sisu

Losing it

"Cups are too small and frankly poncy," counseled our British correspondent Peter McGrath of The Beagle Project -- now affiliated with NASA and supported by the Chilean Navy! -- when he learned we had turned to drink. Tea, that is, "the new gin," AKA "Something to drink if you can't drink liquor." Peter turned us on to his favorite cuppa, Yorkshire Gold, which led to our trying a variety of teas -- black, green, white and herbal -- from Sarah Woods Traditions, a totally awesome distributor in New Jersey. We ordered the selection of "teabag cubes" pictured above on Tuesday, and they were on our doorstep -- with lots of free samples tossed in -- ready for brewing the next morning.

Since last we weighed in here, the unwanted pounds accumulated during the Gluttony Years continue to melt away, albeit at a predictably slower rate than during those lazy, hazy, crazy days of early summer when the Cold Turkey Bandwagon first rolled into town. Facts and figures:

May 29 - July 10 = 6 weeks: 17 pounds lost. 17/6 = 2.8 pounds/week

June 5: Cold Turkey Cookbook Project launched.

July 24: New scale moves in.

July 10 - August 14 = 5 weeks: 8 pounds lost. 8/5 = 1.6 pounds/week

TOTAL lost to date: 25 pounds!

Talk about the light fantastic.

Tea: The new gin

"Theaceous: adj. pertaining to or like the tea-plant; belonging to the tea family of plants." You can get the definition free online at Tiscali's Dictionary of Difficult Words or by subscription at the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. For the full monty we looked it up the old-fashioned way in our snail Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Image of p. 2369 above lists "theaceous" just about a third of the way between "the" and "their" and includes etymological roots: [NL Theaceae + E -ous].

"Tea leaves struck a cord with quite a few of your readers," observed Goomp this morning during imail chats, referring to the deluge of personal testimonials and theaceous pointers flooding into the comments in our previous post, "Something to drink if you can't drink liquor." Excerpts:

We: Tea: The new gin. Or, on a more trendy note, Tea: The new black.

He: The "new black" is too esoteric for me. I prefer "Tea: The new gin."

We'll drink a mug -- "Cups are too small and frankly poncy," counsels our British correspondent Peter McGrath --  to that and to our wonderful commenters. A few nuggets:

Laura Lee: Everyday after school when I was in high school I would come home to a cup of tea and vanilla wafers, a very simple pleasure, but my friends found out and gave me a new nickname, Lauratealeaf.

Goomp: I have a hunch tea may also have an economic advantage over alcohol.

Teresa: I find that tea is a wonderful thing to soothe nerves (which seems silly, but appears to be true) and I have also noticed that it aids digestion.

Pam: Growing up in the south, tea was considered the 'house wine', so you struck a chord.

Rowena: I've been teetotaling for over two years, and now I've finally got the tea!

Meanwhile we've just passed the two-week mark -- and counting -- on our  Cold Turkey Diet. Time for a tea break. 

"Something to drink if you can't drink liquor"

Tiny keeps her eye on the lower forty this morning from her vantage point atop the woodpile.

Tea has never been our cup of tea, so to speak. Coffee was the salt in our stew. But we started drinking tea about a week ago after our British blogfriend, inveterate tea drinker Peter McGrath of The Beagle Project, intrigued us with a brief email message and link to a BBC article touting the health benefits of the liquid refreshment derived from the leaves of Camelia sinensis:

Tea: better for you than water:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5281046.stm

Not that we were unaware that tea was supposed to be good for you, but until our cold-turkey epiphany two weeks back, we hadn't given it much thought.

"Camellia sinensis is the tea plant, the plant species whose leaves and leaf buds are used to produce tea," says Wikipedia. "White tea, green tea, oolong and black tea are all harvested from this species but are processed differently to attain different levels of oxidation." Black -- the one we're currently drinking because we happened to have some Twinings Earl Grey on hand -- "comes from leaves that have been fermented before being heated and dried." Botanical drawing from Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen in naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit kurz erläuterndem Texte (1887)

"Tea is the most important non-alcoholic beverage in the world," according to the Plant Cultures website, which also seems to be carrying water for government interference in markets via something called "fairtrade." But back to non-alcoholic beverages. A snippet of an imail conversation this afternoon about the drinking of tea:

We:  As I said earlier to Tuck, who happened to be puffing on a pipe at the time, "Tea drinking is sort of like smoking a pipe. It gives you something to do."

She: That's the secret of tea. Something to drink if you can't drink liquor.

We: I never knew until I went cold turkey.

In the spirit of her brother's earlier portrayal,Tiny gives her interpretation of the "Greatest Lion," Aslan.

As soon as we finish that Earl Gray, we're going to try Beagleman Peter McGrath's favorite brew, Yorkshire Tea. As Yorkshire fan Melissa McMinn of North Yorkshire says in comments at the site, "Yes - it’s the best! No other tea rivals Yorkshire Tea!!! I honestly don’t think I could live without it." Available online here.

Update: Pajamas Media links with "Something for the cold turkey community."

Update II: If animals of every stripe are your cuppa, head on over to Friday Ark #142 at Modulator and the 168th Carnival of the Cats  at The Scratching Post, where KT,  the Feline Theocracy's Maximum Leader, has "an important public service message" for the staff:

Have you ever had to do the laundry and change the sheets, but found the cat lying on the bed? Today we will show you how to remove the sheets without disturbing the cat.

Don't miss it!