I get hit on the head with a box of Tazo or Yogi Tea (my own heart still belongs to coffee, and this doesn't help).
The fact that tea bags are used at our house rather than the loose variety should indicate, however, that among tea drinkers we here still rank in the novice category. We don't have airtight canisters lining our counters or a pile of dirty strainers in the sink. Yet. So it was worth taking a trip to the Teahouse on Canyon Road to experience how serious tea drinkers take their stuff. Call it a pilgrimage of sorts, because there the owner hand-mixes many of the teas available, which you can read about in a small brochure that rivals the J Peterman catalogue for florid description. We sat on floor cushions (there are tables, but floor cushions seemed more suitable to our quest), selected our poison, and calmly drank while staring off into space.
My husband is a chai tea man and chose a cup of Pakistan Chai ($3.50) that was slightly peppery, very mellow, very creamy and simple. I think I drank half of it. I chose a white tea Pai Mu Tan ($3.00) described by the catalogue to be notable for its "faint aroma and
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sweetness" and it was indeed faint; a light yellow liquid that was like drinking something that was barely there, like someone breathing in your ear. This is what I had come for, for if you look at tea through a coffee-colored lens, which I do, this white tea was the opposite of coffee, and it was everything good that coffee was not. It made me think that less really is more.
And then, having discovered how wonderful less really could be, we broke the rule of less is more and ordered a second cup. I sat sipping a vanilla Rooibos ($3.00), a caffeine-free tea also known as red bush from South Africa, while watching my husband, on his second cup, Green Dragon Chai ($3.50), talk faster and faster on that oh-so-wonderful caffeine high. Let the record state that at least we didn't get anything done that day. Which, I repeat, is a good thing.
