Every few months, I stop drinking coffee for a time. Typically, I give equal time to coffee and tea, but then I hit a wall where coffee suddenly stops tasting good. I don't know what causes it and I can't gauge when it will happen, but one morning I find myself reaching for a box of tea bags instead of my jar of beans and before I know it, two weeks will go by and I won't have touched a drop of joe. I'm in the midst of one of these phases right now, and I'm starting to think I may never go back to coffee, mostly because I'm totally in the thrall of the tea you see right over there to the right. Called Mango with Leaves, it is a fruity, fragrant black tea that goes amazing well with a little milk and honey.
This particular variety comes from The House of Tea, a Philadelphia institution that was founded by Nathaniel Litt, the man who started his career as an architect and then went on to be a clown, a bookstore owner, a professional jam maker, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained pastry chef and finally the owner this Fabric Row teashop. Litt died in 1997, but his tea legacy lives on. For those of you in the Philly area, I recommend making a trip over there. If you're a little too far away, make sure to head over to the website, where you can order all the specialty teas that The House sells.
