There are many stories about tea. But one of the most legends is the legend of the Emperor Shen Nung from 2737 BC. In addition to being a respected leader, Shen Nung was also a scholar, AND an herbalist. Legend has it that for reasons of hygiene he decided to boil ALL drinking water first. This is to ensure that there are certainly no more bacteria in the drinking water. On one of his many travels, Shen Nung stopped to rest and boiled his water under a wild tea bush. A few leaves from the bush fell into his water and turned his water brown. Immediately he was interested, he smelled good. When he liked the smell, he decided to take a careful sip… and the rest is history. Tea as a drink was born!
In any case, this story is much more plausible than a story about the Indian monk Bodhidharma. That story tells of Bodhidharma, later founder of ZEN, who is said to have traveled to China to meditate there for nine years. He would have cut off his eyelids to stay awake. Ouch, a bit lurid, right? In any case, where his eyelids fell to the ground, a plant would have emerged miraculously. The leaves of that plant are said to have a stimulating effect. And because he meditated on a mountain with the naan T'a, the word Thee is said to have originated.
These are just two of the legends, there are others, but it remains the same for me. I seriously have no idea how Thee came to be. When tea originated and why it originated. It doesn't matter to me either ... I'm happy with the existence of Thee!
It's the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning. Boil water and make two cups of tea. I am a real tea drinker and very rarely drink a cup of coffee, but my partner also starts the day with a cup of tea. He only drinks a few cups of coffee at work, but he also always drinks tea at home. This has come after he was plagued by severe headaches every day a few years ago. Those headaches started after the end of the working day. The same every day, you could almost set the clock on it. Of course, at first we didn't know what was going on at all, but at a certain point I thought that the amount of coffee he drank per day might be a cause.
This was easy to test. So the next day we decided to leave the coffee for what it was and drink only tea for a month. He didn't like it at first. He really had to get used to it, but the reward was great when from the second day all the headaches disappeared ... and never came back. Very rarely it still happens that he still wants to drink some more coffee, but then he immediately knows in the evening that it is not the best choice he could have made.
It is known that tea was mainly used as a medicine and fortifying drink in the first two centuries after its discovery. Only after two centuries did tea become a pleasure drink! And if you know that, then it might also be interesting to look at the medicinal powers tea has.
Most famously, tea was used in the earliest history of tea as a treatment for mild asthma and bronchitis. The antioxidants that naturally occur in tea were the main reason for this.
But drinking tea has multiple health benefits. We also know that tea contains fluoride. And also the polyphenols in tea help to reduce tooth decay. Recent research has further shown that tea inhibits the growth of other harmful microorganisms in the oral cavity.
Health benefits of the same antioxidants and polyphenols are also known, such as a reduction in the risk of cancer, for example. To achieve these health benefits, a daily intake of 4-6 cups of tea would be sufficient.
These health benefits naturally apply to all teas made from the same tea bush, but not always to herbal teas. Although there are often other health benefits associated with this, originating from the herbs used to make the tea.
There is of course much more to tell about tea. But for that I would rather write a complete blog, with many more photos. Unfortunately I don't have those pictures at the moment. Let's say you owe this.
For me, tea is in any case the drink that I can drink all day long, and that I literally drink all day long. Summer or winter, it doesn't matter. It actually never bores me. There is simply too much variation with tea for that.
I found my inspiration for this challenge when I found the original Not So Ordinary Challenge, founded by 
