i barely had money for food. my grocery budget was $30/wk. but tea was cheap. grocery store brand earl grey, the box of 250. i sat in my rented townhouse with my roommate at the edge of the city and drank pot after pot of fragrant, black tea. my pee must've smelled of bergamot, i drank so much. my roommate had his computer upstairs. he didn't work, just collected welfare and browsed myspace and flirted with girls on some gothy website. i played ffxi, wrote letters, wrote poems, tried to make sense of what was at the time the hardest and loneliest year of my life.
coffee came later. much more gradual: after i moved and started the most stable chapter of my life. i got it free at work. a perk of my job. it was truly awful stuff but eventually i realized that buying good beans and grinding them magically made good coffee. and somewhere along the line i started making iced tea and coffee rather than buying it. way cheaper than the grocery store, and better too. a while back, one of my high school friends and old crushes very briefly exported tea from sri lanka. i don't think it was ever serious. i think she just liked travelling and had some money saved up or maybe inherited. but i remember she gave me a bag of loose, fragrant orange pekoe as a gift, and i used this to make iced tea for a summer or two.
now that it's late may and the temperature's started to stabilize between warm and hot, i've been making both again. yesterday morning: cold brew coffee, the coarse grinds steeped in less water to make a concentrate. in the fridge for a day, then into a couple jars. this morning, added to a little water and milk over ice; incredibly cheap compared to what you'll get at starbucks, and better too.
this afternoon, a full kettle of water over seven teabags in a pot on the stove. seven minutes, remove the teabags, let everything cool, store in a jug in the fridge.
something about this ritual marks the start of summer for me. something comforting about the preparation and anticipation. the weather where i am so often depressing and faintly oppressive. summer and its trappings just the slightest reprieve.