Tragedy is the word for the day, apparently

I kind of overdid the Starbucks last week. I guess I was feeling extra tired and pitifully in need of comfort food/drink. And for some reason, just the smell of a Starbucks store floods me with joy and contentment. And I'm not even kidding. If they would bottle that smell, I'd be first in line to buy a case and start spritzing my world.



On Saturdays Mark makes a Starbucks run and we sit on our little spots on the couches and sip coffee, read The Oklahoman, and drop crumbs all over the furniture from my Orange Cranberry Scone and his Cream Cheese Danish. We're creatures of habit. But this past Saturday a tragedy occurred while another tragedy was avoided. A dog, oblivious of my need for a steaming grande soy vanilla rooibos latte, ran in front of the car. Since it was a dog and not a cat, Mark applied the brakes, and MY drink went flying. (I just lost all you fellow blog readers who love cats. It's not so much that I don't like cats, it's that they make me itch and sneeze and they don't wag their tales to tell me how they feel. I don't like guessing. A dog tells you right off what they think).



So anyway, I was forced to choose between asking Mark to go back to Starbucks, or drink something else. To be fair, he immediately offered to go back. But I'm just not that selfish. But don't think I didn't consider it!



All that to say, I discovered I could make a pretty darn good soy vanilla rooibos latte at home. Rooibos tea is from South Africa, and when we lived in Joburg, it was my drink of choice. I brought back large quantities, and then had anyone I knew who was traveling that way bring me some more. Then I ran out and it was a tragedy. But then, glory to God, the USA discovered rooibos. It's sort of pronounced roy'-bus. But you have to roll the "r" and stretch out to rooooy, and the "bus" part sounds more like a hiss with a "b" in the front. OK, so I'm not a linguist. But you don't have to pronounce it correctly to try something new. You'll love it!



Ingredients:

1/2 cup vanilla soy milk
2 tsps sugar (can't be helped)
Rooibos Tea (often called Red Tea or White Tea - don't know why they can't decide, but look at the box and it should say Rooibos)
Hot water - duh






Heat your water in the kettle, heat your soy milk in the microwave or steam it however you prefer. Add 2 tsps sugar to the steamed milk. I would NOT recommend using honey instead of sugar. The honey overpowers the rooibos flavor. Add your tea bag and your hot water, let it steep a bit and there you go. Leave the bag in. It won't get too strong like a black tea.






And if you want the full experience, put it in a to-go cup with a lid, write your name on it, and have a loved one yell out "Grande Soy Vanilla Rooibos Latte for Cari at the Bar". Ahhhhh. Joy in a cup.


And that, my friends, is as close to a recipe as you are going to get on this blog.