It is early morning. Too early. Darkness still stalks the house and your eyelids are unwilling to cooperate. You stumble down the stairs, turn on a tiny light and walks towards the kitchen. Which action will you take next? Turn on the coffee machine or put the kettle on for tea?
My choice would be (herbal) tea. Green tea with a touch of lemon in the morning, liquorice tea in the afternoon and mint tea at night. With all possible melanges in between, except black tea with an artificial fruit flavor.
I have hypoglycemia and coffee makes me feel sick. Decaf cappuccino is quite OK though, with lots of milk and cream… but then again, that is no real coffee right? 😉 But I prefer sipping clear golden liquid, steaming in a glass.
If you want to know more about tea, I advise you to visit Art of Tea, a wonderful website dedicated to tea. I could tell you about it myself, but these nice people have already done it for us.
Now please tell me. Are you a coffee person or a tea person? Do you need the caffeine to wake up or stay awake? Or both? And if you’re a coffee person, do you ever drink tea? If you are a tea person, which tea do you prefer? Is there a difference between coffee and tea lovers? 🙂
Figments of a DuTchess 
Sorry everyone, I just found out how to level the ‘nesting comments’ option up to ten.
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@Michelle:
You are SO bad tsk tsk. Drinking alcohol…
… don’t you just LOVE it? 😉 Well I do. Nothing better than a glass of strong red wine or a tiny bit of whisky. Well, tea is better, but you know what I mean 😛
Kids’ cereals are indeed coated in sugar. Simple muesli is much better, but children’s taste buds are spoiled and drowned in sweetness these days.
I just made a whole wheat bread and truly, no cereal can beat the taste of fresh bread! With tea of course hahaha. Have to stay on subject.
Cheese cookies? Do you have a recipe for those? I’d like to try them out. Normally I drag special dark chocolate (slow sugar) cookies with me. They have saved me time and again.
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I made a pitcher of margaritas last night–yum! I also have a sad weakness for wine and whiskey. Mmm…
But onward to the recipe!
Cheddar Sage Bites (From Generation to Generation, p71)(no clue where I got this book from)
2 cups (8 oz) grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
1 stick (1/2 cup, I believe) unsalted butter, cut to bits
2 tsp dried sage or 2 Tbsp minced fresh sage (I totally add extra sage)
1. Combine cheddar, flour, salt, and cayenne and process until blended. Add butter and sage and process until it just forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and chill for 1 hour.
2. Form 1″ balls of dough, pressing lightly to flatten to about 1/4″ thick, 1 inch apart on parchment lined baking sheet and bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for 10-12 minutes. Cool biscuits on a wire rack.
So yeah, these are essentially cheesy sage biscuits, but they come out looking more like a loose crumbly cookie than an American-style biscuit, so I tend to call them my little cheesy sage abominations.
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Thanks Michelle, appreciated! I’ve emailed the recipe to myself and dumped it in my action folder. It sounds delicious, really.
Cheesy sage abominations are loved around the world 😀
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I swing from both sides of the plate…I guess you could say when it comes to herbs, I’m bi. Leaves or Beans…they both have their place. I MUST do coffee in the mornings, though. Black. No cream or sugar. I love to have something hot in my hands while I write, so it can be coffee or hot chocolate as the day wears on. Late afternoon, around 3:30, I usually do Tea. I don’t know why, and I don’t know why at that time, but if that is the strangest thing about me, I’m doing good.
Oh yes, and I’m also either Hypoglycemic, or Hyperglycemic…I always get it confused. I just know I had a NASTY test with a doctor that lasted 6 hours and left me a physical wreck by the end of it which she triumphantly announced that I was indeed Hypoglycemic (Or Hyperglycemic)
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Hypoglycemia is where your body is sugar low. But if you eat regular healthy meals throughout the day, you will be generally fine. I very rarely get a hypoglycemic attacks anymore now that I’ve filled my diet with long-term energy foods.
Hyperglycemia is where your body has excess sugar. My mom has this and sometimes doesn’t treat her body like she ought as she eats desserts and risks inducing a hyperglycemic attack.
There is also apparently reactive hypoglycemia, but I don’t know much about it other than my doctor tested it for me years ago for some stupid reason even after I described to him in great detail exactly how my hypoglycemia operated. They made me drink sugar water and sit in a room bored for a few hours. I indeed did not have reactive hypoglycemia.
So figure out which one you have and figure out how to best treat your body so as to avoid attacks. While the attacks may seem dinky at times, they can hit really hard when you least expect it. It’s just best to avoid having attacks.
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Those tests are indeed STUPID sometimes. I had to go through the same when I was eight months pregnant. I thought I would faint on the spot after a couple of hours at the hospital.
And you know what the result was? NO reactive hypoglycemia. The source was DRINKING TOO MUCH GRAPE JUICE. Aaaargh LOL.
Hypoglycemia is a hereditary thing, my grandmother had it too. It was my dad who dragged me home – half unconscious – on a holiday in France and recognized the signs. Croissants, jelly and tea with sugar wasn’t that good an idea 😉 Since then, like you Michelle, I learned to handle it.
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The best of both worlds huh? 🙂 Sounds like you really enjoy your coffee hehehe.
