It's Teatime!

Alexis, over at North on Harper, wants to bring back the tea party. And this morning, as I stumbled out into the kitchen to put on the kettle for my morning cup of English Breakfast tea, I decided she was right. What this world really needs right now  is more tea parties. 

I've always loved a good tea party. Back in the day, my brother and I used to fill up my miniature Peter Rabbit teapot with water and host tea parties between us and our stuffed animals on our bedroom floor. If we were really lucky we got a couple brownies or cookies from Mom to serve as a teatime nibbles. My family often made real, live tea in the evening (usually herbal) as a way to relax and unwind after an eventful day.

As I grew up, I became well-steeped in English literature and my fascination with all things English, especially the tea party, only grew.

In college, several friends and I made tea parties a semi-tradition. The events always involved way too much sugar and usually ended with a sort of tea party hangover. (No, we weren't drinking sweet tea . . .)

To be honest, a good tea party, in my book at least, should end with an upset stomach and insomnia: it's a natural side effect of one too many scones all washed down with caffeinated tea.

While in London, I even got to have a grown-up tea party at the Ritz. We felt pretty fancy.

And really, when's the last time you got all gussied up to drink a cup of coffee? Tea speaks of elegance and tradition; it's fun and stately at the same time.

While I love a good cup of Starbucks when I can get it, the vast majority of my mornings kick off with a cup of tea. To me, a cup of tea means everything is going to be all right. 

Who's with me on the tea party thing? I'm tired of drinking my daily tea at laptop, staring at the screen through sleep-deprived eyes as I hammer out the morning blog post. What I need right now is an excuse for romance and charm. So let's put on party dresses, decorate the back garden with paper lanterns, and pull out our best china. Remember, pinkies up! 

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Caffeine: a love/hate relationship

My father always referred to coffee as spoiled water. My mother and Andy can't imagine starting their mornings without a steaming mug of coffee. For many years, I didn't need anything to kick start my mornings other than a bit of cold cereal in my belly.

By senior year of college, I was toting a travel mug of tea with me to morning classes and during my time in London, England, the recreational trips my housemate and I took in the morning to one of the ubiquitous Starbucks to grab a latte before we took the Hammersmith and City line into work became more than recreational.  Must have been those early mornings required of us London temps that had me reaching for the joe. After all, I was expected to be at my desk, working away by 9:30 every morning, five days a week! More likely, my need for caffeine stemmed from my utter lack of job responsibilities. When BBC.co wasn't enough to keep me fired up for the work week, I'd wander down to the company's coffee pod for some complimentary hot beverage.

By the time I was back stateside, I was hitting the C pretty hard. Between the black tea, the coffee, and my beloved diet wild cherry Pepsi, I spent most work days buzzing around the office building.  

And then something happened last summer. The taste of coffee started to make me wrinkle my nose. And the coffee was staining my teeth.

To understand my despair about this, you have to understand that, for whatever reason, when both my brother and I got our top two permanent front teeth, the teeth came in a weird stained color. The dentists were baffled and eventually cosmetic caps were placed over both teeth. Watching the coffee wreck havoc with my otherwise pearly whites brought back far too many teenage memories of having anything but a great smile.  

Oh vanity, vanity.

So last month, I gave up on coffee completely. Back to one really strong cup of Earl Grey or Morning Thunder to kick start each morning.  My teeth are back to my pre-coffee day shade of white and smart boy Andy leaves for work before I get up to insure no one's subjected to my caffeine deprived A.M. muddling when I stumble out of the bedroom, flip on the hot pot and slap a tea bag into the nearest mug. To be honest, I don't miss the coffee or the larger dose of caffeine. Regardless of what's in my cup, what really gets me ready for the new day is wrapping my fingers around the steamy mug, inhaling deeply, and hanging onto the warm cozies of sleep for just a moment longer.

How do you start your day?

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Morning Moments

It’s no secret that I’m no morning person. Yet despite my natural night owl inclinations, I’ve been spent a good portion of the last decade trying to train myself into being an early bird.

