EXTREME WARNING, WILL BORE YOU: MY TEA ROUTINE.

What could be cosier than spelling it with an "s"? Why, typing away about my deeply idiosyncratic tea routine on a chilly winter's day, of course, as the ice-slicked sidewalk glowers gray and menacing out the window, and the jaw-droppingly expensive new heat pump at the Fixer-Upper noisily shoots somewhat-warm air out of the living room floor grate.*

As I have written under separate cover, I once started an all-natural soda company. Sodas start life as teas, and these teas get their flavor from herbs and spices. (Most flavor comes from a large windowless factory in New Jersey, but not my flavor.) So, I have plenty of experience** developing blends with ingredients that most people encounter only in nightmares: Devil's Claw, Butcher's Wrath, and the blood-chilling Dong Quai. 

The brew I enjoy in these colder months is a caffeine-free analog to coffee; too much coffee caffeine makes me feel like a raging a$$-ho$e (this is just one example of why profanity is always a blend of symbols) and I use it sparingly. Here we see a 1:1:1:3 blend of roasted dandelion root, licorice root, ginger root, and roasted chicory. Chicory is often used to extend coffee, being of a somewhat similar bitter and oily profile, and serves here as the chassis. The rest of this dirt salad is generally antioxidative, detoxifying, and tonifying. Licorice gives it a nonspecific perceived sweetness—the good Guru (see footnote two) sprinkled it everywhere, to make the medicine go down. 

I brew about a tablespoon and a half of this in the Aeropress with eight ounces of boiling water, for between three and two hundred and eighty minutes, depending on household distraction. I like it black, and find that it tastes like a coffee you'd get in a weird dream where a shard of kindling representing autumn in the Sierra Nevadas was discovered in the bottom of the mug. I call it Prayer Molasses. I just made that up.    

* Apparently these climate-friendly machines make the climate nicer everywhere but inside the house. 

** I was fortunate enough to study under Guru Hari, who lives in nearby Eugene, and is the Chinese Tonic and Ayurvedic herbal expert who developed the line of Yogi teas. One of my prouder moments was the time over a test-brew when he leaned back, closed his eyes, and declared that he liked the way I managed chamomile.