12 Apr Roll Your Own

I never got the attraction of cigarette smokers who roll their own smokes. Looks like a pain in the butt to me — har, I made a punny!

But then, I never got the attraction of cigarette smoking anyway.

But these days I’m into “rolling my own” when it comes to tea… green tea, that is.

I’m a big tea drinker, gulping down several cups of Celestial Seasonings’ Morning Thunder in the morning when I work from home and when I first get in the office. It has enough caffeine — more than coffee, is what I’ve always told everyone I meet — to grid my teeth down by the afternoon, and it dopesn’t turn my mouth all sour and breath all gaggy like coffee does.

But in the afternoon, I’ve been drinking lots and lots of green tea. I’m determined to get every last drop of beneficial effect from drinking green tea, from its antioxidants to its anti-cancer fighting agents.

And the green tea I’m currently drinking is a loose tea I bought at Truong An Videos & Gifts in the Far East Center on Federal South of Alameda. It’s an expensive Chinese brand, and comes in a fancy tall cardboard container.

The tea leaves are rolled into little balls and dried, and I take a small spoonful and put it in a dispoasble tea bag — a great invention that’s available at your neighborhood Asian supermarket. Add hot water and voila! Nice healthy green tea.

No icky Westernized hippie-dippy variations like mint, chamomile or herbal ginger infusion flavors. Just plain green tea, like in the home country.