Chai Tea: Letting Things Steep

I receive a lot of tea in March. Probably has something to do with my birthday being at the end of the month and my tendency to always have a cup of tea somewhere in my immediate vicinity. There’s one tea people don’t usually get me, though, and it’s because I’m supremely picky about it: chai.

Quick linguistics lesson. The word “chai” only means “tea.” The particular brand of tea we’re used to drinking here in America when we use this term is actually a “masala” chai, which is made of an array of spice and black tea. The thing about any masala is that ingredients may differ each time it’s prepared, based on things like region, occasions, and preferences. Due to chai’s mosaic nature, I’ll be listing off the different spices and what they do for the overall taste of the drink, then moving on to the instructions. This way, you can pick your own spice blend and then get cooking!

Cardamom is the most often mentioned spice in chai recipes I’ve found. Green cardamom is considered more traditional. It’s intensely fragrant, with sharp vegetal notes of green spice and pepper. The green pods are harvested before the black cardamom pods, which are muskier and more smoky. Cinnamon sticks can be added to bring out notes of sweetness and to give your drink a feeling of warmth. Fennel seeds offer a gentle anise or licorice note to the chai. Fresh ginger can give your chai a fresh vegetal spice note—and the good news is you won’t need much of it for that. Black peppercorns give the chai a spicy bite, which I’m rather a fan of. Those five are the most commonly combined spices, but there are some other options to consider depending on your palate. Whole cloves can give your chai a musky, strong taste. Coriander seeds lend a sweet and mild citrus note to the masala. And, if you happen to be a great fan of the anise or licorice flavor, star anise can be used instead of fennel seed to get that taste in your chai.

Once you’ve decided on your spice blend, you’ll need a few other things.

Ingredients:
Masala spice blend of choice
Water
Black tea (Darjeeling, Assam, and Ceylon are all top picks. Don’t spend too much on it as the spices will be the most important thing about the chai’s flavor)
Milk
Sweetener of choice (honey and brown sugar are recommended)

You’ll want about ⅓ the amount of milk as you have water. Your spice blend should be balanced as you see fit. You should have enough tea to steep the water you have well. For those of you left feeling uncomfortable without measurements, here’s one, two, three spice-specific and measurement-including chai recipes that you’ll love.

Once you’ve assembled your ingredients, the first thing you’ll want to do is crush and bruise your spices. Pods and cloves should be lightly crushed. Ginger should be sliced into rounds, you can leave the skin on. Cinnamon sticks can be bruised, they don’t need to be crumbled to give off their flavor. Add your spices and your water together in a pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for ten minutes or until fragrant. Covering your pot will keep too much water from burning off, since we are trying to make tea. Once you’re satisfied that your water has been sufficiently flavored by your chosen spices, remove the masala from heat, and add your tea. Let the tea steep as long as you like, but the recommendation seems to be about five minutes. Now you can add the milk and the sweetener of your choice. If the chai has cooled, you can return it to heat, but be sure to keep the heat just below a simmer or you risk scalding the milk in the tea. Once you’re satisfied with the taste, strain and serve!

Tea always takes a little while to steep, but this one has two steeping periods: one with the spices, and one with the tea. Both take a great deal of time, totally to about fifteen minutes if you’re simmering the spices for ten and steeping the tea for five. This is part of why chai is such an investment, and why its flavor is so distinctive. This month’s media tie in also has to do with a steeping of a sort—but this time it’s in hardship and time. Off putting, I know, but bear with me. This month, we’re going to talk about the portrayal of mental illness in Kingdom Hearts: Final Chapter Prologue and the new fifth season of Samurai Jack.

There are plenty of misconceptions about mental illness, from the idea that you can’t have one if you’re functioning to the idea that only certain people are susceptible. What’s exciting about these two different pieces of media is that they take two very capable heroes and show how anyone can develop a mental illness given enough time and misfortune.

Let’s take an element of Aqua’s gameplay in Kingdom Hearts. Aqua is a keyblade master, a keyblade wielder considered powerful enough to fend off the forces of darkness with the light of her heart and keyblade no matter the circumstances. But, even in a fantasy world, how realistic is it to expect someone to fend off the forces of darkness for ten years while living in the realm of darkness? During her travels in the realm of darkness, Aqua enters an area called The World Within (30:37). The area is littered with mirrors, and each time Aqua messes up—by choosing the wrong mirror, falling off the edge of an area, going the wrong way and having to start a puzzle over—Aqua’s own voice reverberates through the speakers, discouraging her. The things it says include “Just let go of everything and fade into the darkness,” “No one can save you, and no one wants to,” “You’ll never see the realm of light again,” “Is there any point in continuing this fight?” and “Your bonds of friendship only tie you down.”

