Tea Time

I love chai. I love my own the most. I love my house helper's second. And after us I like the guy's on the street in my old neighborhood.

When I use to work at the gym in our old neighborhood, I would often times get tea from the chai-wala outside of the gym. We would bring a tray with our own glasses and he would fill them up with boiling hot tea. I guess we didn't trust that his glasses were clean enough. Several times, when the chai was brought back in to drink, the person would pick up their cup of chai and the bottom would break off and chai would spill all over the place. The glasses weren't made to hold boiling chai I guess. Then the rest of us would pour some of our chai into another glass for the poor soul who had theirs spill.

Today I am hostessing a tea party. I don't really get in to tea parties. To me, the most important thing is to be together. I don't care about what the cups look like or what I wear. I may or may not wear make-up today. My cups will be mix and match. No silly hats to wear. And I will make the tea. The only problem today is that we ran out of gas for our stove. So now I will have to make my chai outside of our home. Maybe on a campfire or at a friend's house. Probably not the campfire since I don't have any wood.

So here is my recipe for chai if you care to try it:

Get a steel pot
put enough water in it for however many people you have, approx. one cup per person.
put a spoonful of tea leaves in for every cup and a half of water
crush a half an inch of ginger
one crushed cardomon pod
a shake of pumpkin spice seasoning
boil it
add a spoon of sugar for every cup and a half of water
when it boils, add milk until it is a nice milky brown color
boil again
strain it into cups
drink and relax