On Hot Drinks

Hot drinks are my ultimate comfort food. It all began with hot chocolate in high school. I was rather stressed out at the time (although it's strange how time changes you perspective - it all looks like a breeze from this vantage point. Knowing how time changes your perspective I actually started off a high school journal telling my future self not to scorn the writings of my present self, but to read with understanding. If my future self belittles my past self, I hope my past self comes and kicks my future self. Dear readers, be sure to judge your past selves with mercy! But I digress...) and at one point was having a mug of hot cocoa every morning and night! It was very comforting, but also very bad for the caloric intake count. So I tried to cut back to not-even-once-a-day.

Once I hit my second year of college, the coffee monster started nipping at my heels. I did quite well at staving it off, but by junior year wasn't doing so well. When I began giving up breakfasts of dry cereal as a senior, and found it much easier to grab coffee and a muffin on my way to school (this also cut down on the absolute essential time needed to get ready, thus allowing me to push the snooze button one or two more times than usual), things started to get serious. I cut back when I realized I was starting to get addicted. Besides, I was minoring in voice, and caffeine is very bad for your singing voice. Dries out your vocal chords. Of course, there is decaf coffee which works great when you aren't a huge coffee connoisseur anyway (no one who asks for extra cream and sugar can be called a coffee connoisseur - and it is only black coffee drinkers who demand the respect due to coffee snobs, as I like to call them).

But thanks to voice lessons, and to a terrible bout with laryngitis, I discovered the joys of tea with honey! Herbal tea has no caffeine, and honey is great for getting your voice back in shape. Tea used to be just too water-y for me. But with a healthy dose of honey the flavor fills right out, making it a rich drink instead of a thin one.

And Aunt Laura quickly taught me to appreciate chai tea. Some of this is caffeinated, but you can also get decaf chai, which also tastes excellent.

All of these options are perfect for those I-feel-overwhelmed-with-life moments, when you just need to take a little break from the grind. You can encircle that mug with your hands (this is greatly enhanced if a dear friend like Lindsay has given you a hand painted mug of perfect size, weight, and aesthetic charm), drinking in warmth through your finger tips as well as in the usual manner. The steam warms your face as you slowly take a sip (for some, like my grandfather, this cannot take place without the raising of eyebrows - I find this trait particularly endearing), and the rich taste makes you realize that life can't be all bad. Not while hot chocolate/coffee/tea/chai exist in the world.

So friends, if any of you are feeling overwhelmed, may I advise a spot of Chopin, a comfortable chair, and a mug of something warm. (Um, also, this works best when it is not over 75 degrees outside - and for optimum enjoyment try more like 50 or below. Good thing I thought of this in high summer. But I never said I was the most rational creature alive.)