As the player continues through the area, the voice starts triggering of its own accord, berating Aqua with discouragement even when she isn’t making mistakes. As if that weren’t enough to signify Aqua slowly developing a mental illness, in each of the three mirrors she goes through is a phantom of Aqua—identical to her and as solid as she is. It’s easy to see how these phantoms are part of Aqua, as it was her reflection that pulled her through the mirror into this world to begin with, and the first time Aqua encounters one of her reflections, it discourages her the same way the voice does (40:40). These phantoms attack Aqua, and even though she beats all three of them, the battle against them becomes more difficult each time (46:50, 52:43). The third phantom is much stronger than the other two and is capable of creating clones of itself that mutter discouragements at Aqua as they prowl around her. Each clone goes down with one hit, the real phantom being the only one that doesn’t immediately disappear after being struck—but if the player is distracted for too long dealing with the fake phantoms, they lose their ability to defend against the real one when she strikes. That particular attack might make the battle seem hopeless, but Aqua is able to kill all of the clones at once if she lands a hit on the real phantom. It’s a very literal way of demonstrating the way coping with one’s mental illness can at times require a large amount of energy, and how sometimes dealing with one problem (the real phantom) can help soothe other created ones (the clones of the phantom).

Media is often prone to portraying heroes as besting things like mental illness as something other than a part of themself. While a player or viewer of Aqua’s story might be inclined to write the voice and Aqua’s phantoms off as creations of the darkness and not part of Aqua herself, the game doesn’t pull any punches on the subject. If Aqua attempts to leave The World Within through the original mirror she was pulled through at any time before she’s finished fighting all three of her phantoms, she will find an incomplete reflection of herself in the mirror and be unable to pass through (49:29). In this way, the game undeniably confirms the voice of discouragement and the phantoms to be part of Aqua.

The game also shows Aqua developing coping mechanisms to deal with her illness. During her travels, Aqua encounters Terra, the friend she saved from the realm of darkness. This friend is fighting a battle of his own, trying to resist another’s soul possessing his body and mind. When Terra is winning his battle, we see the person he is fighting against bound by chains of light (1:21:09). By the end of the game, Aqua is also using these chains of light to bind the darkness (2:14:30). What’s exciting about this is that her illness isn’t being shown as something she can destroy. Mental illness is a condition, part of our biochemistry and brain pathways. It can’t be destroyed, only lived with, treated through coping mechanisms, medication, and counseling so that it doesn’t overtake us and continue to affect our quality of life. Aqua’s victory comes through learning to bind the darkness within her to live with her condition.

Jack is also dealing with a mental illness in the new season of Samurai Jack. The premise of the new season is that fifty years have passed since we last saw Jack, but that due to his time traveling, time no longer touches him. Having lost the magic sword that made it possible for Jack to destroy Aku, the villain of the series, Jack has fallen into serious mental turmoil. He hallucinates his parents and the people of his village in the past as they accuse him of abandoning them in the first episode, and in the second he argues with a clean shaven, robe wearing version of himself that mimics the version of Jack the viewer is familiar with from previous seasons. The argument occurs nine and a half minutes into the episode when Jack is losing a battle against a team of new foes. It goes like this:

Phantom Jack: It's time to end it, don't you think?
Jack: Never. They are just machines. I'll find a way. I always have.
PJ: When you have the sword, but now it's gone. There's no hope!
J: I've been doing fine without it.
PJ: Well, listen to you. And what are you going to do when Aku finds you and realizes you have no sword?
J: Aku doesn't know, and he hasn't shown himself in years. He keeps thinking that one of his machines can defeat me.
PJ: Maybe he's right. You haven't faced anything so powerful. How much longer can you keep this up?
J: It always seems bad at first, but then I find a way. They're just nuts and bolts, just nuts and bolts.
PJ: Who cares anymore?! There's no way home. There's nothing to fight for. There's no more honor. Come to think of it, the only honorable thing to do is—
J: Quiet.
PJ: No! I won't spend eternity in this forsaken time!
J: What do you want from me?
PJ: I want it to end. Aren't you tired? Wouldn't it be great to be free of all of this? Our ancestors are waiting for us. They want you to join them.
[Dramatic music] [Horse whinnies] [Horse snorting][Jack sees an opening to new shelter]
J: There.
PJ: You'll never make it! They'll get you!
J: I'll make it.

