DEBORAH CROMBIE: It was so heartening to see how many people responded to Hank’s check-in post a few weeks ago saying that JRW was the first thing they read while having their morning coffee or tea. But that sent me off (not unusually!) on a tangent, wondering how and why people choose what they drink.
I grew up in a perked coffee household. My mom made it every morning in the white Corningware percolator with the little blue flowers, and both parents would refill cups of black coffee throughout the day. The coffee smelled good when it was brewing, but imagine my horror the first time I tasted the bitter black liquid! I couldn’t imagine how anyone could drink such a thing, and my opinion remained firmly fixed until I lived in Mexico City the summer I was eighteen. There, coffee was the social thing, and many hours were spent in coffee shops drinking cappuccinos, although I still had to add sugar to make it palatable. It was only on trips to London in the last decade or so that I discovered the latte—along with the fact that if you drank coffee instead of tea, you spent much less time desperately searching for public restrooms, which are in short supply everywhere in the UK.
But although I drink coffee (unsweetened now) when I’m out and occasionally at home, tea is still my first, passionate love. A perfect cuppa satisfies in a way coffee does not, and most mornings I cannot wait to make that first cup.
Dearest REDS, are you coffee, tea, neither, or both? And how did you come to love your beverage of choice?
JENN McKINLAY: Coffee! So much coffee! Imagine my delight when Hooligan 2 became a barista. My morning cup is essential and I steam and froth the milk just to be fancy. Afternoons are for tea. It helps me make it through the day.
RHYS BOWEN: Need you ask, since my Facebook group is called Tea with Rhys! Tea drinker from birth. I have to start my day with a cuppa ( made from John’s special blend of teas) Then is coffee mid morning. Tea at teatime. And at night alternating flavors of herb teas. Well Rested. Maringa ginger turmeric depending on mood. When I am in the road I carry my own British tea bags but it’s no good unless I can get boiling water
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: There are days when the ONLY thing that lures me from my comfy bed is the knowledge that I get to have coffee.
I often steam the milk, too, and it is transporting. I love it beyond all love. And in the summer, I love to get iced lattes. I mean–heavenly. During the day, I am Diet Pepsi, because I am out of coffee mode. Then after dinner, I always have camomile tea and half a cookie, and I am so cozy.
How? I remember, very clearly, I did not drink coffee until 1971. It just wasn’t a thing at our house. Although my father had it every morning, percolated? I wasn’t involved.
But then, a boyfriend in Washington DC offered me coffee with cream and sugar, and because I was trying to be cool, I pretended that’s what I always drank. I was instantly–instantly!--hooked. Deliciousness! Caffeine! Sugar! Oh, I still remember that first cup. Now I don’t use sweetener, and only skim milk, but I am just as happy.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Passionate tea drinker here, which has been an uphill battle in the coffee-obsessed US. If I had a dollar for every time I ordered tea at a restaurant or diner and got a baggie alongside a tiny carafe of hot (never boiling) water…
My mom, on the other hand, was a coffee fanatic. You could track where she had been in the house throughout the day by the half-empty cups of cold coffee she’d forget as she moved on to her next project. Ross was also a tea drinker, so we had no way to make coffee at our house, a point that was driven home when Mom stopped in at a CVS on the way to Spencer’s baptism (!!!) to buy us a Mr. Coffee machine.
HALLIE EPHRON: I like coffee and I like tea, but neither one passionately. I’m sure it’s partly because I’ve never been properly educated. Tea, for example, I don’t know how to BUY it, keep it, or brew it. I use a cone and a filter to make my morning coffee and it’s very hit or miss.
I should love coffee – my mother always saved the last of her dinner cup of coffee, mixed in some extra sugar and cream, and gave it to me. Maybe that’s why I’m so partial to coffee ice cream.
DEBS: Hallie, glad to give you a crash tea-drinking course, anytime! I am a certified Tea Master from a course I took in London.
And did you all see that researchers are now saying that brewing tea can help remove heavy metals, including lead, from water? How cool is that!
How about it, Reddies, what do you drink, and how did you come to love it?
