The tea of the week is Friday Afternoon from Please and Thank You in Louisville, Kentucky, but that’s almost a sidebar for this post. Scroll down until you see pictures if that’s what you’re here for.
It’s been a really hard and tough week, hasn’t it? I have had a really hard and tough week. Even though I just write this little blog and this little blog isn’t really about health or politics or a ~journey~ of any kind, I think it’s important that I’m honest with people who do read it. I struggle a lot with anxiety and I would say that this week represents one of my lifetime’s high-water marks of that struggle. I’m telling you this because hey, maybe this describes you, too, and you’re feeling alone and just hearing someone else say they feel it too will help you. I know that when I first gave a name to the feeling where doing anything except being very still in my bed was terrifying in 2013, that was true for me. You, and me, and a lot of people with over-productive amygdalae can all work on it together through a combination of working on ourselves, getting some professional intervention, and maybe getting a prescription if we need one.
My therapist says it’s really important for people with an overabundance of anxiety to create schedules and stick to them like they’re the most important things in the world. I let myself get consumed by my anxiety, which makes me want to disappear. Sometimes I do disappear. As a result, I let a lot of people down, including myself. The schedule helps me from sitting in a small ball at the foot of my bed, or from staring at a blank word document blinking at me from my laptop. In the past, I’ve correlated blogging regularly with strong mental well-being, so that’s what’s going to happen now. In the coming weeks I’m going to work really hard to improve the site, and to make it something meaningful and that I can be proud of. I hope you’ll stick around and tell your friends. I’m hoping to put up new entries each day. Tea Party Tuesdays are a fun thing to start with.
This week, in an effort to feel anchored and steady, I picked a tea my friend Brooke sells at her shop, which happens to be my favorite place to get coffee with my friends in the whole world. It’s called Friday Afternoon, which makes for a confusing title line in this context.
This is a blended tea that is mostly an Indian black tea, though it’s mixed with pieces of dried apple, cacao beans, chocolate, coconut, rooibos, and vanilla (maybe extract? I don’t see any bits of bean in the tin and the vanilla taste isn’t strong enough to indicate that I’m simply not noticing them). I like it. Because of the dried fruits and chocolate flecks, it’s a little sweet all on its own, and it has a very pleasant nose to it. I may or may not have pulled out a few of the larger hunks of coconut to eat as a snack while it brewed like it was granola. Put about a teaspoon in to 8 ounces of hot water for about 3 minutes and you’ll be in good shape.
This doesn’t hold up particularly well to being steeped multiple times. If I were a betting woman, and I am, I would guess that the coconut, chocolate, and apples release the bulk of their flavors soon after the hot water hits them. Since there are a lot of the tissane elements added to this blend, there’s not enough tea-tea to make a good, less complicated cup the second time. That is the way of these teas with lots of things in them, and that is fine with me. All teas cannot be all things to all people and occasions.
Below you will see what it looks like once brewed. Please note the friendly octopus who appears in the bottom of my cup.
I picked this tea this week not because it’s something truly noteworthy if you’re a collector or anything, but because it felt good to remember some nice people I don’t see very often and to feel warm and cozy and to watch the little octopus surface while I drink my tea. And that’s okay for today.
Unfortunately, Please and Thank You doesn’t sell this tea on their site, but the small 50g tin I bought was around $5, if I recall correctly. You can pick it up at either of their locations in Louisville.
Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy your day. If you’ve had any interesting tea lately, tell me about it in the comments.