Hypoglycemia is triggered by four things:
– sugar
– coffee
– alcohol
– stress
Whenever you eat or drink these, your blood sugar will drop like a stone, to leave you trembling, sweating, feeling really sick. You can counter this feeling by eating a piece of chocolate or white bread. After which you should eat something with ‘slow’ sugar, like whole wheat bread or brown rice.
So make sure you always eat something with the coffee or alcohol or you will get in trouble. And avoid all sugars. When you keep a healthy diet, you should be able to sneak in a cookie or dessert at times. Or a bit of honey.
And by the way, very nice to meet you!
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I am so bad. I totally drink alcohol, and I at sugar when I want. I just know better than to make sugar an entire meal (no kid’s breakfast cereals for me!). Sugar-based meals leave me with only a 15-minute warning at best if I’m about to be hit by hypoglycemia, and that is a crappy warning time. Protein-rich foods can give me up to an hour or more warning, so I lean toward those as the basis for my meals and fill them in with some nice carbs and tasty vegetables and fruits.
And all those protein-rich foods keep my body from getting even vaguely close to an attack (unlike sugary foods which run out of body fuel super fast).
When I go to writer conventions, I always drag a baggie of homemade cheesy biscuit things and munch on them throughout the day (cheese protein for the win!). They keep me even and help me work around the weird convention eating schedules that occur when you to try to gather for dinner a herd of writers with various panel schedules. 🙂
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I used to put on a pot of coffee and drink it all morning, until I nearly burnt a hole in my stomach. Now it’s tea all the way, which is sometimes disappointing in dining out here in the States—we excel at coffee, but mostly we don’t do tea all that well here. I was in heaven in Ireland when they brought me a nice little pot of tea every morning at breakfast. I drink Irish Breakfast tea every morning and love it.
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Your poor stomach, that must have hurt! Sorry to hear that Christine.
Is there no tea culture in the US? I thought Celestial Seasonings were common?
Irish Breakfast tea is now on my list, thanks for the suggestion 🙂
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I don’t drink coffee, so the answer is obvious. 🙂 But I don’t drink tea in the mornings either. That’s left to the afternoons. I drink soy milk or milk in the mornings.
Coincidentally, I have a draft post with the exact same subject matter!
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Hurray, another tea person 🙂
My whole life I’ve been drinking about half a liter of milk daily, but since last year my body doesn’t take it that well anymore. Fortunately drink yogurt is still OK.
You wanted to write about the same subject? That is SO cool 😀 There must be coffee and tea vibes going around the world 😉
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I love both ~ decaf java in the morning, black and a nice iced rooibos tea in the summer afternoon, or a pomegranate iced green tea w/ mint ice cubes. In the winter I love adagio’s blood orange to warm me.
I’ll keep the kettle on the back burner for ya, Mar! 😉
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Roxie my dear, you have the perfect mix: decaf and tea jihhaaaa \o/
“pomegranate iced green tea w/ mint ice cubes” < I have never tasted this but even the description makes my mouth water.
One day I'll come by and accept your offer 😀 and feel welcome to drop in any time if/when you’re in Holland!
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Definitely coffee 😀 Not a coffee snob though; I buy a can of whatever is on sale/cheapest and drink it black. About a year ago I switched to half caf, recently bought a can of full strength so now I’m drinking some odd mix, maybe 75%? 😉 Some of my kids like tea so I have both regular and a variety of herbal teas available. My personal favorite is Sleepytime.
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Strong black coffee? No milk? Wow haha, that would give me stomach aches, apart from all the other side effects.
Definitely coffee 😀 Yep, you are a coffee person. It should give you a boost straight into the afternoon!
Sleepytime is by Celestial Seasonings too right? Think I have that, nice light tea.
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I stopped drinking coffee and tea about 22 years ago. If I went without it one day I would get a severe headache soI decided that if something could cause that type of reaction it might not be worth drinking…so I quit and haven’t had a cup since. 🙂 In the morning I have honey and lemon in hot water. 🙂 I can hear a lot of coffee and tea drinkers groaning! lol
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You would only hear me groan if you had a headache every day! So honey and lemon in the morning, what do you drink the rest of the day? Juice and water? 🙂
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COFFEE. COFFEE. COFFEE!
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Hahaha I just KNEW it Tim!! 😀
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I am a neither person. I don’t do coffee or tea. But when I did, I loved them both. For coffee my favorite was was with a teaspoon of sugar and some real cream. For tea my favorite was Almond Sunset by Celestial Seasonings.
Love ya,
Jules
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Almond Sunset, that sounds delicious. We do have the brand Celestial Seasonings in Holland too, I will look for it Jules. Thanks for the tip!
Could I offer you a glass of milk then? 🙂
Love you too my friend,
~Mar
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I am a tea person. I used to buy all sorts of exotic flavors and nifty combinations, but I find I have become cheap now that I am a stay-at-home writer in charge of managing the household budget and everything inbetween. So I pretty much hit up my local Asian market for bulk Oolong and bulk green tea (ranging from around $2-$5 for 100 tea bags). Oolong in the morning, and green tea in the afternoon.
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Hi Michelle, welcome 😀
Indeed it can be very hard to resist the temptation of all tea melanges and combinations – my cupboard is a small tea shop in itself – so buying bulk Oolong and green tea is a smart thing to do. Plus they are delicious.
Thanks for commenting!
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