Can you get unsweetened iced tea from McDonald's? As far as I know, or maybe it's just where I live, the "iced tea" is always the canned stuff like Lipton or Brisk that comes out of the soda fountain. It comes how it comes.

Unless of course, you're talking tea with ice. ;). I've tried that the odd time but never had it come out well. The one black tea I had that I thought would make good iced tea I can't remember the name of.

I'm being good. I'm only having one or two cups a day lately and I'm watching the strength. It's not that I make strong tea, it's that I forget about it for stupidly long periods of time and then drink it anyway. Stopping that now. I'm butchering my tea!

Our McDonalds always has brewed iced tea. They used to ONLY have unsweet but a few years ago they started advertising their sweet tea, which is why I forgot to specify sometimes.

What counts as sweet tea? We talking the southern thing, sweet tea? I've only ever encountered the term when referencing the southern US.

I just got back from India where I had street masala chai out of their little clay cups. Yum, so good. We found a spice seller and bought some masala spice for our own tea here so now that I am home I brew up some good black tea add the milk and a pinch of this wondrous masala chai spice and it is so good. I usually have tea every afternoon, a habit I acquired from an old boyfriend who was English and had to have his tea from a teapot.

I would like to eventually create my own masala for chai. I have a mortar and pestle, just need a good recipe.

So masala is the name of Chai spice in general? Or does it refer to a specific mix?

Masala means spice so not any particular spice and definitely it can refer to a mix of spices. We bought Chai Masala and Curry Masala while we were there and these were mixes of I think 6 spices in the chai and not sure how many for the curry. I only new the word in passing before I went to India.

I had some very good tea there. I had a wonderful darjeeling in one city and it occurs to me now that Darjeeling is in India, some people we met were off for there. So...British tea, I guess though that it is really Indian tea.

My understanding was that Darjeeling was British, and possibly Ceylon too but I'm not positive. It might be that Darjeeling tea was brought in (or not) and grown in India but still considered British because India was a major British colony. My favourite tea is Assam which is from India, usually named after the estates that it comes from, and said estates, if I remember correctly, are along the Assam River. The man who runs the tea store I go to has a map of all the estates but he doesn't carry the Banapsaty, which is the one I'm trying to find.

"Chai" in India generally just means "tea" doesn't it?

I've found the honey lemon tea from Tim Horton's to be great for sore throats. There's a Teavanna in a local mall that is having a special sale to support one of the local schools and I have tickets! Maybe they'll have a deal on some teas. Youthberry tea doesn't have any grapefruit in it, does it?

I've found the honey lemon tea from Tim Horton's to be great for sore throats. There's a Teavanna in a local mall that is having a special sale to support one of the local schools and I have tickets! Maybe they'll have a deal on some teas. Youthberry tea doesn't have any grapefruit in it, does it?

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Ah, I see. I assumed they had the ingredients on the bag like a lot of tea places do but I just checked one of mine and it only has the title. I have one of their white chai.

Ah! That's dandy. Now I can look this stuff up instead of harassing the people about it, but I still like to sniff everything anyway. ;)

My stomach has been griping more than usual lately. Anyone know of any good teas for that? I have a chamomile-mint but I'm not sure how well it works.