Tea time!

I’ve been reading a lot about happiness and what makes some people happy and others not. It’s all about how you view your circumstances. I also believe that things happen for a reason.

So I have been having some stomach issues, which meant I have to eat a very bland diet. This also meant no coffee. Ack! When one gets up at 4 am, one definitely needs something to get going. I could choose to be really annoyed about this, but I chose instead to find an alternative. Tea!

I’ll admit it, I dislike the taste of green tea. I know it’s supposed to be so healthy for you, blah, blah, blah. But it’s antioxidant, super-duper powers are only good if you don’t add anything to it. So much for disguising the taste with cream and sugar. I can’t face yucky green tea at 4 am.

Enter Upton Tea Imports. My dear brother-in-law, who is my husband Ken’s identical twin, introduced us to the real joy of tea. This company has every imaginable type of tea.

Ken and I had a blast figuring out what to order.

Here’s what came for us:

We ordered:
(these are all loose leaf teas)

Green Rooibos – from South Africa
Masala Chai – black tea with cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and cloves from India
Peach with Flowers – black tea with marigold flowers and peach flavor from Germany.

As a nice surprise, we also got a sample of:

Shou Mei White tea – from China.

It was as though we took a trip around the world!

Upton Tea Imports provided a wonderful experience from the start. They personify tea! We ordered on a Friday and our order arrived on Monday. The tea came beautifully packaged in thick silver bags. It was even personalized with our names!

We also got a thick tea catalog and some tea strainers so we could make our tea. It was like having Christmas in July!

To top it off we’ll be using a French press to make the tea.

The things I have learned from this experience:

1. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

There is always an alternative. Instead of coffee, which I have lost my taste for, I’ve now become a tea fan.

2. Caffeine isn’t what gets me up and going in the morning.

I do need a little bit, even though I’m a morning person and I love getting up early to exercise. But, I think it’s more the act of drinking a delicious beverage in the morning that wakes me up, not the caffeine.

I made the mistake of having an iced coffee when out with my Mom. BIG mistake. I felt jittery all day and didn’t sleep well. I felt as though my nervous system was all out of whack.

3. Slow down and enjoy life.

I used to stumble out of bed at 4 am, drag myself downstairs and put the coffee (made the day before) into the microwave, anxiously waiting for it to heat up so I could drink it and wake up.

Now, I enjoy every step of making tea. I decide which tea to try that day; it’s so much fun to have a few choices. I carefully scoop out a bit of the tea for the strainer. You really got to go slow with this, or you’ll end up with tea all over the floor!

I savour the tea. Once you’ve tried real tea, you’ll never go back to Lipton’s.

4. Learn to relax more.

The other day was one of those days, very stressful. I came home, saw the Upton Tea catalog sitting on the counter and decided to spend some time perusing it. I got lost in imagining a tea plantation in India or Ceylon. I have no idea where Ceylon is, but it sure sounds exotic, doesn’t it?

I made a mental note to look up where Ceylon is located and to learn more about the different types of teas. I love learning new things. It’s relaxing and energizing at the same time.

After spending a half hour with the tea catalog, I was completely relaxed.  I’m busy planning what I’ll order next.

So what about you? How do you enjoy life?

Photos are courtesy of Ken Loderick.