Tea Time
My friend Marcella Lively recommended I take a specific sort of tea to help me with a peculiar digestive problem I have. Think of it in the "not a cure but it can't hurt" category of recommendations. In her infinite sweetness she sent me a bag of it, as it is a Chinese tea not likely to be found here in the States. Well, not without it being dicked up with all sorts of "New and Improved!" stickers all over the slickly wrapped, geared for conspicuous consumption crowd that dots the American landscape like so much kudzu. No, I got the Real Thing straight from the Mysterious East.
Now Marcella has recommended things and given me advice before and I must say, she is a remarkably astute individual. Black olives, for instance, are high on her Good Recommendations list for helping with aches and pains from RA, and it works I tells ya. The trouble is, black olives taste grim but that's not their fault. Everything she suggests is natural, and there are some things she recommends against (vitamin pills do not earn her favor as a general rule.)
So here comes this package of tea from the Mysterious East, including a note that said the taste is very strong and I might not like it. I might want to add something to improve the flavor. I ran some water through the drip coffee maker in the office and heated it further in the microwave. I put the correct amount of loose leaves in a tea ball and steeped it in the hot water for the prescribed two to three minutes. Let me inject this before I move on: when I say "loose leaves" I don't really mean "leaves" in this case. It's more like wizened little sticks all shrunk up and crumbled and put in a bag with Chinese characters from the Mysterious East on it. See, that's what you get when you deal with natural ingredients from the Mysterious East. You get desiccated bits of brittle twigs that practically scream "This is the real deal!" That's why the Mysterious East is so, you know, mysterious.
After the prescribed two to three minutes, I took a tentative sniff of the tea. Oh. My. Ever. Loving. GOD, it smelled NASTY. I don't just mean like Green Tea Bitter, I mean this stuff smelled like GOAT POO. GOAT POO TEA. My friend warned me it was strong but YIKES, it was just like in The Bucket List when Morgan Freeman described how that fancy coffee Jack Nicholson's character liked that was made with the help of civit cats, and when Nicholson said "you're shittin' me" Freeman replied "The cats beat me to it!"
Of course the tea was not processed through the intestinal tract of goats (hey, I love goats but I won't go that far) but the aroma is so reminiscent of my favorite Goat Farm, I was homesick for my caprine friends for a few minutes there. Fortunately I had the foresight or let's be honest, the dumb blind luck to bring along some honey. I added a couple of teaspoons to the Goat Poo Tea and after a while I was able to choke it down. In fact, the longer the honey mixed with the tea, the more the flavor mellowed until by the last few swallows it was rather pleasant. That or my taste buds surrendered, packed up and went home.
Now if this stuff does what it's supposed to do, I shall be healthier and happier. That's good! That's real good! Like any good old fashioned medicine, Goat Poo Tea sort of HAS to taste bad, right? All that stuff we took as kids tasted awful but it did the trick, didn't it, and we all survived our childhoods.
All I know for sure is, if you measure an ingredient's medicinal values by the taste, then Goat Poo Tea is a cure for any damn thing that ails you.
Now Marcella has recommended things and given me advice before and I must say, she is a remarkably astute individual. Black olives, for instance, are high on her Good Recommendations list for helping with aches and pains from RA, and it works I tells ya. The trouble is, black olives taste grim but that's not their fault. Everything she suggests is natural, and there are some things she recommends against (vitamin pills do not earn her favor as a general rule.)
So here comes this package of tea from the Mysterious East, including a note that said the taste is very strong and I might not like it. I might want to add something to improve the flavor. I ran some water through the drip coffee maker in the office and heated it further in the microwave. I put the correct amount of loose leaves in a tea ball and steeped it in the hot water for the prescribed two to three minutes. Let me inject this before I move on: when I say "loose leaves" I don't really mean "leaves" in this case. It's more like wizened little sticks all shrunk up and crumbled and put in a bag with Chinese characters from the Mysterious East on it. See, that's what you get when you deal with natural ingredients from the Mysterious East. You get desiccated bits of brittle twigs that practically scream "This is the real deal!" That's why the Mysterious East is so, you know, mysterious.
After the prescribed two to three minutes, I took a tentative sniff of the tea. Oh. My. Ever. Loving. GOD, it smelled NASTY. I don't just mean like Green Tea Bitter, I mean this stuff smelled like GOAT POO. GOAT POO TEA. My friend warned me it was strong but YIKES, it was just like in The Bucket List when Morgan Freeman described how that fancy coffee Jack Nicholson's character liked that was made with the help of civit cats, and when Nicholson said "you're shittin' me" Freeman replied "The cats beat me to it!"
Of course the tea was not processed through the intestinal tract of goats (hey, I love goats but I won't go that far) but the aroma is so reminiscent of my favorite Goat Farm, I was homesick for my caprine friends for a few minutes there. Fortunately I had the foresight or let's be honest, the dumb blind luck to bring along some honey. I added a couple of teaspoons to the Goat Poo Tea and after a while I was able to choke it down. In fact, the longer the honey mixed with the tea, the more the flavor mellowed until by the last few swallows it was rather pleasant. That or my taste buds surrendered, packed up and went home.
Now if this stuff does what it's supposed to do, I shall be healthier and happier. That's good! That's real good! Like any good old fashioned medicine, Goat Poo Tea sort of HAS to taste bad, right? All that stuff we took as kids tasted awful but it did the trick, didn't it, and we all survived our childhoods.
All I know for sure is, if you measure an ingredient's medicinal values by the taste, then Goat Poo Tea is a cure for any damn thing that ails you.