Why you shouldn't try foreign things.

Recently, I discovered through one of my favourite websites that in Russia, it is perfectly natural to drink one's tea with jam in it. Now, I am a tea puritan and as such, under normal circumstances, I wouldn't even be tempted to tamper with my tea in such a dangerous manner. However, this time curiosity got the better of me. It was one of those cases of "I love tea! I love jam! How can this possibly fail???"

Now, I had such faith because I have tried unusual food combinations in the past and they have actually WORKED. The best example of this would be chocolate bacon (which I keep meaning to make for the boyfriend. Oops). It was just the perfect combination of sweet and savoury, nice and crispy, like an orgasm in miniature. Truly glorious. But anyway, as you may have already gathered, the same experience was not to be had with the jammy tea. Just because two things are nice separately does not mean they should be combined under ANY circumstances EVER. 

I looked up brewing instructions on the ever-helpful Wikipedia, and as instructed, I made a cup of strong black tea with no sugar. I think this was already a harbinger of disaster. I HATE black tea. But anyhow, I proceeded to add two large spoonfuls of blackberry jam. I stirred it for ages and ages and ages and it still refused to dissolve. Horrid little bits of seed kept floating to the top of the cup. But by this time I had committed myself to it, and I raised it to my lips for the first sip.

It actually wasn't all that bad to start off with. It was unusual, but at least the jam took the foul edge off the bitter black tea. However, the more I drank, the fouler it got. Here are my feelings in graph format:

I actually did manage to force myself to drink the whole bloody thing. The last couple of swallows were the most repulsive of all. My mouth was filled by this disgusting berry sediment - and you should all know my feelings on SEDIMENT. Ptooey! (That was me spitting). I think afterwards I looked something like this:

I had to drink about 16787561 cups of normal-person tea before I recovered. Actually, speaking of normal-person tea, remind me to do a blog one day on correct tea-brewing etiquette.

So obviously my lesson for the day is to never try foreign foods ever, no matter how tempting the combinations of things may sound.

I realise this lesson is rather silly considering that foreign food makes up most of my diet, but you get the idea!