The recipe for keep-you-up-all-night vanilla tea.

I learned this recipe from a lovely young man that once worked at HP (Hewlett Packard). Yes! Tea recipe from a codemonkey, and you know what kind of octane they run on...so it's got to be good.

You'll need:

• water
  
• something to boil it in
  
• 1 bigelow tea bag (anything from their vanilla family will do...or if you have a vanilla tea you like better, go for it!)
  
• sugar (and lots of it!)
  
• some sort of creamer (powered non-dairy, milk, 1/2&1/2)
  
• BIG thermal mug (so the warmed by the fires of hell water stays that way!)

   

I make mine in a 15.9 nissan stainless steel mug, this is not tea for some dainty little teacup...it may even overpower some weaker mugs! When you make this tea you're going to want LOTS! A recent venture to the grocery store led to the discovery that bigelow now makes not just french vanilla, but also vanilla almond, cherry vanilla and vanilla hazelnut. O_o

But in the original recipe we use french vanilla as a default.

• Boil your water on the stove, I like to use a teapot that whistles, it's got this little turtle head...why a turtle? Who knows, it's cute though.

• Prepare your mug ahead of time by dumping at least enough sugar to be an inch or more deep.

• Now pour in the water, it'll dissolve the sugar instantly.

• Grab the teabag and pop it into the water as well. I usually stand around and absentmindly dip it in the water several times.

• Can you see the bottom of the mug anymore? No? Good!

• Now it's time to add the white stuff until you achieve a nice light tan color.

• Now you can zone out on the steam as it rises from the cup while you wait for it to cool to a tolerable level.

The unholy amount of sugar keeps you just under the vibrating enough to enter a new plane of existance...and if you drink a lot of it before you are "supposed" to go to bed... you'll be up with the ol' full bladder effect. ^_~