If you look up ‘tea’ in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points.

This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.

When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:

• First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea.
• Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities — that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad.
• Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.
• Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes — a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.
• Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.
• Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference.
• Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.
• Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one’s tea is always half cold before one has well started on it.
• Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.
• Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.
• Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.Some people would answer that they don’t like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.

These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary uses of tealeaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one’s ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled, ought to represent.

A Nice Cup of Tea by George Orwell

Radio Norwich: Up with the Partridge.
Alan: You’re joining me, Alan Partridge, and Peter Baxendale Thomas of the Norfolk Farmer’s Union. Now, yesterday I, sort of, trod in a rather large farmer’s pat when I made some comments about intensive farming. Where did I go wrong?
Peter: Well I think your comments were ill founded. They were deeply ignorant, they showed a complete lack of understanding of modern agricultural methods, and simply served to highlight the sort of intense stupidity that farmers encounter from armchair pundits who forget to think before they open their mouths. But with a full and frank apology that you’re about to give us this morning I’m sure you can dig yourself out of this rather ugly hole.
Alan: Yeah. Erm, sorry. Er, do you have any requests, anybody you want to say hello to, or…?
Peter: Look, I’m just trying to say that when you make ignorant comments like you did the other day, you serve simply to alarm the public and inflame the farmers, which is exactly what you’ve done. Why don’t you just apologise and make it nice and simple—
Alan: Thought that’d fool you. You could talk the hind-legs off a donkey. But your donkeys are probably born without hind legs because of all the chemicals you put in their… chips.
Peter: Alan, I don’t have donkeys. And even if I did I wouldn’t feed them chips. This is exactly the sort of rubbish you came up with the other day when you talked about putting a spine in a bap.
Alan: I admit that was a mistake. I shouldn’t have said bap.
Peter: Well, good. Well, that’s a start.
Alan: Well, no, I should have said baguette. Because a spinal column would fit in a baguette.
Peter: Listen, you’ve upset half the farmers in this community. You seem to alienate everybody you come across, including, I gather, your wife, which is why you end up living like some bloody tramp in a lay-by.
Alan: It’s a travel tavern.
Peter: I don’t care what you call your sordid little grief-hole. It makes no difference to me. The fact is that an awful lot of my colleagues are—
Alan: Are farmyard animals, yes.
Peter: You’re talking about my friends, here.
Alan: I’ve probably got more friends than you’ve got cows.
Peter: This is ridiculous.
Alan: How many cows have you got?
Peter: I’ve got a hundred cattle.
Alan: Yeah, I’ve got a hundred and four friends.
Peter: I don’t see what this is going to gain you. Why don’t you just issue a frank and full retraction of what you said, and you’ll get yourself out of a lot of silly bother.
Alan: Yeah, you are a big posh sod with plums in your mouth.
Peter: I don’t think it’s got anything to do with class—
Alan: And the plums have mutated and they’ve got beaks.
Peter: Beaks?
Alan: Yes, beaks.
Peter: Have you got any more of this, or do you want to stop at quacking plums?
Alan: No, no. You make pigs smoke.
Peter: I want to know where you think you earned the right to go swanning off on these ludicrous flights of—
Alan: Ah, swans. You feed beefburgers to swans.
Peter: Do I?
Alan: Yes, you do.
Peter: All right, well, perhaps you can tell me what’s wrong with feeding beefburgers to swans?
Alan: What?
Peter: Well if you fill a swan’s stomach up with beefburgers it’s full of fat and it’ll float better. That’s why we do it.
Alan: Really?
Peter: No, you complete cretin. I’m just contributing to this total farce. What else are you going to accuse me of?
Alan: I’ll tell you what. You farmers, you don’t like outsiders, do you? You like to stick to your own.
Peter: What do you mean by that?
Alan: I’ve seen the big-eared boys on farms.
Peter: Oh, for goodness’ sake.
Alan: If you see a lovely field with a family having a picnic, and there’s a nice pond in it, you fill in the pond with concrete, you plough the family into the field, you blow up the tree, and use the leaves to make a dress for your wife who’s also your brother.
Peter: Look, have I got anything else to say here or shall I go?
Alan: Well, listen, I’ll tell you what the point is. You have big sheds, but nobody’s allowed in, and inside these big sheds are twenty-foot high chickens. Because of all the chemicals you put in them.
Alan: And these chickens are scared. They don’t know why they’re so big. They go “oh why am I so massive?” And they’re looking down on all the other little chickens, and they think they’re in an aeroplane because all the other chickens are so small… do you deny that? No. His silence, I think, speaks volumes.
Alan: And… and basically, do you agree that everything I’ve said thus far is completely correct?
Lynn: Yes.
Lynn: Yes.
Alan: And do you also run over badgers in your tractor, for fun?
Lynn: Yes.
Alan: Thank you, Peter Baxendale Thomas. This is T’Pau.

Steve Coogan to reprise Alan Partridge role in new online series [YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS.]

Dumpsters are frequently misused. Few communities have laws which appropriately regulate the usage of dumpsters or if they do have laws regulating usage they are not always enforced. Those who misuse dumpsters should be heavily fined to serve as a deterrent for such misuse.

Figure 1. This dumpster in a mall parking lot is being misused. It has been filled to capacity and is overflowing. Construction debris is scattered around the dumpster in a public access parking lot. There is no barrier between the dumpster and the public to prevent access and to prevent visual pollution.

Dumpster Damnation

Daglas is from a time when fast food represented the freedom of the American road rather than the talons of the American oligarchy, when each restaurant had its own beloved idiosyncrasies, and the faint air of disrepute owed more to the raffish customer base than to the calorie count of the grilled cheese sandwich with pastrami.

Text from Daglas Drive-in: Hamburger Stand By Me. Photo by Anne Fishbein.

The timeline of the burrito documents the use of the burrito, a food made with tortillas and filling found in Mexico and the United States. Hand-held take-out foods like the burrito have a long history. Before the Spanish colonization of the Americas, indigenous peoples were eating hand-held snack foods like corn on the cob, popcorn and pemmican. In Mexico, the Spanish observed Aztecs selling take-out foods like tamales, tortillas, and sauces in open marketplaces. The Pueblo people of the desert Southwest also made tortillas with beans and meat sauce fillings prepared much like the modern burrito we know today.[1]

16th century

Cuisine preceding the development of the modern taco, burrito, and enchilada was created by the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Aztec peoples of Mexico, who used tortillas to wrap foods, with fillings of chile sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, squash, and avocados. Spanish missionaries like Bernardino de Sahagún wrote about Aztec cuisine, describing the variety of tortillas and their preparation, noting that the Aztecs not only used corn in their tortillas, but also squash and amaranth, and that some varieties used turkey, eggs, or honey as a flavoring.[2]

19th century

1840

Burrito created in 1840s American Southwest/Northwestern Mexico. Spiced meat wrapped in flour tortillas made popular by gold miners who worked with burros. Janey M. Rifkin in Hispanic Times Magazine claims this was the original source of meat.[3] If true, it would be out of desperation; burro meat is not considered palatable[citation needed]

20th century

1923

Alejandro Borquez opens Sonora cafe in Los Angeles (later renamed El Cholo Spanish Cafe)[4]

1934

Burrito mentioned in U.S. media for first time.
Restaurente del Bol Corona opens in Tijuana, Mexico.

…

Timeline of the burrito