We finished this one today!
My husband had to go in to work for a little while this morning and then drop off papers at a coworkers house. I had told him about the article that said elements of black and puerh tea had been shown effective against SARS, and he texted me, “On the way back with bagels. Have some of that corona fighting tea available, please!” Ha ha!
He is being super careful, as he should be, and wants to fight this virus with everything we have at our disposal. He had a too-close-to-fatal brush with pneumonia years ago that left him hospitalized for nine days.
I made some honey walnut cream cheese and this tea. It is a really tiny tuo, but it does make a lot of tea. The recipe for the cream cheese is a copycat online for the one they sell at Panera.
I poured boiling water on it for about ten seconds and poured it off. I replaced the lid on the teapot and let it steam and open up for about five or ten minutes. Then I made two consecutive steeps of about four minutes each and combined them. The pot holds about 26 ounces.
The first steep was inky dark, and the second was still richly colored. Combined, they were a happy medium. It tasted great. I made a third steep and didn’t even time it because I thought it would need lots of time to extract whatever flavor is left, and we are drinking it. It is good, but it is a little lighter than I prefer. I should have used less water.
I am counting on the heat of the tea to make my throat a less hospitable place for viruses to thrive.
