Tea vs. Coffee

Tea's good for you,
but coffee's easier.

I rarely get as much tea to drink as coffee drinkers...
I usually have to ask for a new bag and more hot water.

Drinking tea can bruise a delicate ego. While waitresses circle endlessly with coffee pots, I have to flag one down to ask for more tea.

Tea brews at the table, not near wait staff's stations like coffee. It requires the tea drinker's attention so as not to overbrew it.

I get coffee poured into my tea-with-milk. Color isn't the best indicator of what someone or something is.

There is a gentleness among many teas that cannot be said of coffee in general.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning is hard to beat for sensory awareness and delight.

There is refinement and elegance in drinking tea, not that you cannot have a refined cup of coffee served elegantly in fine restaurants. There is no such thing as High Coffee in the afternoon, however, and tea with the Queen is a singular event.

Coffee has its sounds of grinding and percolating. On the other hand, there's something heart-racing about a whistle. My father whistled for us children to come to dinner. It's a clear invitation for attention, action and waiting. The whistle of a tea kettle demands your attention here and now. It teaches you to be in the present moment.

Neither tea nor coffee seem to escape the spills and drips when poured, although I've met way too many steel restaurant tea pots whose lid doesn't sit properly and whose lip drools, drips or gushes hot brewed tea witlessly over the table.

Coffee brews and waits for you - also a lovely attribute - but it grows bitter the longer you make it wait until you carafe it. Tea grows bitter, too, if brewed too long. The only risk of ignoring its whistle, however, is an empty tea kettle.

There is an art to everything. The art of refined serving and enjoying tea, especially in America, shall seep and grow. Tea drinkers unite!