Chai, Pakoda and Big Bang theory

What comes to your mind, when you think of chai?

My friend Hershi, starts her day with black tea and drinks green tea whole day. When, Veronica, likes to have her chai as a dessert and relaxation drink, which means drink chai after coming back from work and enjoy it. There are few people like to drink chai whole day(like me).

Tea was discovered in China, but it was used as medicinal purpose then. Later it changed to highly stylized and sophisticated social etiquette. It has a lot of health benefits too.

“In her book Watching the Tree author Adeline Yen Mah recalls her Aunt Baba telling her as a child that “tea sharpens the mind, soothes the stomach, and nourishes your qi.”

My turkish friends love to drink their tea without milk, when my British colleague loves her tea with milk. But, I love it with and without milk.

Chai has really so many stories with it. At canteen(university cafe), people talk about Karl Marx to theory of relativity while sipping chai. At local tea joint in India, few people gather and talk about elections, corrupted leaders, girls with warm chai. Sometimes two girlfriends meet at a cafe, order chai latte and just gossip. Indians learn to make tea when they are in womb :wink:. Arrange Marriage is pretty common in India. So when guy’s family visits girls’s family, the bride brings the tea to them. And the grump mother in law asks -“Do you know how to make tea?” :laughing:

Here are some details about the tea which I got from the Internet. You can ignore this paragraph as tmi :information_desk_person:.

With black teas, the leaves are withered, rolled, sifted, and fermented, delivering a hearty flavor and rich amber color. To produce green teas, the leaves are fired shortly after harvesting to prevent fermentation, yielding a greenish gold color and a delicate taste. With oolong teas, the leaves are withered, rolled, twisted, and semi-fermented, producing a color and flavor that falls between that of black and green teas. Although herbal teas are designated as teas, they are not comprised of any tea leaves. Instead, these herbal teas contain peels, grasses, berries, leaves, flowers, and flavorings from a variety of plants.

I drink tea whole day, but the special moment of my day is, when I drink chai with some snacks and watch the Big Bang Theory with my husband. It’s very hard for working professionals to spend some time together, but we try to spend few hours by sipping tea and watching Big Bang theory. No, I don’t put only tea bags in my cup this time. I boil the water first, add tea leaves, add some tea spices and jaggery(I don’t use sugar). When it’s almost done, I add the milk and boil it few more minutes. Gur or Jaggery Chai is different that normal chai you will get in Indian restaurant. It always add a special flavor, and crunching some snacks with this is pure bliss.

There is also another thing, I do with tea is making dessert. I make the chai with sugar, pour them over ice cubes and freeze them. When it’s frozen, I use them as ice cubes with cold milk.