Should have known better

Jul 19, 2006

So yesterday, craving an iced chai and too busy to make my own, I stopped into the downtown Chapel Hill Caribou Coffee, where I paid a few bucks for the worst mixture of milk, ice and sugary chai flavor possible. Man, last time I buy anything there.

I need to follow Perri Kersh’s lead and buy less. Read about Perri’s consumer-free lifestyle change..

Last night, I followed the chai recipe and made enough for a mug of hot chai, which I enjoyed immensely while I worked on my dad’s website. Plus, I had enough left over for iced chai for my morning drive.

I also dug out the Saveur issue with the recipe (Number 56, Jan/Feb 2002, not online), and read this:

In India, chai is the generic name for tea. Here in the United States, it has come to mean a host of different tea-based concoctions, most of them cloyingly sweet and comically inauthentic. The inspiration for all these inauthenticities is masala chai, which is spiced Indian tea. Given how easy it is to make the real thing, we think it’s a shame to settle for faux chai.

Touché.

Anton Zuiker ☄