Driven to drinking (tea)!

I had a major panic attack just over two weeks ago. It’s never happened before, and I hope and pray it never happens again. It was a terrifying experience. I’m still exhausted from it, but the oddest thing about it is all the tea drinking!

In the immediate aftermath I had sweet, sugary tea thrust into my hand…. Noooo!!! Thankfully, tea was soon swapped for proper medical attention.

However in the days after, safely tucked up inside The Glen House “resting” (and when I wasn’t very hungry), I drank gallons of tea. Bog standard old-fashioned tea. Proper tea and milk tea, none of the new age modern fancy stuff!

So from Irish builders tea I’ve turned a corner and gone back to the much healthier Masala Chai tea.

This Indian inspired teas has wonderful Ayurvedic healing properties:
Ginger quickly warms up the whole body and has antibacterial and antiviral effects. Cloves are an analgesic relieving pain.

Cardamom helps warm you up. It is beneficial for digestion, respiratory problems and prevents muscle cramps, relieving inflammation.

Cinnamon is naturally sweet and is beneficial particularly for flues and colds. It also regulates blood sugar level and blood pressure and helps alleviate digestive problems.

These ingredients are a rough guide for my version of Masala Chai… Everyone makes it differently… you need to make it to YOUR taste:
1 mug of water
as much (soya) milk as you like in your tea
2 black peppercorns
2 green cardamom  pods, lightly crushed
4 cloves
small piece cinnamon  stick
1 tsp fresh ginger , peeled and roughly sliced
1 tsp loose black tea
sugar (to taste)

Grind the spices, put into pan with the cinnamon stick and boiling water. Add the tea and let it ‘steep’, but don’t let it continue to boil! Leave it for a couple of minutes. Then add in the milk so that it warms in with the tea, but once again don’t let it boil, just simmer away. Strain the tea, pour into mug, discarding the spices and sweeten to taste.

Or you could use an emergency Masala chai tea bag!

So the moral of this story…

Melissa xx