tea story

Shyba, after seeing all those pics of Morocco thru' the link you sent me, my yearning for this drink gets more and more compelling!

mint tea ~ w/ freshly plucked mint leaves from my mum's mini herb garden

I can't remember, what is it that I had for dinner that night. All I know is that I want some mint tea when I get back. Must have been something greasy...

My parents and I, we went tea-crazy recently. We were served this really fragrant fruit tea at my aunt's recently and instead of asking her what type and brand it was, we sought to search for it ourselves, using our supposedly reliable sensory device- the nose.

In that search, we bought Lipton's Peach-Mango at NTUC. It's wasn't the one. We then got Dilmah's Strawberry-Mango at Mustafa. Also not the one. We kind of gave up. Turns out my much-determined dad made another gamble and FINALLY bought the right one. It's Ahmad's Passion fruit-Peach.

It seriously could have been a hell lot easier, had he lowered his pride a weeny bit and ask my aunt, just what is the tea that she served us??

In the frenzy of looking for my dad's tea, my mum jumped on the bandwagon and also got for herself Lipton's Lemongrass-Ginger & another type of pure Ginger tea.

Myself meanwhile, was nursing a bad bout of prolonged cough, so I got the Dilmah's Pure Peppermint.

So we had those and the 3 different fruit teas ON TOP of the regular Lipton tea, Lipton Jasmine tea, Indonesian black tea, BOH Seri Songket Passion fruit tea and the 3 different green tea brands for the each of us (different preference :P).

Imagine what my beverage cabinet looks like.

I brought out 2 teabags of that peppermint tea (100% mint leaves) for a compact teapot. I could have easily used their Moroccan Mint (80% green tea 20% mint) instead. Frankly, they kind of tasted the same.

An idea suddenly springed on me.

"Erm, mum. Do you think they'll be upset, if we take some of their leaves...?" Please note that I'm referring to potted mint plant that grows outside our house, here.

"I don't know. I thought it's YOU who told me NOT to disturb the plants when they are already asleep at night?!"

"Oh well.. They ARE your plants, after all. I guess they won't feel too bad when it's you who took them..." I added, with a sheepish grin. Yeah, trying to act smart.

Without a word, she took her gardening scissors and went out. I LOVEEE my mum!

I expected her to take only a handful of them leaves but she came back in with 2 WHOLE stalks instead.

"Take the leaves and leave the stem. I wanna plant more." Ahh.... stem cutting. Basic science. Was that in Primary 3? Or 4? She simply root the stems in water for a week or so before replanting them.

No matter how weird it taste, our family is trying to use more raw sugar instead of the white one now. Be it in cooking, in our drinks (not just coffee) and even sprinkled on warm margarine toast. Yum!

So there. This drink on that cold, rainy night. Shared amongst my parents and myself while watching cable tv.

Ahhh.... Such bliss....!