One thing to make very clear: I love tea. When I used to drink caffeinated beverages, I had a constant supply of teas of various blends...Assam, Chinese, Indian, even once a Nepalese tea. Always have a green tea of some kind around...still do. Now, herbals are in rotation here, especially hibiscus-based blends and African Red Teas/Rooibos. I drink it straight--always have--and even if it's in bags, it's always loose-leaf. I don't want to say that I'm a tea aficionado, but I do love the stuff.

(In fact, that's why I had to give up caffeine. I was drinking up to 2 pots of tea a day, or the equivalent in iced tea, and not realizing all the caffeine that I was imbibing...and all it took was one stressful patch, and I started suffering from alopecia. That was 4 years ago...essentially I'm caffeine free, and just fine.)

With the upcoming trip to Italy, I decided that I needed to get into coffee in the morning. Not much, just a couple of cups of decaf. Black. Something to go with my toast-with-Nutella (one of my favorite breakfasts ever). In truth, I'm not much of a coffee person, although occasionally I'll make myself a cup, especially on a cold and damp afternoon. Oh, and of course after a big meal there's the obligatory espresso...I grew up with that, really. That bitterness does help settle the stomach when it's extended beyond what it should be, but otherwise, if I have to add stuff to make it taste better, eh, well, I don't much like it. While I don't have a drip coffee maker, I do have a French press...which is supposed to make a better cup of coffee, anyway. *shrug*

Yesterday was the first try, today the second. It's not bad...then again, the Nutella probably is sweet enough to affect how I taste the coffee. Maybe I need to make biscotti and dunk them in, just to get the full effect. I'm almost done with this batch of coffee (Peet's Mr. Dickason's, for those who are wondering), so next I'll get some espresso roast and try that.

The question remains: does the coffee really replace my love, tea? Nope, not in the slightest. Does it replace my morning favorite, a big class of cold milk? Eh, not sure of this one, either, but the jury's still out, as we say.