by Alice Rush
HOW DO you take it? I’m really inconsistent, making it difficult for my Dutch husband to make me a cup of either. I usually (but not always) like my hot coffee to be black, but my hot tea typically must be sweet, sugar-sweet, and no milk. No artificial sweeteners for me. I prefer that iced tea be sweet as well, but I can drink it unsweetened. There were days in my youth when I stirred multiple packets of artificial sweeteners into an iced tea, mostly because they blended better than granulated sugar, but no more. I’ll drink iced tea unsweetened if needed, though I don’t know what the fun is in that.
In the winter, I typically drink hot coffee in the morning and hot tea in the afternoons or evenings. Then as warmer mornings arrive in the spring and summer, I might be known to change things up and drink iced coffee (which can be sweetened or not) in the mornings and during the day. In those months, the hot tea goes by the wayside for the season until the weather is cold again.
AT HOME coffee is always Peet’s, named for Dutch coffee wizard Alfred Peet, or during the holidays, Starbucks Holiday blend, basically also compliments of Alfred, because without Peet there wouldn’t have been Starbucks. If I’m having coffee out somewhere, I always ask for a dark roast and they often miss the mark, but I’m not out for morning coffee too often.
For teas, I try to drink the healthier versions. I look for ones that are touted as organic or especially beneficial for health, but I’m really after what tastes good to me, with a secondary preference for healthy or organic. I grew up drinking good old Lipton black tea, back when that was still a solidly Dutch Unilever product. For years I didn’t know there was any other kind!
My mother kept a glass apothecary jar full of the individually-wrapped paper tea bags. After my mother passed away I got the empty jar. It still smelled of those tea bags! Fond memories of hot mugs or tea cups of sweet Lipton tea when we came home after church. So today that jar is where I keep my regular Lipton tea bags. I usually make iced tea from them during the summer, and I may have one hot on occasion.
I LIKE a full assortment of teas. Sometimes a mild and boring chamomile, sometimes herbal fruit teas, but I don’t like mint or tart flavors at all. My overall preference is black tea. I really enjoy Oolong. However, for Christmas last year, I put in a special request with Dutch family to have a box of Pickwick black tea with fruit – Mango, sent over. The smell alone is fantastic, and then I make it very sweet. That sweetness is a kind of sacrilege for some (you tea purists you!), but I love it.
Still, we’re all watching our sugar, or we should be, or we’d like to be (fingers crossed). Okay, we try. One day I was commiserating with my sister about really enjoying sweet hot tea, but how I wish I could wean myself from the sugar, some of the time. She suggested a brand of Egyptian licorice tea that was naturally sweet. I immediately found it at our local Albert Heijn-owned Hannaford supermarket, and it is really lovely, very healthy, and it is naturally sweet! So I have added yet another tea to my list, for the days when I feel I’ve already had enough sugar and need to behave.
Side benefit, when I pick that one, my husband can easily prepare it to my liking!
* Alice is a Maine realtor and a licensed helicopter and fixed wing pilot. She first met her Dutch husband in Maryland in 2005, and married him four years later.
