You steep up a potful. In a twinkling, the pot is empty. You steep up another potful. Again — whoosh! — it’s empty. On and on. It’s pure futili-TEA! And it’s enough to make any Tea Princess or even the most manly Tea Guy go to a level of frustration usually described as “aaaaaggghhh!”

Time to find out why this happens and from that we can come up with a solution. Works for things like figuring out why we periodically run out of food at our house, so it should work for avoiding futili-TEA.

Tea steeping is a process. The basics are all the same, but the details can differ. Heat water — cooler for the more delicate teas and hotter for the darker teas. Put some tea leaves in the steeping vessel — more for stronger flavor and/or more infusions or less for lighter flavor and when doing single infusions. Steep the tea — very short times for some teas and longer times for others.

Then, we drink. And that’s where the problem comes in. Steep. Drink. Drink. Drink. Drink. Drink. Empty. Dang! The laws of physics strikes again.

Time to restart the steeping process. Or is it? Is there another solution? I’m thinking that we need one of those faster-than-the-speed-of-light-spaceships so time gets suspended or even warped backwards. Or we can drop down a rabbit hole and join that subterranean tea party. Or hire someone to steep tea on a continual basis. “Oh, Jeeves, the teacup is empty!”

Yes, tea can seem futile. You steep and drink and then have to start it all over again. Of course, just like with that whole buying food and eating food and needing to buy more cycle, we do get the actual benefit of drinking the tea. So, it’s not as futile as it would seem.

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