Tea and Me

So, tea that smells like weeds – I honestly can’t stand the stuff. When I was a teenager and still living at home my mum used to ‘enjoy’ and I use the word loosely drinking things like chamomile tea, a beverage which made me feel ill. It was the smell, mainly. I couldn’t even get as far as tasting it because the horrible smell was so off-putting. Fortunately, years have passed and chamomile is no longer quite as popular as it once was and so I’ve managed to keep away from its terrible ditch water smell, until today.  Today, I decided to try the Bluebird Tea Company’s Honey Bee Beautiful as I was having quite a stressful day at work (and that was before I found out about the General Election) and wanted something soothing. Ingredients: Rooibos, honeybush, chamomile, nettle leaves, cornflowers, calendula petals, flavour They describe it thus: ‘Have you ever considered the work it must take to make a queen bee? Their beauty regime is extensive and their mu...

Let me talk for a minute about rooibos tea. These days, it seems to have always been around and is everyone’s favourite hydrating, non-caffeinated beverage, but I remember when it was first introduced. Eager to find a tea I could drink without milk because of the diet I was on at the time, I latched onto it and forced myself to drink it, even though I honestly couldn’t stand the taste of it. Shortly afterwards a vanilla flavoured version came out, which was marginally better but still only drinkable when I was really desperate. I did find some caramel flavour and some orange flavour tea bags in one of the cheap supermarkets but they weren’t a regular visitor, and while the caramel one was just about bearable, the orange was as bad as all the others. Once I finally decided to own up to the fact that I didn’t like Rooibos my life was much improved and I never once felt the urge to go back to trying it. Until now. The Bluebird Tea Company use a lot of rooibos in their te...