Back in high school I forewent the luxury of being homeschooled by doing my best to conform my schedule to that of public school kids: it was the only way I seemed to manage half-way productive school days. In college I forced myself up every school day morning when it was still dark to trundle myself down to the gym on campus. Today, I stumble out of the bedroom just as Andy’s about to head to work each morning. They say the writing life is all about stealing moments to write and often the hour or so I spend in the morning updating my blog or hammering a couple hundred words on whatever project I’m currently working on is the only writing I’ve gotten many days this summer.

I like to think I’ve been fairly successful with my early bird ambitions, although I suppose my success is open to interpretation. I’m no Pollyanna during my first couple hours of consciousness by any stretch of the imagination. I may be awake, but that doesn’t mean I’m great company.

Oscar Wilde famously quipped in his play An Ideal Husband: “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.” I’ve long evoked that phrase in my defense, although I think Oscar’s insight extends far beyond me. My earliest memory of early mornings are quiet times spend pouring over the morning paper while spoon clink against cereal bowls, or in the case of my maternal grandparents, playing three games of Yahtzee while the coffee brewed. Morning is the time when we all have to come to terms with the world and we all do that in a different, albeit, rarely exciting, way.

Morning’s such a time of quiet ritual. Whether visiting grandparents as a child or even when staying with friends today, morning is when you let those around you do their own thing. It’s a time of unspoken routine, something that we do our best not to intrude upon.

Overtime, my mornings have become a time for exercises, breakfast, coffee, blogging, writing, and knitting a couple rows on my current project. Monumental things aren’t accomplished in the morning. But little tasks, completed with diligence can set the tune for the whole day. I’ve grown to cherish my quiet morning moments and the fleeting introspection they bring.

This morning I woke up to the sound of rain hitting the roof and Andy get ready for work. I’d planned for a lazy morning; after all, it’s the first opportunity I’ve had to sleep in for several weeks. Yet I found myself prompted to push aside the blankets and get up to face the rainy day.

Why do we get up early even when we know we can delay the stumbling towards consciousness a few more hours? Maybe it’s like jogging: the process of doing the waking up is always a struggle, but it sure feels good when it’s over with.

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What to do about coffee?

At the cabin, there are a few things that cause us to drop everything and make the 60 mile trip into town, regardless of convenience. Number one is running out of gas. Number two is running out of toothpaste. And number three? Running out of coffee.

Every morning I wake up to the sound of Andy grinding coffee beans. Although our intake of coffee declines slightly in the warm summer months, it’s still part of the everyday routine. And that’s where the conundrum comes in.

If we’re to focus on living locally and feeding our bodies with foods naturally grown in our home range, turning a blind eye to our favorite breakfast beverage is a huge oversight. Feel good statements on the coffee bags like “organic” or “fair trade” don’t erase the fact that every ground coffee bean that ends up in our filters has traveled thousands of miles before reaching our breakfast table. Sure Kona coffee from Hawaii is “U.S. grown coffee” but Hawaii isn’t exactly in my northern Minnesota backyard, now is it?

Since our town is teeny, we’ve been spared the arrival of commercialized coffee. The coffeehouse in town is no Starbucks or Caribou Coffee, it’s a locally owned and operated business which hires local high school kids during summer months and supports a local family. When we grab a latte in town, we’re not supporting “the man,” we’re supporting neighbors.

Even I, who am more of a coffee sipper rather than a coffee drinker, foresee problems in swearing off coffee for good. Caffeine is such integral part of 21st century life that to do away with coffee would probably just mean the emergence of another environmentally and nutritionally worse alternative. If we do some research about where we invest our coffee dollar, we can insure that we support worthy coffee plantations and small business.

Is that good enough? How effective can local living be if we start down the slippery slope of making caveats?

It probably behooves us to remember that when coffee, tea, and spices emerged into Western society, they were considered luxuries. We often forget that stocking up on coffee wasn’t always as easy as hopping in an automobile, turning the key in the ignition and driving 60 miles. It used to be journey that used to involve gangplanks and white handkerchiefs being fluttered in farewell as a three-masted tea clipper pulled out of the harbor on the start of a multi-month trip. If we can remember that every time the coffee grinder roars we are beginning our mornings with the epitome of a “treat” we can succeed not in living locally, but living life a little more mindfully. Everything in moderation, right?

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