Tag Archives: food

Warm, Comforting Ritual

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Recently I shifted from coffee to tea. It’s part of a health issue but also, you know, I like tea. Jack and I have shifted three or four times between these two life-giving morning drinks over the course of our marriage.

Part of the health shift includes being a little more deliberate, a little more gentle, with food and time and intentions to adhere to schedules in the first place. Life in the slow lane is a good place to be, and tea is a way of being there in some surprising ways.

When you make coffee, it stays hot awhile and fresh awhile. Now some foodies will tell you that after about 45 minutes it’s not worth drinking, but most of us don’t mind, so long as it’s not scorched. Like gas station coffee that’s sat around all day. Coffee is largely forgiving. Heck, you can even throw in some ice cubes and drink it cold and be a hipster. It’s all good.

But tea, well, there is a ritual aspect to its preparation and a window to its taste. Jack sets up coffee the night before; flick the switch in the morning and it’s ready to roll.

Tea water has to be made in the kettle that morning. As it reaches boil, you pour a little into two vessels: the pot warmed and cleansed, the mug heated. Then you put the bags into the pot: one for each drinker, and one for the pot. Only then can you pour the rest of the hot water in. Put your cozy over the pot. Give it a few minutes. Too soon and you are drinking what my English friend calls pealy-wally rabbit piss tea. Wrong color, not near strong enough.

But if you forget and come back in twenty minutes or so, your tea is bitter, overbrewed, and worse, starting to cool.

I used to count stress days by how many reheating revolutions my coffee took in the microwave. A bad day was 5. Tea doesn’t play this kind of game. Drink it warm, or make it into iced tea, or waste it. Tea does not accept excuses. Once it’s in the pot, the clock starts.

Which is bemusing, because tea demanding this time makes the time protected, precious. This is when you have your devotions, play the morning word games online. Check your overnight phone messages, but don’t ANSWER them. Set up your strategy for the day. Sipping each cup, a little ritual inside a larger one.

Tea makes time by demanding it. Coffee will follow you anywhere, anytime. Tea demands loyalty and mindfulness.

I’m enjoying my morning tea rituals, and I’m learning to pay attention to the window of warm comfort opportunity in the pot. It’s all part of life in the slow-down lane.

That Margarita, Though

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Bad days that follow good times feel somehow worse, as though reality wishes to remind you that you’re not on holiday anymore, you have responsibilities and the occasional wild card, so here’s one to remember that with.

I left my last aunt’s house at 6:30 am on Sunday. Four days of visiting relatives, attending conferences, making strategy, and running around with childhood friends from my old neighborhood would culminate in getting to my parents’ house in time to see my sister, who was there helping them get their wills finalized.

This was a big deal, the moment when “what happens if” became a certain plan involving who had what decisions to make and who would come live with them and inherit the house, all the things. My sister and I had agreed an amiable plan, and we really wanted to celebrate it with Sunday fun before they went to the lawyer’s office Monday.

My tire blew at 9:30. There was a rest area right there and off I wobbled–knowing what that smell, that sound, and that pull to the right meant. But hey, I had Triple A, hurray hurray!

Yeah, right.

Four hours later the tow truck took me five miles on their dime and another three on mine. Every time I called to check progress, they told me the tow truck would be there within 45 minutes. A nice truck driver offered to help me, but the Prius had no spare. A couple of people asked if they could do anything, but the tire store open on Sunday was behind us, northbound, and everyone at the rest area was going south. So Triple A got a scathing review, and I got a new tire at 3:30 pm.

Which meant the day with my sister was lost. I should have been there at 1, but still had three hours of driving. After a few phone calls (hands-free, of course) we agreed I would shop up Monday after the wills and we’d all grab lunch before I had to conduct business in Knoxville for my day job.

So I drove another couple of hours until the emotional and physical exhaustion of a packed week of extroverting coupled with the anger of realizing Triple A was a scam and I’d been took suggested now would be a good time to pull over.

I pulled off in some little town called London, Kentucky, and found a hotel with a pool. By then I was starving, and 600 feet straight down the road was this little shack of a restaurant labeled “Mexican Grille”

Whatever. I stashed my stuff in the room and walked to the place, decorated like every other Mexican foodery in America. I ordered a veggie quesadilla and the house margarita.

A minute later the waitress brought me a party in a swimming pool. I’ve seen hotel bathtubs smaller than that thing. I stared at the sparkler, which seemed to be singing something to the effect of “THE SUN’LL COME OUUUUUUT TOMORRRRROWWWW” while simultaneously promising immediate delights.

It had five pieces of fruit, three pieces of candy, and a rubber duck hanging off its rim in addition to the sparkler. Forget salted rim; there was no rim showing beneath that stuff.

The waitress openly laughed at my face, and then she patted me on the shoulder and left.

I don’t think I’ll ever know if she read my face and added a few things, or if that’s the way the margarita sparkles in London, Kentucky, in this tiny little shack of a restaurant by the side of the road in this deserted small Appalachian town.

It was the next day, talking to Jack (hands-free!) as I drove down to Knoxville that he pointed out where I had been: THAT London, where the guy had shot up the highway before disappearing. Well, maybe that explained why the place was so empty and the hotel and the restaurant were so friendly and kind. They were recovering from a very bad week as well.

The sparkler told the truth: in all the hard times and strange circumstances, we still have Light to guide us, some fun to have, a few delightful surprises to lift our spirits in bad times, and always, the friends and family who undergird our lives. Thank God for London, for sweet waitresses who makes amazing margaritas, and for sparklers.