iced tea.

One happy surprise of working at home is that I can make (and drink) gallon after gallon of sun tea.

Although I am still working, and still staring at a computer screen most of the day, I feel a little more connected to the world around me here. Cubicle walls are isolating and demoralizing. So I sit in this brown chair in the morning (where I’m also sitting now), and I drink coffee and write, and this room is cool and a little dark. The sun is hitting the front of the house, rising over Route 6, and coming through the windows across the living room, and the big window on the front door. The stairs, directly behind the front door, are practically glowing in the morning when the sun comes in.

Eventually I make my way to the dining room table, spread out my piles of papers and notes, turn on my computer. The room gets lighter, lunch passes by, and around 1pm, the sun starts to hit the windows in the dining room, the ones facing west. So I get out a giant mason jar (or the kickass glass pitcher I just picked up at Atlantic Spice Company) and I fill it up with cold water and tea (right now a rotation of earl grey, gunpowder green, or spearmint). It sits in the sun there for a few hours and gets golden. Meanwhile I drink two or three or four glasses of the iced tea I made yesterday while I work in the afternoon.

I love having rituals. I also love iced tea in the summer, on the Cape.

An important note:, all of the above teas are wildly good with a splash of saffron and cardamom lemonade concentrate in them. We came back from Turkey with quite a haul of saffron, and I’ve been sitting on it, saving it up for something really special. This is the perfect way to use a little bit.