I don't think I own any funky-shaped drinking receptacles. All of my coffee and tea cups are rather ordinary shaped, as are my dishes, pans, and glasses (though I do own one glass that is square - I use it for many of my cocktails). These heart-shaped coffee cups look rather nice, though I always get nervous drinking out of very fancy, delicate cups and china. I either feel like I'm going to drop it or I feel dainty.

They're $13 each. Anyone try them?

[via Boing Boing]

Are you the type of person who just happens to love tea and penguins? Have I got a product for you.

It's the Penguin Teaboy, a cute little item you can put on your kitchen counter or table. You hang a teabag from the penguin's beak and set the timer and the little guy lowers the tea bag into the water until you have a perfect cup of tea. You can set it for as short a time as 1 minute (if you like it weak) or as long as 20 (which will be stronger but I assume...colder?). It doesn't look like it works with loose tea.

I don't think the penguin has a name, but if I buy one I'm going to call it "Clyde."

[via Boing Boing]

A lot of you gave me some tips for trying to find great-tasting teas that would help me cut down on my daily sugar intake. Thanks again. I took everyone's advice and went on a little tea shopping spree this weekend, and here's what I bought and how they taste.

I went with reader advice and bought two different kinds of Good Earth: Original and Vanilla Chai. Both are nice. The original has a strong cinnamon taste, and while the chai has a strong vanilla flavor and aroma to it, it also has a lot of cinnamon and other spices. But they both taste good. I've had some cinnamon-flavored teas that, well, just tasted like someone took 30 or 40 sticks of Big Red gum and boiled them. These taste really great. I also bought a variety pack of Celestial Seasonings. I've had some flavors of this brand in that past I wasn't too thrilled with, but it's a good tea to keep on hand. I'm going to buy some other brands too and see how they are.

And the best news? With these teas I've cut down from 4-5 packets of sugar to only 1 or 2! Most excellent.

But that's what I eat every single day. And I'm only counting the tea I drink, not actual food.

I'm not a coffee drinker, I'm a tea drinker, so I'm probably healthy in that way, since tea has been proven to have many good health benefits. And I use fat free milk in my tea too. But the sugar. Oh, the sugar. I have 4 packets in each cup of tea that I make, and I have around 4 cups a day. That can't be good for me, can it? (And that's an average day - there have been some days when I've had 5 or 6 cups.)

I've tried sugar substitutes. I'm a fan of Splenda, though I can't get used to using it in tea (sorry). The other substitues don't do anything for me. I know, I know, I could either have flavored teas (nah, never liked them), or go without any sugar in the tea at all. No sugar? That's just crazy talk.

If you had asked me ten years ago if I would drink diet soda, or any drink without sugar or with a sugar substitute, I would have laughed and said, "Of course not!" I couldn't stand the taste of diet drinks. But now? All I drink is diet soda. I can't drink regular Coke or Pepsi because it just tastes too sweet and syrupy (same thing with milk - I only drink non-fat milk now because whole milk tastes like heavy cream or something).

But there's one drink where I just can't bring myself to drink in a diet or sugar substitute version: iced tea. In fact, I can't even stand "real" iced tea. It just tastes like ... well, a cold cup of tea. Give me the sugar-filled packaged stuff any day. Over at The Atlantic, Cory Kummer has a piece (subscription required, but there's an excerpt) on the amount of sugar they're putting in soft drinks, diabetes, and how one of the world's oldest drinks might help solve the sugar epidemic problem.

I am addicted to tea. As I've written here before, I drink several cups of tea a day (hot in the fall and winter, iced in the summer - spring is a mix). I really don't think I can even function without it anymore. Which is either a sign that I'm a true lover or tea or I have a serious, serious problem. Not sure which.

But it got me thinking about morning routines. The foods we eat to get us going in the morning. My morning routine consists of getting out of bed, putting my shoes on and heading directly to the stove to turn the stove on before I do anything else. Before I visit the bathroom, before I see if the paper is there, even before I put my contacts on (which once lead to a boiling-water-in-my-right-eye incident, but that's another story). It's my first thought and my first assignment I give myself everyday. And it's not just the caffeine, it's the ritual. It gives me a base to work from at the start of the day.

I don't eat breakfast though (bad, I know). No eggs, no toast, no muffin. But tea is something I need every single day. And it's certainly going to help me get through last minute Christmas chores and work today. 

What's your morning routine?