Even as a Michigan alum, I have to admit Script Ohio by the Ohio State Marching Band is one of the best marching band formations ever.
Go ahead … make my marinara.
We’re mostly coffee drinkers, but I do make the occasional pot of tea, particularly to make iced tea. This is new to me. To confess my sins, I usually just rinse out our (glazed) teapots, but that’s more laziness and a desire not to risk that slight aftertaste of dish soap that didn’t get completely rinsed out. So maybe I’m doing the right thing by accident, (which is better than doing the wrong thing intentionally).
Any advice from tea drinkers out there?
Ceramic teapots are never dishwasher safe, and are indeed prone to retaining soap residue, which is precisely why rinsing out a “seasoned” teapot is not entirely irrational, as long as you aren’t switching back and forth between different kinds of “flavored” teas. Another disadvantage is that ceramic teapots are often so massive that they should be preheated (with hot water) before use, otherwise the tea water will be significantly cooled from the intended brewing temperature. All of our teapots are glass, which have much less heat capacity, are easy to clean (in the dishwasher), and thus do not collect any of that ugly residue.
LikeLike
As the marching band spells out the name of their state in cursive, should this get a geezer tag?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have two cups of tea per day, one in the afternoon, the other late evening. I don’t use a pot. I have a stoneware cup/mug. I fill it about 1/4 with water, and a large measuring cup with a bit over a cup of water in it. Both go into the microwave (the horror) for a few minutes. The tea cup comes out then and sits with hot water in it while the remaining comes to a boil. The cup is emptied out then and a bag added, along with the water from the measuring cup. The cup has acquired a “patina” as I never scrub it. It gets a bit of rinsing from the warming water.
LikeLike
I believe that Script Ohio was copied from the Marching Longhorns’ Script Texas. I don’t have origin dates for either, but when I was in the Marching Longhorns, I never heard of the Ohio version.
LikeLike
According to Google, the Ohio State Marching Band debuted the script Ohio on October 10, 1936.
Also according to Google, the Marching Longhorns debuted the script Texas in 1957.
LikeLike
Exclamation mark or exclamation point? I was taught the latter (and autocomplete likes it too).
LikeLike
I inherited my grandparents pre-war bone chine tea service (which is to say, pre-war with post-war backfill, sort of a ship of Theseus), which I always have an intention of using, but never do: no one else is quite into tea as much as I am, and just for me, it never seems worth the trouble, especially as I have my own Bodum pot (glassware), which I do use when I can persuade others to join me in some tea. I like the infuser Bodum has, with the plunger to stop the leaves from continuing to steep into the pot. (I once had a afternoon tea at one of the fancy New York hotels that do this as a snobby thing, and even though they had my preferred tea, they left it in the pot the whole time, letting it over-steep, so that by the time I got to my second cup, it was a bitter, awful mess…) I have loose leaf tea from India, my favorite being Darjeeling, and I always do a second steeping, both because I am a) cheap, and b) a second steeping is a whole different experience, the tea often being more mellow, and the caffeine content being less. So that’s two whole pots at least I’m committing to every time I do the Bodum.
So for just tea for one, I have tried a variety of solutions: being as I like loose leaf tea, I don’t do tea bags (though some of the better quality bags have good, non-shavings leaf inside, and the pyramid infusers are nice, so it comes down to buying loose tea in bulk is way more economical than buying the super fancy bags); I’ve tried metal sieve balls, but I don’t like the metal; there are empty tea bags into which you put your loose leaf which are quite nice, but then you need to constantly being buying the empty bags. What I settled on is a silicon infuser I bought in Denmark by chance at a close-out of the large department store in Copenhagen once. It is shaped like a flower, with the infuser a bulb at the bottom that fits into a ceramic holder. You can put just enough tea in for one cup (and the second steeping…), and when it has steeped enough, you take it out and put it in it’s holder, neat and practical.
For tea cups, I have settled on those glass double-walled ones. I bought a set at Aldi in Germany once, and discovered I quite liked them, but we lost them slowly to attrition as we kept breaking them, but I have replaced them with ones from Lidl I got over here, and have started being mindful about where I leave them so they don’t accidentally get knocked over onto the floor. I like the double walled ones more than the Jena glass collection I previously favored largely because they are much bigger than the smaller Jena glasses. Smaller glasses are nice when you have a whole pot, and can take just as much as you like without having to take too much, but for single servings, they are too small, the infuser takes too much room if they fit at all. The glasses have a handle, mug-like, which is nice so you don’t scald yourself holding the hot tea, but the double-walled cups take care of that problem quite nicely.
So in the end, I have settled on glass everything, except for the holder for the infuser, which does get stained and requires some scrubbing to get clean. But being as it’s only the holder, it’s not that vital.
LikeLike
I suppose tea tastes better in a bone china teacup than a wooden one or a pewter one, but it’s just fine in a cheap Corelle glass teacup.
LikeLike
Lost in A**2 (5): Well, then, I guess UT probably copied it from OSU (and not the other way around). Both years were well before my time with the Longhorn Band.
Mark H. (6): It’s regional, but “point” is more commonly American and “mark” is more common in the rest of the world, including the UK. Both sound familiar to me.
larK (7) and Mark (8): I agree with Mark. And I recently encountered a drink called London Fog — essentially Earl Grey and vanilla — that I really like, even in a stiff paper cup. (It’s probably a profit-maker for restaurants, selling for a dozen or two times the cost of making it.)
LikeLike