Roses Are Red 

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          Fame has a price. My readers are starting to ask some very personal questions. Last week someone asked me, what tea do I drink. A response is necessary to avoid any false rumors. Are you sitting down? In addition to coffee, I do drink tea. Because I have a ‘no product endorsement’ policy, I will discreetly refer to the tea I drink as The Rose. If you aren’t familiar with The Rose and still have a grandparent living, this is probably the tea that they drink. Not wanting to conform to the media hype for cool; I walk away from the brands that have flooded the market in the past twenty years. Thirty years?  Time flies. The Rose is not gluten free. It is not organic. It is not environmentally friendly but, but ….it comes with a little ceramic animal in every box. Can you believe it! Each box is packed with a little friend to sit next to my cup while it brews. The Rose has always provided this emotional support. Does it get any cuter than this? And the price is so right, 100 bags for under $5.00 plus a little walrus! Way to go!

          Please note, the little animals are not plastic. When I was a girl, I collected small porcelain animals. This is the electronic age, and The Rose is still packaging a miniature duck, horse, or whatever into every box. Amazing. I asked a friend from England which tea she drinks and if she had switched to an American brand. You guessed it; she said that she likes The Rose because it is the most like British tea.

Selecting your tea culture is important. Do you want to drink British style, or Asian? Do you want herbal? Something similar to an identity crisis is the tea culture affiliation. If you go British, as I have done, then you drink your tea with milk and sugar. If you choose the Asia side of the equation, you are not using milk or sugar but possibly a squeeze of lemon. This is important. A mature adult needs to know where to cast their tea drinking ballot in order to reap the benefits of their brew. And just how do you brew your tea? Do you use a tea pot? The Rose is plebeian enough to be in bags. It is not a loose tea product, but some folks brew their tea bags in a fine china tea pot. Hmm …I know someone who does that.

         Globalization has changed everything, and my guess is that countries that were founded on a bedrock of tea are probably now a part of the ‘Coffee Culture.’ That’s okay; beans, leaves, twigs, whatever it is that you brew –identity marketing has you covered. The big incentive for my choice of tea is the gift packed into each box. What other food products are willing to do this? Uh - oh, I am starting to think. What other food products should be doing this and what would be their free gifts? Unable to resist an opportunity to explore something meaningless, I accept the challenge. Here is a list of products paired with their potential gifts. 

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1. Whole Wheat bread - little wagons carrying shafts of wheat in from the field.

2. Almond Milk- a mini cow.

3. Sticky Candy like the one that pulled the caps off two of my teeth… a wind-up dentist.

4. Fakin’ Bacon - three wind up pigs that roll on the table, point at you and laugh.

5. All brands of designer coffee – a piece of gold jewelry.

So, put the kettle on, line up your porcelain animal friends- it’s time to relax with a cup of tea.