It's for making single cups of tea using tea leaves. To help reduce our waste, I stopped using tea bags some time ago, but as I am frequently making just one cup for myself, using the tea pot all the time is annoying me a bit, so I was quite enamoured with this little contraption.
As I was standing at the counter buying it, a little voice in the back of my head was whispering "It's just more piece of clutter to take up space in your kitchen drawers!" But the other part of my brain was too busy rationalising the purchase by calculating the number of cups of tea I have a day versus the amount of water used to rinse the teapot out afterwards, etc etc.
So I bought it. And used it for, oh, four days? Before this happened:
It bent out of shape. Now it doesn't seal properly any more (and I can't fix it), so the tea leaves leak out into my cuppa. I had to go back to using the tea pot and old strainer.
I think there is a moral in there somewhere.
6 comments:
I think you should take it back to the place you purchased it and get a replacement or your money back. Manufacturers need to know they are producing poor quality products and retailers need feed back to know what not to stock! I love my single tea infuser - it's just a cheap wire looking one from the supermarket. Only thing about it is it looks quite rusty so I am never sure if it is safe to use (I keep using it all the same as I too get annoyed washing out the tea pot just for me!). Happy tea drinking :) !
You can get infuser tea cups - they're great! Last forever too, I've had mine for 10 years or so, I make herbal tea from loose leaf blends and I wouldn't be without it as I only make one cup at a time. I got mine from a shop where I buy my tea, but you can find them on the internet - here's an example of what I'm talking about on ebay http://cgi.ebay.com.au/*Chinese-coffee-Tea-cup-infuser*_W0QQitemZ180254164166QQcmdZViewItem?IMSfp=TL080615101a11792
So you pop the leaves in the insert thing with the holes, put that inside the tea cup and pour over the boiling water. Pop the lid on so you don't lose the heat and let it infuse. Then when it's done I take the insert out (slowly, otherwise you can bring some water with you and it comes out the holes all over your hands usually and it's boiling hot!) and voila, one cup of tea!
I let the leaves drain in the insert, the excess liquid will drain out the holes and then chuck them in the compost.
I agree with Rebecca. I had a similar experience, though. I swore to only buy secondhand clothes this year. I found myself buying a new pair of jeans at a chain store with the excuse that they were a bargain. Got them home, wore them once and the seam came undone up one leg. Needless to say I took then back! Meanwhile the near new pair I got from Lifeline fit perfectly, are wearing well and cost much less!
I've got one of those tea thingies somewhere - I'll find it and send it to you if you like. I like the ritual of the teapot!
Hi Rebecca,
Ordinarily I would have taken it back for a refund, but I rarely visit the shopping centre where I bought it, and these days it would cost me as much in petrol as it cost to buy it, just to return it. To be honest, in a perverse kind of way I like it staring at me in the drawer each morning, as it reminds me to "simplify, simplify" as Thoreau said.
Keely, that tea cup is pretty snazzy, I might put one on my Christmas list for the girls to get me :-)
Hi Suz, The jeans thing is so typical isn't it? And frustrating. I haven't gotten into the teapot ritual as yet, as I am primarily a coffee drinker - my ritual is the morning espresso in my stovetop pot. I should start applying the same deliberateness to my tea drinking as well... Thanks for the offer of the tea infuser, but as I said to Rebecca, in a perverse kind of way I like being reminded that I can be dumb sometimes ;-)
Cheers, Julie
LOL... I have similar issues at home here! I simply must have up to 4 cups of tea per day - mostly green. And *whispering* they're teabags (gasp) *shh*
So I gotta change somehow here too.
My hubby kept telling me if its still not used for a season - chuck it! (I translate that as either freecycling or recycling it - ;) )
Thanks for the laughs, Julie!
I just bought a pretty soap dispenser from Spotlight as it was on sale for $2. Put the soap in and it leaks. I'm not going back, I am just going to learn the lesson.
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