Cocoa Amore

If you had asked me about sweetener in tea three years ago I would have adamantly held the position that a tea “simply isn’t a good quality tea if it requires additions to taste enjoyable” – but I’ve since realized that ideology is something I picked up from a crowd of tea drinkers who were somewhat more snobbish than I would like to be personally and would like the community to be as a whole. Sometimes I still have to combat that mindset; it’s like unlearning a negative behaviour…

Sweetener definitely does make your tea different and I do believe that can be both a positive OR a negative. It really, truly does depend on both your own individual taste preferences (and I don’t believe anyone has “superior” preferences; taste is qualitative) as well as an understanding of how different additives (sugar, milk, lemonade, etc.) both pair with and affect flavour. No wrong choices; just different ones. I definitely have my own arsenal of things I add to my tea when the mood strikes.

Don’t let anyone shame you for enjoying the added sweetness!

Piggybacking off of what Roswell posted, but yeah, there is really nothing wrong with adding sweeteners to tea. I don’t have a problem with it. For some time there, my beverage of choice before work was either CTC Assam or Ceylon OP with additions of 2% milk and honey. I’ll even take the blasphemy one step further: I enjoy Southern sweet tea. I can’t have it very often, but it was a huge part of my upbringing and I lived off of it in college when I couldn’t afford better quality tea. I also sometimes like to add mango and apricot nectar to unsweetened iced tea on hot days.

Also, for a long time, I had trouble appreciating pu’erh and any sort of aged tea. When I tried to get into them and learn more about them, I ran into a lot of very snooty, rigidly dogmatic people who put me off of them in a big way. There are some fantastic, knowledgeable, and kind pu’erh fanatics out there (mrmopar and Liquid Proust chief among them), but there is also a number of very vocal people in that segment of the tea community who look down on anyone who gravitates to other types of tea and consider themselves the gatekeepers of the true tea community. I eventually just decided to ignore them. Pu’erh and aged teas really aren’t my things. I can appreciate them in small doses, but honestly, I would rather have anything else most of the time, and there is nothing wrong with that. Don’t ever let anyone make you think their personal preferences and experiences are superior to yours. Do your own thing and enjoy it. You’re in it for your own enjoyment, enlightenment, and/or whatever else.

I added sweetener to my tea for quite some time when I first started drinking tea… and suddenly one day I just… didn’t. I don’t even know what changed! I didn’t even “wean” myself from it by progressively adding less, or make a conscious decision that I wanted to drink less sweetener… my palate just changed suddenly. I was used to always needing a little extra sweetness in my tea, and then… just… didn’t. It was odd! But then I’ve heard that our tastebuds and palates can naturally change over time.

When I make tea lattes, though, I still prefer “pre-sweetened” milk in the form of vanilla almond milk… yum!

One thing that weighs on me heavily is my IRL BFF who claims to be a tea snob because she refuses to drink any tea that isn’t palatable without sweetener. She keeps ragging on me for adding sweetener, and keeps telling me “If it was good tea, you wouldn’t need sweetener”. However, HER idea of “Good Tea” is hyper-tart grocery store hibi and the occasional raspberry royal from Bigalow. I actually once offered to buy her some loose leaf for Christmas and, long story short, after two months worth of arguments, we didn’t exchange presents this past Christmas. sigh I really need better IRL Friends.

And if it sounds like I’m shaming her for liking grocery store tea, it’s not because she LIKES it, it’s because she isn’t willing to accept or try anything else. In her mind, tea ENDS with Bigelow and Stash.

