Refreshing Summer Jasmine-Lime Iced Tea What you will need: - 3 or 4 jasmine tea bags. You can substitute regular green tea if you can't fine jasmine, but as jasmine tea tastes like flowers, it's really the best. - 5 limes. - A whole mess of sugar. - Water. What to do: OK, I feel a little silly explaining this, since it's so easy, but here we go: Get your water. Find a fairly big pot and fill it up most of the way. I'm not sure how much water I used, but were I to guess, I'd say 5 pints. (That's about how much tea there was after I transferred it to the pitcher. Metric system, you say?) OK, now put the pot of water on the stove and turn on the flames of deliciousness. Take out your 3-4 jasmine teabags. (Depends how strong you like it. I used three, which seems fine, but I might thrown in an extra next time and see how that turns out.) Take off the strings and tags and stuff and just throw them into the pot of water as it's heating up. As the water comes to a boil, it will get hot tea infusion, which is way better than taking four teabags in your hand and dipping them in and out of the hot water repeatedly. Get out your limes and cut them all in half. Careful, don't cut yourself, because that lime juice stings like a mother. OK, when the water is all boiled and the tea is the right strength, take out the teabags. Now get your lime halves. Squeeze all the lime juice into your tea. Squeeze! Squeeze! Then, when squeezing doesn't do it anymore, work it out with a tool. I really covet this lemon reamer, but since I'm not Martha Stewart and therefore don't own one, I just used a teaspoon to grind out all the juicy bits. It's OK to have little lime things floating in your tea. That's proof of your work! After you got the tea all limed up, add sugar to taste. This part actually surprised me--I had to add a lot more than I thought, and still, it's not that sweet. I like it not too sweet, though. Light, citrusy, but not syrupy or cloying. Let it cool, then refrigerate. Serve over cracked ice. Great for preventing scurvy when you're on the high seas! |
Wednesday . June 26 . 2002 . 12:37pm |
summer funk festival Every year, at around the same time, Joe slips into kind of a funk. He's unhappy with his life. He's unhappy with his career. He's unhappy with our relationship. Every year, seemingly out of nowhere, with virtually no prelude or fanfare, bam, there it is. Dysthymia Joe. This period can last for weeks to months. And nothing I say can snap him out of it. He becomes absolutely convinced that everything in life is irrevocably mundane and devoid of pleasure, and I can talk myself blue in the face, but nothing will change his view once he's looking through the world with what he refers to as his "shit-colored glasses". He'll go on being this way, not budging, anhedonic, no matter how much I counsel or cajole, until at some point, just as quickly and mysteriously, he snaps out of it himself and goes back to being Good Old Joe. You know, the good-natured guy who takes pleasure in life and smiles once in a while. It's really very strange, especially the fact that it happens every single summer since I've known him, like clockwork. It's like Seasonal Affective Disorder in reverse. I thought it might not happen this year, but of course it has. One moment everything is like it always was, and literally the next day, he's morose, sighing deeply, feeling "lost" with respect to career direction and cripplingly unsure about our relationship. And despite the fact that I've gone through it twice before, I'm still at a loss on how to deal with it. It can be like a futile struggle with him when he gets like this, a Sisyphusean dance that no one can win. Try to ask him what's wrong and all he'll say is "I don't know," repeated ad infinitum. Smile and try to coax him out of his mood and he only gets more distant. Leave him alone and it only proves to him that we're indeed "not connecting". Get mad and tell him to snap out of it only causes him to clam up more. So what ends up happening is that during this period, I tiptoe on eggshells all around him, delicately trying to assess his mood day-to-day, like a bather sticking one toe into a pool of water, and figuring out how I should act on the basis of that assessment. And then I get mad at myself for acting like that. And I resent him for making me act like that. I have no idea why he falls into this annual summer funk, if it's just normal reaction to life changes or a reaction to the stress of med school, or even some actual psychiatric phenomenon. And I want to help him out, if he'll let me. But the last two summers, nothing I tried worked, until he suddenly snapped out of his mood himself. And it's good that he always snaps out of it, but the intervening weeks and months before he does are miserable. And now he's doing it again. The Third Annual Summer Funk Festival. And call me selfish, but part of me is thinking, "I have to take the Boards in two days and start my Sub-I next week, so unless you're able to tell me what the hell is wrong and what I can do to help, I really don't have time this year to reprise my role of fair handmaiden to your angst-clenched ego." Does that make me a bad person? xo Michelle Countdown to the Boards: 2 days |
Bikini Briefs |
Refreshing Summer Jasmine-Lime Iced Tea What you will need: - 3 or 4 jasmine tea bags. You can substitute regular green tea if you can't fine jasmine, but as jasmine tea tastes like flowers, it's really the best. - 5 limes. - A whole mess of sugar. - Water. What to do: OK, I feel a little silly explaining this, since it's so easy, but here we go: Get your water. Find a fairly big pot and fill it up most of the way. I'm not sure how much water I used, but were I to guess, I'd say 5 pints. (That's about how much tea there was after I transferred it to the pitcher. Metric system, you say?) OK, now put the pot of water on the stove and turn on the flames of deliciousness. Take out your 3-4 jasmine teabags. (Depends how strong you like it. I used three, which seems fine, but I might thrown in an extra next time and see how that turns out.) Take off the strings and tags and stuff and just throw them into the pot of water as it's heating up. As the water comes to a boil, it will get hot tea infusion, which is way better than taking four teabags in your hand and dipping them in and out of the hot water repeatedly. Get out your limes and cut them all in half. Careful, don't cut yourself, because that lime juice stings like a mother. OK, when the water is all boiled and the tea is the right strength, take out the teabags. Now get your lime halves. Squeeze all the lime juice into your tea. Squeeze! Squeeze! Then, when squeezing doesn't do it anymore, work it out with a tool. I really covet this lemon reamer, but since I'm not Martha Stewart and therefore don't own one, I just used a teaspoon to grind out all the juicy bits. It's OK to have little lime things floating in your tea. That's proof of your work! After you got the tea all limed up, add sugar to taste. This part actually surprised me--I had to add a lot more than I thought, and still, it's not that sweet. I like it not too sweet, though. Light, citrusy, but not syrupy or cloying. Let it cool, then refrigerate. Serve over cracked ice. Great for preventing scurvy when you're on the high seas! |
