Chai (and other teas)

I also rediscovered green tea. Yum yum! I don't know if it's okay to drink it while pregnant but I didn't... Now that I'm not pregnant anymore, I can go overboard and drink a liter per day again.

I haven't made chai myself - do you heat up the milk with the chai spices in it?

I've been drinking some kind of twig tea at work in the afternoons. A little bit of it is good, but two cups gives me heartburn, which is weird to me for some reason. I need to have some ginger tea here to deal with that!

using a chai tea bag should be fine. from what i've seen, you can get chai tea bags and add milk, or you can buy this gritty paste stuff in indian groceries that you add to hot milk, or (in some health food/gourmet stores in the us) you can buy cartons of chai concentrate that you pour into hot/cold milk. the liquid concentrate already has sugar in (i think this is what cafes use), but bagged tea and the indian spice paste don't.

Technically "chai" just means "tea." If you want to avoid the smirks of Indian friends, masala chai/chai masala is more accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai

I know! Since I was in Japan, I just understood cha and thought reguar tea. But my friend just giggled and said CHAI as if to say that green tea would have been blasphemy. Kinda funny since their idea of curry is... just... well... tasty but not really curry in my opinion.

Thanks for the tip Lauren! Will check it out!

It's really good with almond milk. I had some yesterday.

I recommend: http://www.theteaspot.co.uk

alas i cant drink any tea anymore.

You're preggers again?!

What I like is that black fucking darjeeling.[/swearingen]

You can still drink tea Natalie, up to six cups a day is fine (if that's the case!) The whole 'don't drink caffeine' thing is only if you're addicted to a coffee/coke every half hour...

This wouldn't be a proper tea thread without me banging on about white tea, I LOVE white tea (and I don't mean black tea with milk in, I mean picked tea leaves at the stage before green tea) it's much more mellow than green tea.

You're sure, Vicky? I keep reading everywhere that it's not a healthy thing. Maybe they are exaggerating. I quit coffee a few months back since I had madcrazy migraine attacks. My husband says it's okay, not to worry so much.

And, yes, AGAIN, Chris. :-) Ophelia is one year old, so we decided, let's give it a try. We got lucky after one month! Hopefully all goes well. :-)

Advice on food does vary from country to country, doesn't it? I remember being amazed that the French are advised to have 9 portions of fruit and veg per day (in the UK it's 5). Maybe it's the official line is tempered by what you can generally expect your average Brit/Frencais/Belge to cope with.

(Also, well done Nath! You should change your email to twotwotwo)

Absolutely sure. The whole caffeine thing - it occurs naturally, it's just when it's taken in ridiculous amounts that it can cause problems.
http://www.babycentre.co.uk/pregnancy/nutrition/foodsafety/caffeine/

Don't forget that there's less caffeine in green tea than there is in black, and even less again in white tea. If you're really worried about it, I've heard that the caffeine comes out of the tea in the first minute, so you could brew a cup for a minute and pour it out, then use the bag again, but I doubt that it would taste as nice!

Congrats Nath!!! What exciting news :)

Vicky's spot on about the caffeine - the majority of it dissolves out in the first 45 - 60 seconds. When Mr. Jaq decided to decaffeinate himself for awhile, I made our tea by first steeping the bags for a minute in my cup, then switching one to his, then after 3 or 4 minutes moving the other bag from my cup to his. He got a bit less tea flavor but I got a double shot of caffeine.