I drink coffee in the morning but tea during the rest of the day. For green, I normally like one that has a flavor enhancer such as jasmine or mint. When I have a cold I love mint tea or earl grey with lavender. I like flavored black teas if I am making iced tea and one favorite is ginger peach black. If I am in an herbal mood or do not want caffeeine a favorite is Rooibos Capetown blend. I have to say though, I am not a fan of Darjeeling. A splash of Gran Marnier in tea is excellent. We tend to only use loose teas which we get from a local coffee shop and I use an infuser like the one linked below. The hinged balls would tend to leak sediment into my tea and I do not like texture. Here is a link that might be useful: tea infuser

Khalid: I didn't see your message until I came back to this thread. Thank you for what you wrote: " I regularly use black tea with ginger and cinnamon. Honey (with black pepper if I have a source throat), cardamom (small and large), garlic (as part of all our curries), onions (an integral part of our curry), as well as a few more herbs, spices etc." All those have anti-viral and anti-bacterial .. I agree with using food as preventive medicine, rather than dangerous flu-shot (combining virus). Carol: Glad to hear that you are back on schedule .. I am delighted to hear of your progress & success. It feels SO GOOD to have looser pants, and I wish everyone have that experience with daily exercise. Sam: does your Achilles tendon hurt to wear shoes with heels? I don't like shoes with heels: one of my foot is shorter than the other. I actually do more exercise on the treadmill than outside ... I can wear my husband Walmart open-heel plastic clog, I insert a memory foam inside ... and wear that on the treadmill. I wear size 7 woman, but I need a BIG shoe to insert the thick $5 memory foam. The plastic clog has bigger toe-box than running shoe, plus no need for lacing.

I went to the dr. last week with "something." He thought I had either strep or the flu; however both tests were negative. He diagnosed a virus and upper respitory infection. He highly recommended Allegra-d, Mucinex DM, Coricidin HBP and the nasal spray Neo Synephrine, all of them over the counter. I've used all of them as directed...some 8 hrs and other 4 hrs...and am finally out of bed. Still coughing but not all the time as before. So, currently, that's what's been working for me. Good luck, everyone. It's been difficult to stay well this winter, with allergans so bad and Mother Nature thinking it's already spring. Local schools are closing for a day at a time to disinfect everything after near-epidemic levels of flu and even pink eye.

So for cups I had these nice 6 oz. hot/cold cups in solid colors, lots of different ones like a rainbow, no handles so like they use in Japan. Left over from our wedding reception. They were great, perfect for this application. I could also at some point get some plain white ones and have the kids decorate them, but that wasn't that important for the experience this time. I brought the tea already brewed because I was doing the activity as a station in a gym so couldn't figure out how to easily and safely heat the water. Now I'm thinking that my activity kit for this could include a large colorful electric tea kettle to be used for heating water and then some colorful teapots. I was doing an herb theme this time, but long term I'm thinking that regular ol' tea might go over better. I put a healthy amount of sugar in all the tea choices. Maybe next time if they brew it, I can give them some individual tastes and they can make their own mixed tissane bag to take home. Some of the kids already wanted to try and mix a combo of the three I had available. I'm going to keep experimenting to find the most kid-friendly herbal mixes. I grew up on black tea with sugar and cream and loved it. Took me a while as an adult to adjust to tea without sugar and milk. I love almost any type of tea now. My folks did not worry about the caffeine, but then I only drank one teacup back as a kid, and no later than afternoon. As a kid growing up in the 60s, I also visited homes of many friends who drank caffeinated iced tea with dinner. However, if I did this for a public group I would use decaffeinated.