Weekend recipe: Chai tea

Baby, it's cold outside. And also iced over. And that's why we haven't gone past the front door in three straight days. Aghhhh...
Thank you for humoring my temporary freak out. Anyway, as I was saying, it's down right cold.
To combat the chill, I've taken to coffee, cocoa and my most favorite warm beverage: tea. And my favoritest of favorites is chai.
It's soothing and milky. It has a slight caffeine kick. It's spicy. It pretty much gets me through this rough patch of cabin fever. Fevah!
So while this is not a recipe for babies or toddlers, an occasional recipe for mommies and daddies is important, too. After all, it's rather hard to feed Josie if Mommy's all cross-eyed and itchy from being stuck indoors for 72 consecutive hours.

Chai tea
Time
About 20 minutes
Ingredients and Equipment
- 4 to 6 cups of water
- 3 to 4 bags of black tea (Don't used flavored black tea; just plain like assam or darjeeling or pekoe. And truthfully, plain old Lipton's is the best.)
- whole milk
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 6 whole cloves
- 6 green whole cardamom pods
- a dozen whole black peppercorns

- 1/2 to 1 cup white sugar (optional)

- saucepot
- ladle
- sieve
Directions
- Bring water to a boil in the saucepot and drop in the tea bags. Make sure to add enough bags to brew a strong, very dark tea.
- Also drop in the whole spices, though you should crush the cardamom pods in your hands before adding to the mix.
-Stir in the sugar. (Alternatively, you can leave the sugar out and sweeten my the mugful or leave it plain.)
- Turn the heat down to the lowest setting and cover with a lid. Let the tea and spices steep for 10 minutes.
- Turn the heat up just slightly and add several splashes of whole milk.
- Serve warm. (Place the sieve over a mug and ladle the chai into the sieve to strain out the whole spices.)