Friday night tea time

It's not a good sign when I'm standing in a 7-Eleven store complaining about their paltry yet baffling selection of Lipton teas, and the friend I'm with says, "You're going to blog about this later, right?"

Which I wasn't going to --- honest! --- but since it's apparently expected of me, here it is.

I wanted some good ol'-fashioned Lipton Yellow Label tea --- you know, what used to be the default tea option when I was growing up, before I knew what Earl Grey was, and well before Celestial Seasonings and its ilk of infusion confusions came along to clutter up our shelves.

7-Eleven was the only place still open that might have tea for sale. Except that the first 7-Eleven store I walked into had exactly three varieties of Lipton: Red Tea, White Tea and Gold Tea. No humble Yellow Label options in sight, and the descriptions of the Red/White/Gold Tea consisted of sufficiently purple prose that I immediately replaced the boxes on the shelves.

The next 7-Eleven store, mercifully, had many boxes of Yellow Label tea, but also the Red and White varieties. (Neither store had any non-Lipton teas for sale.) Now that the Yellow Label was safely within reach, I took a few moments to peruse the Red and White Tea descriptions a little more closely. Red Tea promised a spicy flavour (I almost fell for it), White Tea hailed from Kenya, which made me think of a rich coffee-like flavour because of the Rift Valley blend coffee I'd had at Starbucks this morning.

Then the friend helpfully pointed out that the Red and White Teas were $4.60 a pack, while the Yellow Label was $2.45.

Half an hour later, I had my Yellow Label tea in a Starbucks mug. It tasted just like it used to.

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