Shanie, it’s no joke, but I recently made the statement, “I really need better IRL friends” in conversation. I had the same issue you did. A lot of my IRL friends just got to this weird point where we couldn’t interact without a disagreement or an argument. I’m a pretty liberal, easygoing, live-and-let live kind of guy, but a bunch of my friends and colleagues got way into radical activist culture, and suddenly, every interaction was problematic. Everything turned into a political discussion and then an argument. They also seemed to stop having interests or lives outside of their individual causes of the day. I couldn’t talk to them about anything going on in my life and couldn’t expect any form of understanding or support from them. I also got annoyed with the constant condescension. These people would try to explain the concepts behind sociopolitical movements and trends to me, and I’m a former integrated social studies teacher who taught government, economics, US history, sociology, and psychology who made the jump into the community health field! I was pretty positive I knew more about that stuff than they did. Eventually, I just got sick of their hysterics and constantly being disrespected, realized that I had outgrown these relationships, and moved on with my life. Making real life friends is harder as you get older, but it’s far from impossible. Moving on from those people allowed me to reconnect with some older friends and acquaintances with similar interests and gave me tons of time to work on myself. If I were you, I would take a step back from this relationship to carefully evaluate its course, and if you feel that it’s worth saving and should be saved, great. Go for it. If there just isn’t some level of mutual respect, tolerance, and acceptance there, it’s okay to move on from it. Sometimes people change and have to go a different way. Don’t feel bad about it if that ends up being the case.

I’d get lots of healthy trail mixes. I love trail mixes. :D

May tea be the salvation!

Trail mixes have tons of calories, unfortunately and I’m currently on a 1200 calorie diet to lose weight from years of being on OTHER medications that caused massive weight gain. I’m finally of “normal” weight although not at goal yet and I’d really not like to go backwards.

Oh sorry. :( I just figured trail mixes were a much healthier option than all the other crap I eat. haha. I guess I didn’t know they had more calories. If they are nuts without sugar then it should be healthy calories? By the way, I’m drinking one of the teas you sent me a while ago today (Bluebird’s Terry’s). So thanks for those again.

While nuts are healthy calories, they are also LOTS of calories for very small serving sizes. Mostly I’m drinking my calories in smoothies.

I just figured nuts would be FILLING though, like protein. Oh well, smoothies are delicious too. :D

Yeah, it’s great how doctors don’t seem to mention these potential side effects and often leave it up to the patient to connect the dots. After years of various drug experiments brought on by doctors’ prescription pads and overall appalling side effects during and after, I do intensive research through patient review sites to see how others have fared.

Break a leg! Hope it’s all a good fit for you.

My doctor and I made a decision to take me off of it (Seroquel, if anyone cares) so I’m back to my regular meds, which I have adapted to already.

Another one of my doctors suggested that that would be worth a try, in the exact therapeutic dosage i.e. under the usual, for sleep issues. I haven’t tried it tough and likely will not.

Good to hear that your choice is working for you. YAY!

It’s a tricky thing commenting on such things. I was going to delete my earlier comment, but ultimately thought my experience might be useful. Thank you for understanding my intended meaning.

Will you be my valentine?

<-U HAVE GOOD TASTE-3

That’s a conversation heart if you can’t tell.

I, too, hope Rivendell comes back. I passed it by because at the time because it was out of my league.

I think Tahitian vanilla in particular has notes of cherry?

oh wow, i had no idea.. thanks for mentioning it.

Happy New Year, tea-sipper :)

Happy New Year! Congrats on the impressive sipdowns!

Congrats! Happy New Year!

Thanks very much derk, ashmanra & Kaylee!

Happy new year!

Thanks, Michelle!

Happy new year, even it’s a little late.

Happy Late Birthday! __

Happy birthday!

Happy belated birthday! Yay for celebratory teas!

Happy birthday!!!

Thank you!

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday!

Thank you!

happy birthday lady! sorry i missed it….apparently steepster unfollowed you? :(

Thank you, Sil. No, I wasn’t in followed but rather my original acct is on my laptop, as is FB, and I still am without WiFi at home. This acct is what I can access on my mini tablet out in the world. Hence, my very short posts and being mostly incommunicado. Typing with this stick sucks. (I need to get your little pouch of tea to you. I’ll send a couple of dates/times soon. Are you away or at work the next couple of weeks?)