🍵 418 I'm a teapot
Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
Long ago, the four elements worked together in harmony.
Then, everything changed when the steeping method changed. Only the appliance, master of all four elements could maximize the flavours of a brew. My household had been making tea wrong for hundreds of days.
Then, this winter, my wife and I discovered the new high-end teapot, an electric appliance, and although its water boiling skills were great, we've got a lot to learn before we're ready to host anyone... but, I believe this teapot can serve the world!
It's always fun to pull a pop-culture reference to Avatar: The Last Airbender 😆
In all seriousness, though, I needed to express how life-changing it is to go from "simple brew" to "proper, full steeping" when it comes to making tea. I've been making little cups of herbal tea from David's Tea for about a year now, throughout the pandemic, and, the bulk of those results were arguably just terrible. The teas were still tasty, but, when compared to using a proper appliance that could steep the tea for 5-10 minutes at the right temperatures rather than simply fall, straight down to room temperatures in either a simple mug or simple teapot – the difference is like night and day.
So much more of all the good flavours actually come out! It's a lot like rice cookers. Having a great rice cooker is game-changing, in Asian culture's common-sense. Having a great tea kettle is the same in many ways.
To date, we've only ever made tea using this Buydeem kettle. There are tons of other ways to use it, too. It's marketed as being able to make tea, soups, stews, desserts, and more. Wild, eh?
Speaking of Tea Time, it's always good form to refer to Kongou (from Kantai Collection) when discussing tea – she's that loveable shipgirl who is basically half-Japanese, half-British and all BURNING LOVE. The blonde shipgirl with the crown is Warspite. The others are the four Kongou sisters, from left to right: Kirishima, Kongou, Hiei (in the background), and Haruna.
We're currently living in extremely dark times right now with a literal war involving a nuclear superpower state.
♛ Keep Calm and Tea Time!
Last, but not least, you might have been wondering what the deal is with "418 I'm a teapot". It's basically a fun bit of trivia about web communication protocols. 418 is one of the possible error codes. See Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP), and also List of HTTP Status Codes.