Small Town Life – Ice cream for breakfast?

I have started making smoothies for breakfast. I love it. One banana, milk and a smattering of frozen fruit. The other day, I saw that my bananas weren’t going to make it through to the next smoothy so I froze several just to not be wasteful. This morning, I used the frozen banana and WHAT? It makes the smoothy way smoother. It’s like having ice cream for breakfast. Try it. I’m telling you! It’s AWESOME!!!

A Good Cuppa Tea

I was never much of a tea drinker as a young person which is surprising considering my love for all things English. (I’ve never been to England. But I love the BBC, English Lit, and I do a pretty good accent.)

When in Costa Rica (coincidentally known for coffee and not much for tea of any type) I met a lovely English woman who introduced me to tea with milk, or lemon, or sugar or whatever. It was an instant addiction! I started drinking tea like crazy and I’ve loved it ever since although my craving for coffee still rules me in the morning.

I’m way into the herbal teas at night like camomile and all that. It’s amazing.

I have a love hate relationship with the tea bag. It’s convenient. However, it bubbles and floats and you have to get the spoon to sit on it just right to get your tea to steep strong enough to be worth drinking. Then once the tea steeps, you are stuck with that awful bag to dispose of and it usually gets left on the spoon on a table and leaves a mark or a mess or whatever. I hate leaving it in the cup while I drink because it always floats near my face and the spoon handle swings around and slaps me.

So there’s loose leaf tea that you can get and put in one of those lovely little tea steeper things to keep the leaves from floating all around thus avoiding the spoon altogether. But they still have to be cleaned up and if you don’t want over-steeped tea so you have to take it out before you drink the tea and then what do you do with it? It ends up on the table next to the bag.

My best option so far has been the loose leaf tea pot. It has a little strainer inside that fits so nicely and the tea stays down in the water where it belongs and there is no clean up right away to keep stains from forming on the furniture. It also keeps more tea warm longer.

Sadly, I had one of these pots. HAD being the operative word in the previous sentence. My kids used it as a play thing and broke it so now I’m back to the bags.

Growl.

What’s your vice?

– the wifey

Pine Cone & Frost

Purple Aster