Tonight we’ve established we don’t take coffee with sugar.
Those of you thinking you wandered into the wrong Advent blog, this is your reassurance you landed on Chorister at Home, thoughts on tea, good books and music. It happens, however, that the Advent Tea for December 10 is Fireside Mocha.
Fireside Mocha contains, these in no particular order, coffee, chocolate, apple (artificial? Real? Who knows!), and – no word of a lie – green tea sprinkles.
Not to sing an old tune here, but if we liked coffee, we’d drink coffee.
We hate coffee. Vehemently.
Fireside Mocha has the bizarre distinction of featuring coffee but being billed as a herbal tea. Question to the discerning masses; is it tea? Do green tea sprinkles justify it’s inclusion in this calendar?
Further question; What the – forgive the language – bloody hell are green tea sprinkles when they’re at home?
Anyway, the maybe-tea-possibly-coffee that is Fireside Mocha combines all our least favourite things in a Davids Tea selection. There’s the coffee, which we’ve discussed. Over the course of several years, no less. Then there’s a ridiculous amount of sweetener. The apple (artificial? Real? Jury’s out) exacerbates this.
So, what you get is a cup of overly sweet herbal tea with undertones of bitter coffee. Somewhere in this thing, supposedly, is chocolate and we can’t taste that, but frankly, at this juncture, we can’t decide if that helps or hinders it.
As for the green tea sprinkles, we’re pretty sure they’re decoration only. There isn’t even a hint of green tea in this cup. Ration-era teabags on their third steeping come closer to tea, and we’d like it on record that we don’t say that lightly. We had a grandmother whose family sent tea to a British family back when tea was rationed, and we heard all about the steeping and re-steeping process.
Sounding the funeral knell of this sample is Miss Marscahllin. She came, she sniffed, she walked indignantly away to wash her paws. We’re going to do the same.
But first, have a poem. Not about tea, or coffee or how you’re supposed to make it because we’ve given up on David ever having the epiphany we want him to have about how coffee has no business in tea.
No, this is nice, and inoffensive. Enjoy.
Two Sewing
Hazel Hall
The Wind is sewing with needles of rain.
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth. In,
In, in, in.
Oh, the wind has often sewed with me.
One, two, three.
Spring must have fine things
To wear like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. One and two and three.
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting colour from the ground;
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear.
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain,
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth, in,
In, in, in,
For all the springs of futurity.
One, two, three.
You’d better like this one better than we liked the tea. Because it didn’t half fight us over the formatting.
Chorister at Home 