Milking Tea

Regular readers will know my dislike of green tea. Amazingly, I have found an additive which, when added to the mix, neutralises the awful flavours of that herb, making it perfectly palatable. What is this magical ingredient?, I hear you ask. What potent substance known to man can counter the dreadful effects of so noxious a beverage? Sulphuric acid? Cyanide? Bats’ eyes? Crushed petals from Brugmansia vulcanicola which only grows on the cool slopes of the Ecuadoran Andes? No, not them; I have learned to add good, old fashioned cow juice, a bottle of which I have delivered three times a week by Martin, my milkman.

Now there is some snobbery about adding milk to teas. Folk with double-barrelled surnames, people who read the Guardian, and those who take their holidays in the south of France, will all look askance at the 'philistine' who requests milk for their Earl Grey or green tea. Such behaviour is deemed loutish, unsophisticated, vulgar and common. “But it spoils the flavours!”, they shriek.

“Precisely”, says I.

Milk makes even green tea not unpleasant, if a little pale to behold. Originally, milk was added to tea because it saved porcelain crockery from cracking under the tea’s boiling temperatures. The milk absorbed some of the heat and spared the delicate ceramic. Nevertheless, milk assists with the enjoyment of many teas, by enhancing, or diluting, the flavours.

There is much about Christianity which intellectuals and the fashionable cannot bring themselves to accept: its bleak assessment of human nature, the true and proper deity of Christ; the exclusivity of the Cross as the way to salvation, the absurdity of the evolutionary world-view. Let them dismiss and reject all they want; the gospel is true, and it still tastes good and nourishes greatly.