Astranoir

For the most part, I prefer to drink water (though I do drink juice and sodas on occasion).  Unfortunately, sometimes it gets chilly, and I’ve been considering various hot beverages.

While my go-to hot beverage is usually hot cocoa, I am hoping to find something healthier to drink instead.  I’ve never acquired a taste for either coffee or tea.  I tried some coffee at my dad’s award luncheon awhile back, but I’m resistant to acquiring a taste to coffee because (a) I don’t want to get addicted to caffeine (though I could get decaffeinated), and (b) it kind of hurts my stomach.  As a result, I’m trying tea.  With my breakfast this morning, I had decaffeinated chai tea from Stash, which I picked up from Harps.

The verdict:  For some reason, I always expect tea to be stronger/heartier.  So far, I’m still not enjoying drinking it.  It smells heavenly (ingredients include cinnamon, ginger, clove, nutmeg and cardamom), but wasn’t strongly flavorful.

I “brewed” the tea in my mug for 8 minutes (over twice the recommended length), and it still tasted watery to me.  This is not a slight against this type or brand of tea, it’s my impression of tea in general, unless it has large amounts of something unhealthy like milk in it (like a chai tea latte).  I liked the spices I could taste, and I enjoyed the flavor of dipping oatmeal chocolate chip cookies in my tea.  I think I’m going to keep making myself tea on these chilly spring mornings (it was about 39F this morning).  We’ll see if I start to like it.