Mocha Ginseng

Stopped by Fair Trade today to get some tea. As one of their herbals, they had Mocha Ginseng. I couldn’t help but be curious. Chocolate coffee makes a world of sense: I mean, beans and beans, right? But beans and leaves, never! The barista let me smell the tea as preview when I asked her how “chocolaty” it was (this conversation was not as steamy as it sounds). Well, it smelled chocolaty, but then I thought “tea never tastes as strong as it smells,” so I should be in the clear. Stupid me. So as you may have wisely guessed by now, the tea sucked. I do realize that I have not helped anyone who might be confronted with the same decision in the future, but simply confirmed the universally acknowledged fact, tea and chocolate just do not mix.

By the way, while I’m on the subject of beans, the only good thing that every came out of Silvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is the beans part where she disagrees with my formula above. Here are Esther’s thoughts in the psychiatric ward:

“Now I knew perfectly well you didn’t serve two kinds of beans together at a meal. Beans and carrots, or beans and peas, maybe, but never beans and beans. [The orderly] was just trying to see how much we could take.”