Friday, July 31, 2009

Cinnamon Sun Tea



















Bengal Tiger Tea
Celestial Seasonings, from $3 for 20 bags

One grim, gusty London day a couple of winters ago, my friend Pepe let me in on a marvelous secret:  if you steep a bag of Celestial Seasonings' Bengal Tiger tea for a ridiculously long time (put a lid on the mug to conserve heat), the spicy cinnamon infusion turns sweet all by itself, with no added honey or sugar.  

Since then the self-sweetening elixir has become one of my cold weather staples, but I only recently started to wonder if it might help me get through Seattle's current heatwave.  So I put two bags in a quart jar and doused them with a little hot water, then topped up the jar with more water and moved it into a sunny spot to steep.  A couple of hours later I moved the jar to the fridge, and a couple of hours after that I was sitting in the shade, cooling down with a tall glass of sweet-spicy nectar.  

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