You help yourself to tea and make nothing for me

[venta]

The trouble with reality is that you have to be capable of making your first cup of tea of the morning before you've had your first cup of tea of the morning.

A colleague maintains that coffee (he's talking instant) is at least easier to make, because you don't have to worry about taking the teabag out. I reckon this is wrong: with coffee you have to measure or judge the quantity of instant granules, which is much more difficult than counting up to one (as you would with a teabag).

All this is taking place in the work environment, where one is not easily able to bother with niceties like teapots or looseleaf tea.

Comments

You drink your coffee and I sip my tea

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with coffee as easier - even allowing for the counting you lose the bother of making sure you've got the best out of the teabag and removing it. Instant coffee might be (in general) distinctly inferior but it's nigh-on impossible to get wrong.

Re: You drink your coffee and I sip my tea

[venta.livejournal.com]

It is easier for me, but that's because I drink coffee black :)

However, since coffee almost always makes me ill these days it's not such a good option :(

[edling.livejournal.com]

I make it easier with tea- don't bother taking the teabags out (I have a very large mug, so use two). The only issue it causes is if I forget to clean my mug at the end of a Friday and come back to a pair of dried teabags spot welded to the bottom of my mug.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah, you see the shameful secret is that actually caffeine and I don't get on so well these days. Which is why I hardly ever drink coffee any more. Even strong tea is a bit much for my feeble stomach...

[octalbunny.livejournal.com]

I disagree with both arguments.

If you forget to take the teabag out then you get stronger tea with more caffeine, which helps wake you up.

For instant coffee, just use a spoon of the stuff - howevermuch the spoon gets out of the jar is the right amount.

[venta.livejournal.com]

you get stronger tea with more caffeine, which gives you stomach ache, in my case :(

Even if I have minutes

[a-llusive.livejournal.com]

after falling out of bed and into the nearest clothes, I make sure the first cup of tea drunk (not necessarily the first made, for reasons obvious from your post) happens before I leave for work. The rest of the day is just likely to go better that way...

...as I was reminded this morning when, for the first time in ages, I failed to stick to that practice.

Very timely entry, yours.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I have coffee in the morning, because tea contains insufficient wake-up-ness for me. Turns out that it's possible to mess up anything if you're sleepy enough.

For starters, 'pop capsule in machine, press button' works better if you remember the capsule

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

I make real coffee, from freshly ground beans, each morning.

This means that everyday I have to: clean the coffee maker, put the correct amount of water in, measure out the correct quantity of beans, grind them to the correct consistency, put the grinds in the coffee maker and switch it on.

I reckon I fail to do at least one of these steps about one day in ten...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Just supposing you had an outbreak of late-night activity... how many of those steps do you reckon could be done in advance the night before without compromising your coffee-quality? Presumably everything up to the "grind" stage, at least...

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if I was like organised and shit, I could do everything but grind the beans the night before.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Also, oooh, get you and your sophisticated morning routine ;)

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I pretty much always have to have a cup of instant before I can bring myself to grind the beans and generally sort out my cup of proper coffee.

[erming.livejournal.com]

I found a relatively easy way. Get in after the colleague who puts the filter coffee machine on. Time it right and all you need to do is slowly pour it into the mug then add milk!

[erming.livejournal.com]

And as someone who is trying to improve their memory tea is a nightmare to make.

You see if I boil the kettle and leave it it doesn't matter - I can always reboil it or if I make the coffee and forget to take it back to my desk it is just cooler coffee of the same strength.

If I leave a cup of tea brewing and forget about it there is cold tea that is super strong and has stained the cup.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

You could get a Teasmade (if they still exist), that'd sort you out. No idea if it makes decent tea or not, but the principle is sound. Set its timer the previous night so it comes ready just at your morning arrival time.

I have the same morning beverage routine as mister_jack above. And the same failure rate -- many's the time when I've been surprised at how unwatery, uncoffeey, unground etc the product that emerges is.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Sadly, being of the delicately-stomached persuasion, I just can't drink tea or coffefe on an empty stomach in the morning :( Accordingly my entry into the world is usually with a mug of hot-water-and-lemon-juice (frequently prepared very kindly for me by ChrisC).

The cup of sensible, proper tea happens when I've got to work.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I meant at work, on your desk. Unless you think your colleagues would nick the freshly-brewed tea just before you got in…

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

I eat breakfast while the coffee brews thus solving the empty stomach problem.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Teasmades do still exist, and cheaper versions, which is how I have my first cup of tea before I even get out of bed. Great!

[zandev.livejournal.com]

If a person were very organised, they could put instant coffee granules of the correct quantity in a mug the night before.

[metame.livejournal.com]

and then add a teabag to it in the morning....

[zandev.livejournal.com]

At least they'd then have sufficient caffiene in their system to regret it.

[lnr]

I maintain that I don't need caffeine in the mornings anyway, and just wait until they procure the vat of strong coffee in the coffee room at 10:30.

[erming.livejournal.com]

BTW A couple of mornings ago I saw my boss demonstrate that sometimes instant coffee can be tricky to make first thing in the morning.

He wandered over, put a spoonfull of coffee in his mug, then proceeded to pur the kettle of boiling water into the jar of coffee before realising his mistake!