Jack makes use of several coping mechanisms in this short exchange. The first is to rationalize. His phantom makes a big sweeping statement about how there’s no hope, and Jack retaliates with data—mainly that he’s still alive and has made it this far without it. His phantom asks him what will happen when Aku finds out he’s lost the sword, and Jack rationalizes that Aku hasn’t found out yet, and that it’s likely he won’t since he only sends his minions these days. Then his phantom changes tactics and asks Jack how much longer he thinks he can win against these minions. Here, Jack minimizes the threat, reducing his enemies to nuts and bolts, reminding himself that it always seems bad at the beginning of a fight but that he finds his way through. Here Jack’s phantom gives up arguing logically and goes after Jack’s fear of death. The phantom doesn’t actually say the word “die,” but it’s implied given his use of “end it” at the beginning of the argument, and his implication that Jack’s ancestors want him to join them at the end. Jack disengages his phantom here, not allowing his phantom to speak the word “die,” instead interrupting him.

It’s obvious that Jack has been living with this condition for a time now, considering his sequential use of coping mechanisms up to this point. It becomes apparent that Jack is having a particularly bad attack, due to his shaking pupils at the beginning of the scene—something we’ve never seen Jack’s eyes do before—the physical appearance of a phantom of himself, and the failure of all of his coping mechanisms up to this point. Even at the end of the argument, Jack has yet to best his phantom. What ends the argument is Jack doing something his phantom tells him he can’t do—he makes to the temple he’s spotted, and loses his attackers in the twisting corridors. Sometimes when all other coping mechanisms fail, action can defeat a panic attack or other rut of negative thinking. Jack wins this round with his illness through just that.

What’s exciting about both of these portrayals of mental illness is that both characters cope with their conditions. Their conditions don’t defeat them. It doesn’t invalidate them. And it doesn’t stop them from living. These are powerful, truthful portrayals of conditions that one in five people will experience within their lifetimes. It means a lot to see them in our media.

Dandelions: Sorely Underestimated and Hugely Versatile

Apparently it’s not uncommon for small children to put all sorts of things in their mouths, but it was a miracle I survived my childhood with all of the poisonous plants and flowers I had at my disposal out in the woods of Boring, Oregon. Although there was a bit of an incident with the Fox Glove flower, there are in fact flowers you can eat that won’t make you sick. Here’s a nice long list of some of the ones you can eat and how best to prepare them. My favorites include rose petals, clover, and nasturtiums—but today we’re focusing on dandelions.

Perhaps the title of a particular Ray Bradbury book clued you in that dandelions could be used as a food source, perhaps you already knew, or perhaps you’re shocked. The dandelion, although often regarded as a common weed, is a plant that can be prepared in many ways. One can harvest the flowers to make wine with, collect the greens to include in salads or other dishes, and even cook and eat the roots. There’s a lot of advice out there about how to harvest dandelions, but let me quickly go over some of the most important stuff:

First of all, never harvest dandelions from areas that may have been sprayed with pesticides, near roads, or where people often take their pets to do their business. Secondly, start harvesting the leaves of the plant at the beginning of the season when the plants are young. Apparently the leaves are less bitter at this time in the dandelion’s lifespan. Continue to collect dandelion leaves until they become too bitter for you, and make note of when that is so you can collect leaves of an agreeable nature in the future. However, be aware that if the leaves are too bitter, you can always blanche or steam them to get rid of some of the bitterness. This is particularly effective when adding them to other dishes, such as a French cream of dandelion soup or a tasty vegetarian dandelion quiche. Third, if it’s dandelion flowers you’re after for cooking or wine making, be sure to get them early, when they’ve just flowered. If you leave them too long, these will also become bitter. And, lastly, if you’re trying to harvest the roots, be sure to dig deep. The dandelion root is long and thin like a carrot, so bring a gardening tool with you to get at the long roots without snapping them. To prepare the roots, simply treat them as if they were carrots—although apparently there is a way to roast them and use them as tea and coffee substitute as well if you’re interested in that!

If you want to make dandelion wine, there are a lot of different recipes and methods for brewing it out there. See here, here, and here for the best three I found.

