Nice!

Writing about tea yesterday reminded me of other tea experiences in my life. As a child one of my favorite snacks was tea and toast. Tea is very conducive to dunking. Milk is really the only other dunking liquid. Dunking things in water, orange juice, beer or even coffee just doesn’t cut it. Tea is in that sense a prefect beverage.

Later in life I had a friend that was born into a Jewish family that kept a Kosher kitchen. I became really close to the family and spent a lot of time there. He mother professed that tea was the drink that was served with a beef or dairy meal because most people put milk in their coffee and that would render the meal un-Kosher. On the other hand tea was not usually taken with milk, so it was perfect at the end of beef or dairy meals. Coffee was served with other meals.

Another “nicety” of this Jewish mother was that everything was “nice” to here. As soon as I would show up she would say, “How about a pot of nice tea?” It was never a nice pot of tea, but a pot of “nice tea.” When dining at their home she would announce, “You should stay and eat. We are going to have a nice fish tonight.”

It must be a Jewish thing because I’ve heard other Jews say that they went out to eat and they had a nice piece of fish. I can’t recall any other culture that I’ve come in contact with that thought co kindly for the food they are by calling it nice. The food of most cultures does not come close to being at all nice. You can say the word nice in the same sentence as Kim Chi, or lutefisk.

So the assignment for all readers here today is to have something nice to eat and make sure you address it as “nice.” It does make a difference.