This article is classified "Real"
"Tea," along with "set," has one of the highest "meanings per letter" ratios in the English language. In England, United Kingdom, Earth "tea" is usually a drink made from recently boiled hot water, a white liquid taken from cows, granulated sugar and, most importantly, dried leaves from the shrub or small tree Camellia sinensis. This shrub is also known as "tea," but very few people consider where their tea leaves come from before they reach the supermarket shelves. These shrubs have been grown in China for thousands of years, and it is only recently (since the seventeenth century) that this plant has been widely available in Europe. In the nineteenth century, it was discovered that the Assam region in India also grew tea. It now grows in several other countries. Tea shrubs likes high rainfall, equable temperatures, and high humidity. Picking the tea leaves is somewhat of a mystery. A certain famous tea wholesaler in the UK proudly boasts that it only picks the top leaf off of each bush. This seems extremely inefficient considering how much tea the British public consumes. It also points to how poorly paid tea pickers are. In the Orient, the tea drinking ceremony is something of a ritual. In the British Isles the ceremony of tea has largely been lost. Tea is now seen as a means to warming yourself, something to dip your McVitie's digestive biscuits in, something to wash down you supper with. The ceremony only survives because of certain "tea snobs" and Chinese restaurants. Chinese Restaurants often serve you with jasmine tea before you even order your meal. This is made from parts of the jasmine flowering bush, but contains no milk (the aforementioned white substance from cows) or sugar. It is extremely bad form to ask for either milk or sugar. You are not normally charged for this tea if served unasked for, and you may even ask for refills of hot water, for infusion with the old leaves. Do not complain about bits of jasmine floating about in your cup. And never stick your hand or fingers into your cup to remove them! "Tea Snobs" are both a blessing and a pain. On one hand they maintain a vital part of British culture. On the other, they try to constrict your human rights about eating food how you wish. Here is a description of how to prepare tea. (It should be noted that although there are many forms of coffee makers, there are no widely available automatic tea makers.) Boil a kettle. If it is one which does not turn itself off, then make sure that it has a piercing whistle attachment which can be heard over Nirvana playing on your stereo hi-fi. In the meantime, find yourself a teapot and a bone china cup and saucer. The teapot can be any sensible substance but silver is preferred by real snobs who can pay someone else to keep it polished. Pour half an inch of milk into the bottom of the cup. Do not use the equivalent metric volume as only Imperial measures may be used. This may be to cool the drink before it comes into contact with the china, to prevent the cup from cracking. I have not tested this theory. Do not add the tea to teapot yet. You have to scald it first. When boiled, put some hot water into the teapot, swirl it around a bit to warm up the inside, and then discard this water. This simultaneously washes the teapot and makes sure that the water being mixed with the tea is still at boiling point and not massively cooled. Add your tea to the pot and immediately add water and close the lid. The amount of water and tea depends upon the number of people present and the size of the pot. A favorite saying when using teabags is "one per person, and one for the pot." If available, cover the teapot with a tea cosy. This is a woollen hat-like object which will insulate the teapot against the cold. When the tea has brewed for long enough (determined by the colour of the liquid), pour into cups, and then ask each person how many spoons of sugar they would like. No lumps please! Drink the tea, and note your mistakes for your next attempt. Note, if you used loose leaves in your pot then you must pour your tea through a tea-strainer. This is a sieve the width of a normal cup, and will catch any bits of tea which make it up the spout. Most forms of tea drinking in Britain are variants on the above recipe. Usually items are swapped for other items, or left out entirely! One such replacement for milk is lemon juice. An alternative to sugar might be honey, or sweetex, or nutrasweet. Tea is also an evening meal in which the drinking of tea plays an important part. Perhaps the most pleasurable tea experience, short of sex on a bed of used tea bags, is the eating of Marmite toast dipped in strong hot tea. This is best served at breakfast time. Tea distributors are now being forced to come up with advertising gimmicks with which to sell their brand of tea. It is becoming more and more difficult to find tea sold in square bags, the trend being towards round bags. The infamous chimpanzees, who traditionally had their tea parties at the zoo, now cavort all over the nation's television screens in clothes and uttering sweet words of praise for their benefactors' tea. The name of their employer? PG Tips. Or perhaps that should be "Project Galactic Tips"?