As you can see, this common garden “weed” has been sorely underestimated and is actually hugely versatile; much like a couple of protagonists in two of my favorite franchises, Kingdom Hearts and Phoenix Wright.

The protagonist of Kingdom Hearts is a boy named Sora. In the first game of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, the player is led to believe that Sora is the main character of the game because he is the wielder of the Keyblade. The Keyblade is a mythical weapon that is said to be able to open and close off hearts. Sora uses the Keyblade to seal off the hearts from shadowy beings without hearts—fittingly called “the Heartless”—who hunt down and devour the hearts of individuals and worlds. The game was intended to be a one-shot, but very quickly was retconned for a series.  As the series progresses, the player learns that there are many Keyblades and that anyone with a heart can learn to summon them. However, the Keyblades are passed down from Keyblade users who deem others worthy of the honor of possessing a Keyblade. Sora was never given a Keyblade by a previous Keyblade wielder. His friend Riku, however, was. When Riku was unable to claim his Keyblade when his and Sora’s home world of the Destiny Islands was attacked by Heartless, Sora “borrowed” the power completely by accident. In short, Sora isn’t special—but it is how he deals with not being special that makes him the main character of the series:

The people Sora is talking about, of course, are his friends. He goes on to say that his friends are his power. The camera swoops out to show all of them behind him, connected through their hearts. To see the full scene, click here. In a way, Sora is the main character of Kingdom Hearts not because he is special, but because he is the most versatile member of the story due to his normalcy and willingness to be part of something bigger than just himself.

Rookie defense attorney Phoenix Wright of the Phoenix Wright franchise is even more of a regular Joe than Sora. Phoenix is a lawyer, and the sort of bumbling sweetie that always smiles and tries his best. His opinion of himself isn’t very high though…

And neither are his friends’ opinions of him…

But everything changes the moment Phoenix enters a court room.

In being the sort of bumbling sweetie that always smiles and tries his best, Phoenix becomes a force to be reckoned with in the court room, because his best must be the exposure of the truth and the protection of the innocent. In every way he is underestimated in his day to day life, but in every case in his video game and manga series, Phoenix fights his way to the truth successfully every time.

The last bit of media I’d like to share with you today is a little more directly related to the dandelion than our last two examples: the sports day chapters of Cardcaptor Sakura in which the Flowery card appears.

Sakura, unlike our other two protagonists, actually is a chosen one—and it is her task to collect the escaped magical Clow Cards that could cause all sorts of havoc if left unchecked. This particular episode takes place during her school’s sports day activities. What’s funny about this episode, however, is that no one thinks anything of the beautiful falling flowers and flower petals until the flowers begin to interfere with the sports day activities.

Flowers are so commonly used as a background panel filter in manga, that even the readers have it pointed out to them by the characters that there’s something strange about all of the flowers all over the pages.

In the end, Sakura manages to capture the Clow Card. Her guardian beast Kero (currently assuming his “power saving” form similar in appearance to a stuffed animal) comments on how easy it must have been since the card is good natured and fun loving.

Just goes to show one should never underestimate the value of anything. Happy dandelion hunting!

Ice Cream: Expectations

While I was in Japan, I ate a lot of ice cream—especially during the summer months. There were three flavors of ice cream that really struck me: matcha, sea salt, and soy sauce.

If you’ve gotten sea water in your mouth, doused sushi in too much soy sauce, or sampled really thick matcha, you might wonder why anyone would want to make ice cream out of such salty and bitter substances. Those of you who are familiar with the Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbon from the Portland Salt & Straw or any other strange flavor from your local artisan ice cream parlor may be less surprised—but when one hears “ice cream,” one often expects it to be something sweet. These three flavors offered an experience that was far from the one I had come to expect from ice cream.

Matcha ice cream is often served as a soft cream and topped with real matcha tea powder. It can also be found at any nearby Japanese Baskin Robbins in scoops. In comparison to the rich, dark tea taste of the Japan’s matcha ice cream, the green tea ice cream of the States is downright sweet.

Me with matcha ice cream.

Sea salt ice cream is the brainchild of the Disney Sea park in Chiba. Each area of the park is themed after a kingdom from a Disney movie. You can visit the center of the earth, Agrabah, and even Atlantica. Each area has its own theme for the food available. As you may have guessed, Atlantica’s theme is salt. Only “under the sea” is one able to get salted popcorn and the sea salt flavored ice cream that inspired Tetsuya Nomura, the creator of Kingdom Hearts. I had to try the ice cream in order to A) compare it to Salt & Straw’s version, and B) taste what had inspired the blue ice cream bars I’ve been coveting for most of my young adult life. The ice cream from Disney Sea comes in a cute shell and has a fruit center. The ice cream was tasty, and I enjoyed it for the novelty, but if you’re looking for truly delicious sea salt ice cream, I would recommend scheduling a trip to Portland and the Salt & Straw.

