Although generally very good on its own, tea is sometimes better when you add things to enhance its taste.  Unfortunately, with the current economic problems, some of these things are less practical to buy.  The object of this post is to suggest slightly more affordable ways to add things to your tea.  Although there are lots of things you can add to tea, I’m going to concentrate on the four most traditional items: sugar, milk, honey, and lemon.

Sugar is definitely the most common tea additive, especially for new tea drinkers.  Usually, sugar is easy to find in your home, and it sweetens tea, which can sometimes be bitter.  Thankfully, you don’t need to add much sugar for tea to taste wonderful and it isn’t as expensive as many other sweeteners.

Another common addition to tea is milk.  Again, milk is easy to find in your home.  It also gives tea a slightly different flavor, and you don’t need to add much milk for it to work.  The downside of adding milk to your warm tea is that milk is cold and sometimes brings down the temperature of the tea (which can be a good thing or a bad thing).

Moving on to slightly less common things to put in your tea, honey is another sweetener that is added to tea and can be used as a healthier alternative to sugar.  However, honey is often more expensive than sugar and more needs to be added to bring out the sweetness.  In addition, honey may be harder to find around your home.

Like honey, lemon is an excellent addition to tea, usually in the form of a lemon slice in the cup.  However, some people may not have lemons on hand unless they have a lemon tree in their backyard.  Lemons are more expensive than most items used in tea, especially when they are out of season, and lemons spoil faster than any of the other additives I mentioned.  I have found that a good alternative to fresh lemons is a bottle of lemon juice, which can be found at most grocery stores.  A drop or two takes the place of a lemon slice and is less expensive.

Of course, this is just the beginning.  There are dozens of way to save money on tea, and other alternatives to the traditional items.  When all else fails, tea tastes very good all by itself.

MAIN: IMAGE1: IMAGE2