Drink This, You'll Live Longer.

This may not come as a big shock to you, especially considering the blase attitude in my last post, but I've not been cooking much lately. And I don't have much of an excuse, either, except that I became engrossed in a novel (Devil in the White City), couldn't set it down, and found that in a wink my husband had already helped himself to a bowl of cereal for dinner. (Don't feel too sorry for him, this Wild Blueberry Flax we buy is insanely delicious.) Sometimes I wonder if he conspires to eat cereal for dinner, either as a favor to me or as a treat to himself. I'm not sure.

Anyway, the point is that I haven't got a recipe for you today. I'm sorry. But what I do have for you may be even better. I hope you will think so. And the information suits up especially nicely with a book, so you really shouldn't be disappointed. Apparently, in some island off the coast of Greece, or wherever, there's a group of people that are quite old and perfectly healthy. Researchers expected to find the usual reason for such a boisterous, energetic community of elderly people, such as regular consumption of olive oil, or red wine, or perhaps even chocolate. Yet instead they discovered none of the above. The secret, they found, to the ageless skin and the hearty bodies was, in fact, that they all read books! No, that isn't true. But you could read a book while you are sipping on your hot cup of life-prolonging green tea, because that is what these people were consuming on a regular basis for their entire lives. (Think two to three cups per day.)

There are so many health benefits to drinking tea, among which are that it has anti-cancer properties, increases metabolic rate, boosts mental alertness, immune system and lowers stress hormone levels. In fact, it seems like there is no good reason why you shouldn't be drinking it all day long. To not do so would be the equivalent of not wearing your seatbelt. I'm going to stick with that metaphor and go ahead and stake the claim that we need to drink green tea. It is the seatbelt for our health.

My plan is to introduce it to my life twice a day. I don't intend on replacing it in the mornings because coffee is one of the reasons I get out of bed, but I am going to sip on it around mid-afternoon, and perhaps again in the evening after dinner. I know it kind of tastes like grass, but a person can get used to anything... right? Who's with me?

P.S. Most people recommend Gyokuro green tea, which can be found on Amazon. Also, brewing instructions HERE.