How do I love tea? The joys of the morning routine

December 21, 2016

How do I love tea? Let me count the ways…

Puns aside, I really really love tea and it’s an integral part of my hectic morning routine. One of my enduring childhood memories is of my dad bringing my mum the morning gift of tea to wake her up. Every morning. What an absolute hero!

Twinings Strong English Breakfast and the morning routine

Tea is also a massive part of motherhood, isn’t it? There’s that amazing first cup of terrible tea after you have a baby. Then there’s the endless quest for a hot cup when you have no free hands, then the countless cups at playgroups and play dates and parties, the ones you make yourself to wake yourself up, the ones that are a hug in a mug. And all the ones in between.

Often as a new mum the only time you get a hot one is during naptime. Even nearly five years into motherhood the novelty of a hot one hasn’t worn off and on work days I still drink as many as possible.

Twinings – one of the oldest tea firms in the world with over 300 years of tea experience – asked me to write about our morning routine and how much of a role tea plays in this, which was a total non-brainer. It usually goes something like this:

  • Wake up (usually really early). Feel confident that we have LOADS of time to get everyone ready for school and out of the door in a relaxed, leisurely way
  • Make about ten breakfasts for everyone, practise reading, watch some terrible TV, open advent calendars
  • Make tea, drink tea, breathe
  • Realise the time and panic – get everyone dressed in record time and find books and water bottles and shoes and coats and hats and ‘Brush your teeth please! Brush your teeeeeeth noooooow!’ Run out of the house and dash to school.

(It’s an efficient routine as we’ve not been late yet).

Our morning routine - with Twinings English Strong Breakfast tea

It’s pretty hard to function without tea, and in that time-old British way there is nothing worse than a bad first cup of tea – if mine goes too cold I’ll often remake it, even if it’s getting late, as the first cup of the day should be the best cup, shouldn’t it? And there’s a lot of room for error for tea to go cold when you’re busy and doing a million other things.

Twinings recently conducted research about the importance of the first cup of tea of the day as part of the morning routine. For almost three quarters of people (74%) tea is the first drink of the day and for a third of people making one is the first thing they do (even before checking social media).

The morning routine and importance of a strong cup of tea

Twinnings also found that letting the tea go cold would spoil the enjoyment of the first cup of tea of the day for a third of Brits, And to help solve this massive and scary problem, they developed the ‘Forget-tea-not’ – a specially designed cup that safeguards the first cup of the day by letting you know when it’s the perfect temperature.

Twinings English Strong Breakfast tea and the forget-tea-not mug

The cup – hand painted in English Strong Breakfast tea colours – contains a temperature sensor to alert the eager drinker when the tea is at the perfect temperature by playing the tune through an inbuilt speaker – meaning you won’t leave it too long/forget about it and allow it to go cold while you get distracted with the millions of other morning tasks.

We were sent a Forget-tea-not to try out for ourselves. I was slightly concerned that the mug would let the tea get *too* cold before alerting me, but the sensor is set to the perfect temperature for tea as devised by Twinnings master tea scientist (68 degrees centigrade, don’t you know – the temperature at which the Twinings English Strong Breakfast tea blend is optimised for).

We were also sent some Twinings English Strong Breakfast tea to try, which is a brilliantly strong and tasty tea. It’s actually a different and more lively blend to the traditional English Breakfast tea and is sourced from tea gardens in Assam, Africa and Sri Lanka. It is perfect if you want – NEED – a strong cup of tea to set you up for the day (English Strong Breakfast tea costs £4.99 for 80 tea bags and is stocked in all major supermarkets and also available on the Twinings website. You’re welcome).

Cheers! Please can Twinnings now devise something to help with morning teeth brushing?

This post is an advetorial paid for by Twinnings, but my love of tea is 100% my own. More posts…if baby milestone cards were made for mums and how not to leave the house with small children

3 Comments

  • Amanda

    December 21, 2016 at 2:55 pm

    Tea is a cure all too isn’t it. I’ve had many crisis averted with some wise words with a friend whilst sharing a cup of tea together.

  • Rachel @ The Ordinary Lovely

    December 21, 2016 at 3:17 pm

    I think I organise my whole life around cups of tea. It’s in our blood, isn’t it?! 🙂

  • Jess

    December 27, 2016 at 3:03 am

    Definitely a cup of Tea to start my day , and yeah same scenario, I make a tea, find a good spot, slowly drink it, breathe , take a look at the time and panic mode on! haha just couldn’t help it, when I am trying to relax and realize I am 30 minutes short to finish the tasks.

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