I heard on the morning news "New evidence: drinking tea after a stressful situation can help people recover from that stress!"

And I was all happy and amused. Because, one thing, I'm always happy when Something I Learned From British Golden Age Mysteries seems to actually be true, and for another, it's so NICE to for-once have a "medical news" story that's not "Here's yet another horrifying way you can die from something you have little control over."

So I looked it up online, curious whether it was some compound in the tea that helped, or if it was the act of making tea (stopping and taking time to do something "normal" in a stressful situation).

Turns out the "study" was actually a stinking poll. Possibly not even a "scientific" poll, as it does not say whether it was an "opt-in" situation (as in: call if you feel strongly about this) or it was a randomly selected group of people who were asked (which is more scientific).

At any rate, the conclusions that Brits find tea comforting was largely attributed to "cultural factors" - as in, it might not work for Americans. (And the news story I saw had the predictable person-on-the-street commentary, including one woman who proclaimed, "When do we have time to drink tea? We all have to work for a living!" Good grief, woman.)

That said, I am thinking of buying a new electric kettle (even though such things are technically taboo in the building where I have my office; we've been told alternately that "someone might forget one plugged in and start a fire" and "it has a heating element, and that could overload the electrical system" but water boiled in a microwave does not seem the same) and making tea again over in my office.

Incidentally, a current favorite among teas is Adagio's raspberry black tea (I have the decaf version). It is very light, the raspberry doesn't overpower the tea. And it's good "plain" (without milk and sugar - in fact, I don't think milk would be so good in this one). It has bits of dried raspberry and what look like raspberry leaves mixed in with the black tea (for years, some herbalists have used raspberry leaf tea as a way of treating certain "female complaints")