Me and two friends at Tokyo Disney Sea eating sea salt ice cream.

The last type of ice cream was the one I didn’t come to Japan expecting to try. I was raised to be the sort of person who will try any type of food once, so when a teacher mentioned soy sauce ice cream to me, I was intrigued. Soy sauce in Japan is far more than just liquid salt. There are different kinds, different flavor combinations, different levels of intensity of flavor. Picking a soy sauce can be as complicated as picking a fine wine. This was reflected by the ice cream. One might have expected it to taste salty. Instead, it tasted like one of those soy sauce coated rice crackers. There was something salty, yet sticky and sweet about it.

My very first soy sauce ice cream.

I want to talk a little about how expectation plays a role in media today—especially when it comes to secret identities and love triangles—or, as with Miraculous Ladybug (aka Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir and Miraculous), love squares.

The two main characters of Miraculous Ladybug are the super heroes Ladybug and Chat Noir (he’s called “cat noir” in the English dub, but you get the idea). These super heroes daywalk as Marinette and Adrian. Now, get ready for the geometry. Marinette likes Adrian, but Adrian as Chat Noir fancies Ladybug, who is Marinette. Sadly, these two have no idea they’re just crushing on the other’s alter ego, and so Adrian is nice to Marinette, but not too nice, and Ladybug is constantly outwitting Chat Noir’s charming (if pun-tastic) flirting. The only thing keeping them from realizing who the other is? Their expectations about their different identities. Adrian’s ladylove couldn’t possibly be someone as ordinary as Marinette, and Marinette’s sweet kind-hearted Adrian could never be so full of bad cat-themed humor as Chat Noir…right? It’s going to be all kinds of fun when these two finally figure it out. Let’s hope it follows Sailor Moon’s example and cinches this particular plot bunny before the end of season one.

Marinette and Adrian visually expressing their love square in the Miraculous Ladybug opening.

Next, I know we’ve talked about Undertale before, but it bears bringing up again. Those of you nostalgic for the 8-bit games of the 90’s will want to pick up this particular little number. I don’t want to say too much, but those of you who have played know the merit of playing this game through twice. You may think you know what’s going on, due to your unspeakable experience with video games and understanding of plot…but that is precisely what the game wants you to think. Undertale is like a wine that gets better with age, because the second time you play it, you’ll come at it with a completely different understanding of the characters, the world, and the story you’re being told.

(This is where those of you who don’t want spoilers for the game should stop.)

For example, let’s talk about Mettaton. The robot celebrity is first met when the player enters the laboratory of Royal Scientist, Doctor Alphys. Alphys makes Mettaton out to be a robot that has gone rogue and is out for human blood. Mettaton then tries to kill the player through all manner of entertainment programs, ranging from quiz shows to cooking shows to Romeo and Juliet type drama—but each time he is about to succeed, Alphys comes through and saves the player. In the player’s final encounter with Mettaton, Mettaton tells the player that Alphys was fooling them the whole time. There was never any danger, and Mettaton would rather entertain humans than hurt them. He just played along so Alphys could pretend to help you.

As a player who has had plenty of villains try to sway my mind with lies, I immediately disbelieved Mettaton. No way he was going to get out of taking responsibility for trying to kill me multiple times just by trying to make out like it had been a game. No way he was going to undermine the bonds of trust and friendship Alphys and I had built by braving his trials together. So I paid him no mind, and I fought him, and I won, and Alphys told me she had one more lie she had to confess to me, and didn’t deny anything Mettaton had said, and when I played the second time around, it was obvious that Mettaton was acting. It was amazing how different my responses to Alphys and Mettaton were. Since my original expectation of Mettaton was that he was my adversary, I read all of his antagonistic text as serious the first time through. The second time, it was impossible to take him seriously.

The moment Mettaton made me laugh most on my second playthrough.

Even though the evidence was there the first time I played through the game, my expectation of what was going to happen overpowered it. And this is just one example of how Undertale uses your expectations against you—a sweet little reminder to keep an open mind.

Now go eat some strange ice cream.