Tea Time

Scrolling through social media this afternoon, I found out that today was International Tea Day.

United Nations

I decided to learn more. According to Wikipedia:

International Tea Day aims to raise awareness of the long history and the deep cultural and economic significance of tea around the world. The goal of the day is to promote and foster collective actions to implement activities in favour of the sustainable production and consumption of tea and raise awareness of its importance in fighting hunger and poverty. It aims to draw global attention of governments and citizens to the impact of the global tea trade on workers and growers, and has been linked to requests for price supports and fair trade.

Tea is one of the world’s oldest beverages. There is evidence that it was consumed in China as early as 5,000 years ago. Today, many of the workers and producers of tea face poor working conditions and pay, and International Tea Day is part of educating people about the issues.

Hubby Tony and I decided to celebrate by having iced tea with dinner. If I had known about the event in advance I would have done some preparation, but when I looked through our supply of tea bags I noticed there wasn't a lot of variety (and put 'tea bags' on the grocery list). Our drink ended up being a combination of half black tea and half decaf tea bags.

I brewed the tea in my old reliable Mr. Coffee Iced Tea maker, which is extremely easy to use. You put water in the reservoir, add tea to the basket, and hit the start button. Ten minutes later the hot tea was ready to go into the refrigerator to chill.

Since we usually have sparkling water with dinner, the tea was a nice change of pace. And as an added bonus there was enough left over to serve it again tomorrow night.

Even though I had tea with dinner, later in the evening I decided I wanted my normal after-dinner herbal brew. Tonight it was hibiscus-deep red, tart, slightly sweet, and fruity.

Five years ago: Who Are Those Masked People?