#70 - The Story of Tea

Hello Readers,

I am back! And I wanted to do a review here of a book that I recently read, or should I say, drank through? What I mean is that I was given a gift from a friend of mine during the holiday season and this book was called, The Story of Tea. They found this book at a local Barnes and Noble. It looks like a book from the outside, except, it is actually a tin canister full of different flavored natural tea bags! There were a wide variety of different herbal tea flavors and It was a blast drinking through and discovering my taste in green tea. 

So why is covering tea important? Well it’s a big part of studying and people who are academic love to drink morning beverages whether it is coffee, tea, or what have you. Tea is also a big part of cultures around the world. I feel like it is almost a food staple kind of like how rice, hummus, and some form of bread is eaten all around the world. Tea is also one of these food staples that I think all people or most people consume. 

Okay so what did I get in the Story of Tea? Well the book looked like this:

At the time of the writing though, I am unable to find any web links on this product. It basically just had 60 tea bags and there were the following flavors:

-Ginger Peach

-Lemon Ginger

-Mango

-Pomegranate

-Orange Spice

-Green Tea

The back cover also looked liked this though If you are able to find it at a local book store or Barnes and Noble. 

Drinking through this entire book over the last couple of weeks was really eye opening. It was eye opening, because I started FEELING better with each sip. Usually, my drink of choice is an Iced Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks and I usually get it Venti. This is because, I think for the price that I pay, I should be getting a lot of liquid. If I get a grande sized drink I feel kind of disappointed that this size of drink is $6! Anyways, Chais while tasting great have a lot of milk and I think too much milk over time leads to weight gain and other ill effects. Not only that, but one starts feeling sick or lactose Intolerance after a while. 

On the other hand, there’s something magical about green tea. Green tea has been drunk or consumed for centuries by many, many cultures. What has been eye opening has been the Japanese. Japanese culture exclusively drinks green tea for a very long time and it’s part of their everyday routine. They drink it morning, noon, and night. They even drink it during meals! At last, I feel like I found a good drink that I can consume all day and not have any bad side effects. Since, usually whatever drink that I settle on it’s one that I want to consume in an all day period. Green Tea is interesting too because of the health benefits. It has a low amount of caffeine (which increases focus) and has another chemical called L-Theanine which helps with insomnia and helps to decrease anxiety (which increases one’s calmness). So throughout the day one has a really great middle ground of calm alertness. This is in contrast to just drinking caffeine all day. Which leads to jitteriness, anxiety, and an increase in high blood pressure. It’s very difficult to sustain or even qualify drinking coffee all day. Can this also be one of the secret as to why the Japanese culture live longer? We are what we eat to say the least. Although I do also think we are what we drink! 

Anyways, I wanted to review this book. Even though It’s not a traditional book: I will give it a 7.0. Why a 7? I honestly don’t know. But I can’t start grading too high. That way, I have some wiggle room for myself. I think the selection was delightful, the experience was a nice change from the extreme of drinking black tea in Chai, and all the caffeine in coffee. Not only that, but I felt better which led to me being more productive. Another point is that, I went to the restroom a lot less as well. Since it kind of suppressed my appetite, I am able to eat less during the day as well and just have a nice lunch in the middle of my day. It’s a really great compromise and I have been drinking a lot of green tea. Usually, this is in a big jumbo Contigo Stainless Steel Mug. 

Tea in my mind also has a big cultural impact and/or influence from the British Empire. Most, if not all, the people in Great Britain drink a cup of tea daily. This is usually in the Earl Grey variety and they have it with some small cookies of some kind. The Queen of England and all of the Monarchies drank tea during their reign. And tea and the trade of tea has been happening through and from England all over the world. It’s a big, big part of their culture. The tea market that is. This is kind of in contrast with the west in which people drink mostly coffee, or at least, coffee is seen as the standard beverage for most people in the morning. 

Well those are all my thoughts about tea, the tea book, and beverage drinking in general. Will I continue to drink green tea? Sure absolutely! Sometimes though I do still crave something sweeter and creamier, since green tea tastes very herb-like. So I will usually have green tea at work in the morning and before lunch. Have a great lunch. And then in the evenings I will have a Chai or something with cream and sugar. I’ve sort of liked this routine, but If I have to drink a beverage all day, then I would definitely go for Green Tea. Green Tea with honey is also another choice and I’ve been sort of considering this as well. 

So there’s are my thoughts on tea. Here are some updates on my website:

I’ve decided to keep the navigation title “blog” on my website. I like how blogging has a little bit of wiggle room or creativity to talk about whatever I want. Plus, it might drive some traffic to my website in the future. You never know! I know that AI and the way that Google Search is going against bloggers now, but that doesn’t change the fact that blogging and people still need a website or portal to put their ideas and products. So that’s definitely going to be this website. I also am still working on my next big course which is on Deep Research. The current stage that I am at is the research stage. So I’ve updated my navigation titles to have a “process” tab. This process tab will have just a summary of what I go through in order to create a course. I’m almost done with that web page, I just need some nice artwork which I am painting right now in my spare time. 

It’s going to take some time to create this course. So hopefully I make progress throughout the year and maybe even during the summer. I plan on doing this a lot at the library and making significant progress. But we will see. Summers are always very eventful, but I do look forward now to drinking my Green Tea and studying. 

Have a great week!

-Calvin