Hot drinks in the winter

I’m delighted to be joining in with Floss’s new meme #SWAP with Floss which started this week. This week the prompt is about mugs and hot drinks.

I am a lover of hot drinks; coffee, tea, chocolate and even mulled wine. But my consumption ebbs and flows. In the main I’m a winter time hot drinks person and since this is winter time today is a great day to write about them.

Coffee in the Morning

There was a time when I drank a lot of coffee – morning, noon and even night. Pretty much exclusively instant unless I was out somewhere or it was a special occasion. My parents had a percolator, a beautiful tall blue pot and a coffee grinder. But still they only drank ‘real coffee’ on special occasions.

About 10 years ago I started to suffer palpitations intermittently, they aren’t really directly related to coffee. But coffee was one of the things I cut down on to try to eliminate them since I didn’t want to take the tablets prescribed at the hospital. So I started to just have one or two coffees a day, but made them count. I guess that it coincided with the growth in coffee shops and the availability of good coffee helped.

We have a bean to cup machine, Master invested in it about 3 or 4 years ago and it has revolutionised our coffee drinking. Safe to say it’s almost impossible to find coffee anywhere as good as we get it at home. I drink mine out of this lovely cup and saucer by Cath Kidston. Usually we stick to one cup a day, but on rare occasions I’ll treat myself to a second.

I’ve been drinking my coffee out of a cup rather than a mug for over 3 years now and I’ve come to prefer it this way.

Tea – a rediscovery

Since I’ve reduced my coffee intake, tea consumption has gone up. My preference is either a good strong mug of Yorkshire tea or else some kind of green tea or other flavoured tea. In summer I might drink very little tea at all, where as today while working I’ve had 3 big mugs. The last one, this afternoon because despite the heating I was feeling cold.

When I’m on a health kick, I’ll cut down on the milk and go for green or flavoured tea. So long as it’s nothing too sweet, I’m not a fan of those.

Tea reminds me most of my nan. She wasn’t a coffee drinker and so I always had tea at her place. She used to make it in a pot, warming it first. Milk first and then the tea. Plus there were always biscuits or cake. Even though she died over 20 years ago I can still picture me sitting chatting with her over a cuppa.

Hot chocolate and other hot drinks

I like chocolate, but at times it can be just too sweet. Plus it is really rather calorific. But in the right place on the right day it really has it’s place. This photo was taken in a little coffee shop in Germany while I was there for the Christmas markets a few years ago. Outside it was snowing and we were frozen when we sat down with our orders. I can confirm it was delicious and set us up for more shopping.

As far as other hot drinks go, the only thing that springs to mind is mulled wine (gluhwein), also consumed at the German Christmas markets. Each year I picked up one of the commemorative mugs at different markets, which sadly never get used these days. I’d love to return to the Christmas markets one day, more for the delights of chocolate, cake and gluhwein than the shopping part itself!