Milk tea is best
I like tea with milk very much, both hot and iced. I have it for lunch almost every day. Some of my friends say having lunch with such a drink is strange, which may be true, but for me, it’s the best policy. Of course a lunch with green tea will do, though.
Not only with lunch but with any sweets or snacks, tea with milk agrees very well with me. In a beverage corner in a store, I choose a bottle or can of tea with milk almost every time. Once in a while, I choose black tea or tea with lemon for a change, but much less frequently than tea with milk.
The reason why I like tea with milk so much may be that I like milk. Since the age of fourteen, I’ve been drinking half liter of milk every day because it would make me taller due to its calcium and its vitamin D that helps the body to absorb calcium. Drinking milk, I have come to like its taste. Increasingly, my purpose for drinking so much milk a day is enjoying the taste, not the calcium.
Some of you might say that canned or bottled Japanese tea with milk such as Gogono Koucha (Japanese web page only, sorry) contains so much sugar and calories. I think it’s true and I think so, too. But to me, it doesn’t matter. One thing I should say is that I like milk tea with less sugar and fewer calories as well, but how much sugar the milk tea contains is not a big deal to me at all.
Honesty is the best policy. In addition to that, milk tea is the best policy for me. What is your best policy? Or dou you have any policies for yourself?
Comments
I don’t hate tea with milk but I don’t really like it. The idea of mixing tea with milk is strange to me because we Japanese don’t do so with Japanese tea. I know red tea is different from green tea, but…mmm still it’s strange.
Maurice :: February 1, 2004
Admit it daijirou, you are only drinking Gogo no Koucha because Ayaya drinks it. ;)
Here in Germany most people drink coffee instead of tea. I don’t really like coffee. Tea with milk and sugar is much better in my opinion. Ah, and I think in europe tea almost always means black tea ie. koucha. Green Tea isn’t that popular here, but you can buy bottled green tea with lots of sugar.
Years ago, I used to be a tea enthusiast. There was a tea shop right next to the university and they had the most spectacular loose-leaf teas.
The shop was very small: you walked in and two or three steps took you right up to the counter. There were scales on that counter and a huge old-time mechanical cash register that was probably a hundred years old. Behind the counter, on a shelf that reached up to the ceiling, there were rows of big massive tea jars with heavy lids. The staff would take them down, open them and let you sniff. Then they’d mete out the tea you chose, weigh it, and fill it into 100 g sachets. If you asked, you could also get small free samples. The staff really knew their stuff and made recommendations: Lapsang Souchong? Yes, they just had a new delivery last week that’s very mild.
Unless it was a heavy Assam, you drank those teas without milk, which in most cases only ruined their flavour.
Nowadays I just drink too much coffee.
Also, probably more popular in continental Europe than anywhere else in the world, I really like verbena. It usually comes as dried, whole lose leaves, and you seep them in boiling water for three to four minutes and drink the infusion without milk or sugar. It has a clean, fresh taste that is very pleasing.
And Yukiko-san — what you call “red tea” in Japanese is called “black tea” in English. Or simply “tea” because the big-nose people don’t know anything else. Except — wait, that isn’t true anymore either. A couple of years ago all the magazines were awash in articles praising the health benefits of green tea. That’s when my mum started drinking it. I bought her some for Christmas.
toshi :: February 2, 2004
I mostly drink coffee, but go thru phases where I drink a lot of green tea w/ toasted rice (genmai). I used to drink quite a lot of milk (so much that when I was little, Mom would scold me because she said it would ruin my appetite for dinner) but then went thru a period in my teens when I drank very little or none at all. I noticed that when I tried to have it again, I was quite lactose intolerant.
But the last several months I’ve been drinking much more milk. My body is much more accepting of it and I enjoy the taste quite a lot. I often have a cup just before bedtime - I heat up a mug in the microwave (nonfat) and add a teaspoon of sugar. It’s smooth and sweet.
Have you ever try the Yerba Mate Tea? Mate is a Tea-like beverage consumed in Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Yerba Mate was introduced by the primitive Guarani Indians of Paraguay. It is brewed from the dried leaves and stemlets of the perennial tree “Ilex paraguarensis” (Yerba Mate). How to prepare the mate? To drink the infusion , the dried leaves of the yerba mate are placed inside the mate cup. The mate cup is ussually made of the horn of the cows. Nowadays you can also find mate cups made of the very good smell of “Palo Santo wood”. Fill the mate cup up to 3/4 of it capacity. Pour some hot water (aproxim. 70C), which is called “cebar el mate”, until it nearly fills the cup. Dont worry if some of the leaves remaind dry. They will eventually absorb water in the subsequent infusions. The infusion is sucked throught a metal pipe called “bombilla” wich has a strainer at its lower end to prevent the minced leaves to reache the mouth. As you can see the bombilla is made of metal and you drink the mate with very hot water, that is way sometime it is said you have to be a “macho” to be able to drink a really good hot mate. When pouring cold water instead of the hot water in Paraguay the name of the tea changes to “Terere”, great for summer though. Some people add sugar or other herbs like mint for example or petals of flowers like jazmin to change the flavour and smell of the tea. Some replace the water with milk for the children. It is traditional to drink the mate, or terere, among friends, but the unique thing is that in the group of fellows sharing either teas, mate or terere, is that there will be only one cup and one bombilla going around in circle, drinking by turns, like the peace-pipe. An invigorator of the mind and body, a natural source of nutrition, and a health promoter par excellence, Mate deserves the attention of every person interested in optimum health. Please try and enjoy! I strongly recommend you ;) (… Can you guess where am I from?)
Gav :: February 5, 2004
All kinds of tea are popular in England. Almost every fruit (and vegetable, i think) has been made into a tea plus green tea is also popular. It’s very similar to camomile (sp) tea which is probably why.
Me, I prefer coffee. :D
Yesterday, I was given the chance to try some cups of lemon verbena tea, which Ruedi introduced us to in a previous comment. Ruedi brought a pack of tea leaves to the oikon, a farewell party for the graduates of the English Department. He used a Japanese teapot and a sieve made from a paper cup. He had not brought a proper sieve and improvized a replacement =)
Its taste is very good, though I cannot describe it in my poor English. ;-) It was the first time for me to have this kind of herb tea. The aroma of verbena tea is as good as its taste. I did not add any flavor enhancer in order to have as original taste as possible.
Sugary tea is somtimes too strong for my taste. When I get bored of it, I would like to have some herb tea. I will look for other kinds of it.
In passing, here is a snapshot of Ruedi preparing tea.
Glad you liked the tea.
And … yikes! Since I’ve uploaded so many student photos to this site I should have known that somebody was going to take revenge and post a picture of me.
t-shirt-man :: April 6, 2004
Hmm…. I found other article about this theme… But I did’n remember URL, sorry… Try to search google….
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My policy? It’s eating :)
As for the tea with milk. I hated it until last year. Well, to tell the truth, I didn’t like milk itself. When I was small, I had to drink it at school, though.
Last year, when I was recommended to have some tea with milk, I tried. Unexpectedly, it was not so bad. When you get older, your taste may change.