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Correct me if I got anything wrong, TA!
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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I'm Canadian and we have a long heritage with English things .... especially tea. But our brothers and sisters are American so we have a lot of overlap in our culture.
I grew up in northern Ontario in an indigenous community. Mom and dad were traditional people who were born and raised in the bush. They lived on your old English black tea. We treated it like a survival food and basically cooked it like it was coffee. All my life tea was made by boiling water in a large metal 4 litre tea pot and once there was a rolling boil, you dropped in eight tea bags and let it bubble for a minute until it all turned into a deep reddish liquid. The best tea was always in the first half an hour, after that it was like drinking a really strong coffee.
I drank that from the time I was a baby ... really! I remember seeing mom fill a baby bottle with warm tea, canned milk and a bit of sugar and feed it to my baby brothers. I assume she did the same to me.
Once I started living away from home, I drank less tea and more coffee. But I always love my black tea.
Never order it in a restaurant in Canada. Half the time a cheap little restaurant will just use hot tap water and drop the shittiest tea bag thats been sitting on the shelf for years to make your brew.
The only public place to get good tea is at Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee chain. They actually make the kind of tea I grew up with, really strong brewed tea that is kept fresh regularly. Their coffee is shit but their tea is excellent .... at least to me.
Thanks for sharing your story. I bet that tea your parents made was also useful for a lot of things. Did they ever make you run on a treadmill afterwards to power a generator?
As a kid, me and every kid around me in the same situation probably drove our teachers insane .... I feel terribly for them when I think about it now. But in the summer time when we were off school, I'd wake up drink a cup of tea, eat some toast and then spend the entire day outside, rain or shine. Starting when I was about seven or eight I'd spend the day on my own. We were surrounded by family so there was never a problem. I'd come home for more tea and supper was always at six, eat for ten minutes and head out again until the sun went down. We have freezing Arctic winters here between the great lakes and Hudson Bay but as a little kid, my parents thought it was normal to just give me a light parka and let me play outside with my friends for hours. I remember being about 11 or 12 and wandering away into the bush in minus 20 degree weather an hour from home with my friends just to say we could do it.
Always made our way back to the house for another cup of tea. That energy drink is basically what powered most of my life. I didn't have a treadmill but I probably traveled thousands of kilometers because of this drink.
Tea .... I'm probably 50% tea at this point in my life ... I've been drinking it since the day I was born.
We've got a passport waiting for you at the border if you're interested
Similar fond memories of growing up straddling English and American traditions on the wet Westcoast with English and Swedish grandparents.
My grandfather always had coffee brewing on the wood cookstove in his cabin. It was a metal 2 piece drip system. Always adding more hot water to the top as the day progressed. Like your example the first cups are the strongest. They had those white rogers sugar cubes and canned condensed milk from Pacific as creamer. Us grandkids would be bouncing off the walls from the caffeine and massive amounts of sugar most of the day.
Then at night with dinner it was Orange Pekoe tea with milk to finish the day. I'm surprised we got any sleep to be honest looking back on it.
Now living close to the US border I sometimes forget when I'm south tea is not such a normal thing in a restaurant and I get odd looks from those when ordering it. Usually they are the kind of place that serves Coke with breakfast though so I'm already in the wrong place for tea as it is.
For me Tea is the only thing I get from Tim's too in the way of a London Fog. When it comes to Coffee Canadian McDonalds is my way to go. US McDonald's coffee is something else terribly not enjoyable.
Im not a black tea drinker, Liptons was black tea growing up in the US and I did not like it. It is fine for sun/ice tea but still not my thing. But I visited Ireland and was exposed to Berry's and I have to say that stuff is fantastic! But 2 minutes seeping is all it needs or else it gets bitter.
I visited a Tim Horton's for the first time recently. It was in downtown Victoria and I have to say that it was an experience... Not a good one but at least I can say I have done it.
I have to say Tim Hortons has slipped. I've been in better versions of Tim's in New York state where they are a little more like a mini cafeteria than the high traffic flow models the Canadian ones have become. At some point McDonald's Canada took over coffee supply from Tim's. Not sure who they are but Tim's new coffee is not my cup of tea