tea infuser

We recently acquired this tea infuser from my mom. My husband had a hankering for hot tea, but he didn’t want to use tea bags (even though we have them on hand all. the. time – we’re iced tea drinkers twelve months a year). He wanted to try out loose leaf tea. At Fred Meyer, where we do most of our grocery shopping, they have a bulk section with lots of varieties of loose tea. Neither of us had ever “done” loose leaf tea before, so we decided to give it a shot. Together with the kids, we chose a variety (Irish Breakfast) and then went off in search of a tea infuser. We had one criteria for the infuser we were willing to buy: it had to be made of steel. No plastic.

They didn’t have anything like that in the entire store. They had a couple of different infusers, but all we mostly plastic.

It so happened that Seahawk had a basketball game the next day, so while we were there, we told my mom about our woes (she came to every single one of his games). She said that she thought she had a steel tea ball that she’d never used. If she could find it, she would let us have it. Score!

She called later that day with the good news: the tea ball had been found and she would bring it over.

Because it had been over 24 hours at this point, Will wasn’t in the mood for hot tea anymore. Of course, right? But we were glad to have acquired the equipment we would need when the mood hit. It hit the week before last. We were all suffering from allergies. The whole nine yards: sneezing, watery eyes, runny noses, coughing … you get the picture. Even though it was allergies and not a cold, we decided that hot tea was just what we needed. So we pulled down our tea infuser and loose leaf tea and tried it out.

It was pretty cool.

I knew in my mind that it would work just like a tea bag, but it was still really cool to see it in action. It felt almost like a trip back in time (hence the title of this post). It took us back to a time when things weren’t so “packaged.” Tea bags weren’t an option. Plastic doohickeys weren’t an option. Loose leaf tea and steel tea infusers were the norm. Life was simpler then (or so I imagine … I’m not that old!).

I long for times like that – when things were slower and simpler.

I often wish I’d been born 50 years earlier.

But for now, loose leaf tea will have to do.

Blessings,

Wendy