Teabag Tales
Last year, during the lockdown, I spent more time with the plants in my home than I have in the last 30 years.
The gardener, Ramu, who comes twice a week couldn’t, so Prakash — our full time staff person who lives on the second floor of our home with his family — and I took over the care of the plants. I had a lot of time on my hands, so I took to plant watching in a serious way.
We had a good crop of roses. I watched them bud, bloom and slowly die on the stems. There were so many, so I plucked some and removed the still quite fresh petals. I’m going to dry these, I told Prakash. I laid them out on a wooden tray and covered them with a kitchen towel. They dried beautifully. I put them in a glass jar with an airtight lid, labelled them and made space for them in the open kitchen shelf. I used some for the marmalade I made later in the winter months.
Then it was marigold season. Watching them I thought, I could dry these too and began to pick them, take apart the petals and dry them. I loved their bright orange colour. Then it was kinnow season, and I was making marmalade — a lot of it. So, we cleaned the peels and what we didn’t use for the marmalade we put in the oven and dried them. The whole house was filled with the aroma of citrus. I bottled these too.
For a while I had been thinking of making my own tea bags. We have a good stock of loose tea — green, black, and herbal — at home, lining the kitchen shelves. Most are gifts from friends who came over. My brother-in-law, some years ago, began experimenting with tea plants in his home in the hills of Uttarakhand. Soon he began harvesting and roasting tea. We had several boxes of the Shyamkhet Tea as I call it. Shyamkhet is the village in which the hill house sits.
We have many teapots that could accommodate loose tea or tea leaves. I would make tea in the first floor utilities room in a French press. Usually, herbal tea. Sometimes I like the idea of just getting a teabag out of a box, putting in a cup and letting the hot water slosh all over it. Downstairs, in the kitchen, Prakash and I make tea in a teapot. Or sometimes just use a teabag. There are no fixed rules. It depends on our mood.
My friend Stina would be mocking me if she read about my preference for a tea bag. She believes firmly in tea leaves in a teapot. That is tea. Nothing else.
I grew up drinking tea in India. Like children, mine was a cup of milk with a spot of tea. As I got older, I began to have actual cups of tea. At home, we had two kinds. In the mornings, there was ready-made tea as we called it which was cooked tea leaves, spices, and milk, boiled and strained. Then there was a more genteel tea in the evenings, with tea leaves seeped in hot water in a tea pot, with a tea cosy, a small jug of hot milk and teacups with saucers. When we had guests there was high tea — a popular social event in the 50s, especially among the ladies. Tea was accompanied by finger sandwiches, often cucumber and tomato, maybe some cheese. There would be a cake and maybe some pakoras or fritters with potatoes, onions, cauliflower or brinjal. There could be samosas too.
My father worked for a British mining company, so it was a very Anglicized environment. The tea was brought out in a tea tray which had a tray cloth and often matching tea napkins. There was always a tea cosy to keep the tea pot warm.
I first encountered teabags when I went to the US in the early 1970s. I was enchanted with them. Like many new things in the US, I marvelled at its convenience. The Indians I knew in my campus town used tea bags to make ready-made or cooked tea, just as I did. Within a few years I discovered herbal teas. They, too, came in tea bags, and it wasn’t till much later in the early 80s I could buy them loose as we called them, in boxes.
Tea strainers were popular too. They were usually made of stainless steel. My friend Agnes who lived in Amsterdam had cloth tea bags which she rinsed and washed and used for the next pot of tea.
I began to mix herbs in the tea strainer and realized that the combination was rather delightful. Chamomile and mint tasted different to just mint and chamomile on its own. Not necessarily better. Just different.
When I moved to Italy in the mid-1980s, it was a coffee culture, but I started the day with a teabag and milk before I left for work, stopping by at the bar across the street from the office for a cappuccino and cornetto. For the rest of the day, it was many cups of espresso. You could get herbal tea in Italy, as tisane it was called. A tisane is an infusion of herbs and flowers.
Back in India in the 1990s, the day started with cooked tea, coffee during the day and tea in the evenings. I missed the herbal teas. But, very soon, they became available in India too. And now, there is a huge market for herbal teas. In tea bags or loose, in any quantity you want.
In the last few years, I have chosen to spend more time with my plants and experimenting with things I have not done before. The teabag project is one such experiment.
Today, after breakfast I brought down the glass jars of rose petals, green tea, dried mint, and dried kinnow. I mixed them gently in a pottery bowl and slowly filled the tea bags that arrived a few days ago. I had to figure out just how much I could pull on the strings that then had to be tightened and tied, once filled.
I made 25 teabags in all. I liked the way my fingers smelled after I finished.
After lunch, I took one bag and put it in one of my favourite cups. And sloshed hot water over it.
I liked it. More so, I was secretly thrilled that I had made it with my hands, with some ingredients from the garden, choosing the mix and match.
