the tea-making

There's nothing like a good cup of tea... wouldn't you agree?

For Christmas this year, Nathan surprised me with the perfect gift: the Breville Tea Maker.

I'll be honest; I didn't even know that such a thing existed. But knowing my affinity for tea, when he saw it he knew it was just the thing for me.

It's like a coffee maker in the sense that you can fill it with tea leaves and program it to start whenever you want, it does all the work, it can keep your tea warm for you, etc. But it's so much better than a coffee maker, because hey, it's tea. (Coffee = good. But tea > coffee.)

So ever since Christmas, I've been enjoying perfect-brewed cups of loose-leaf tea. (Mostly herbal, of course -- I know pregnant women aren't supposed to have much caffeine; don't worry.)

All you need to do is start with some of this:

Scoop your tea into the tea basket, and fill the glass kettle with the desired amount of water:

And wait for the tea maker to bring your water to exactly the right temperature for your particular kind of tea. Then it will lower the automatic tea basket into the water to steep for exactly the right amount of time.

The display pad lets you choose your options, and then keeps you in the loop during brewing:

And when it's finished brewing the perfect cup of tea, it beeps at you quietly and in a perfectly non-intrusive sort of way to let you know that your tea is ready and waiting.

Then all that's left to do is to sit and enjoy it!

(Which I have been doing many times a day.)

Disclaimer: This post was in no way sponsored by Breville, because let's face it, my blog is small potatoes to a company like Breville. But if they did wish to send me a dozen tea makers, I would gladly accept them, and would put one in each room of my house so I could roam from room to room and be constantly sipping tea.