Thursday, May 21, 2009

Diet Coke, I wish I knew how to quit you

So, all this talk about organic this, and natural that, and what do I wash down my organic, locally-grown salad with? A nice tall glass of chemicals. Mmmmmm.... Diet Coke. I know better. It's bad for me. It can't be good for the earth to manufacture it and ship it to me, even if I do justify it by only buying the 2-liter bottles and recycling them when I'm done. And even the 2-liter bottles cost money. I'm ashamed that Diet Coke brings me away from my favorite co-op and my beloved Trader Joe's (within walking distance!), so that I can go to a conventional grocery store for (groan with me) Diet Coke.

So, I'm trying to ditch the aspartame habit. I wish I could go cold-turkey with caffeine altogether, but I live with a small creature who insists upon sleeping with his feet in my eye sockets most nights. In order to keep said creature (and, oh, by the way, myself) alive by not driving into a ravine or falling asleep at a hot stove, I depend on caffeine. Coffee makes my stomach all rumbly-jumbly, and it tends to make me jittery. I love tea, and I even love the ritual of making a cup of hot tea, but I do love the convenience of just grabbing something cold out of the refrigerator. Voila: we have iced tea. I brew it from real tea leaves (some of which were inherited from a dead quasi-relative; don't ask), and then I compost the leaves when I'm finished with them. (By "compost," I mean, throw them in the dirt with my potted plants, because I don't know what I'm doing.) If there's leftover hot water in the kettle after I've filled the tea pot, I use it to sanitize the kitchen sink. (I've heard, probably from Martha Stewart, that water that has been boiled once should not be cooled and used again to make tea. Really, I just like the sight of a steaming sink.) We have Earl Grey, Keemun, and Irish Breakfast leaves waiting to be brewed. Despite a five-year stint in Dixie, I can't bring myself to sweeten iced tea, but I love it black, with lots and lots of ice.

I'm not a full-on convert yet, though. What to do in restaurants, where the Diet Coke surely tastes better than the swill they call "tea," but is really sweetened powder from a can? Maybe I can just have water and save my caffeinating for home.

1 comment:

  1. I love iced tea! I especially love that you just toss your tea bags into your potted plants. I should try that. :) Very funny post. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete