Rooibos tea.

Being reduced to clear liquids recently reminded me how much I liked drinking hot beverages. I somehow got out of the habit of drinking them. This didn't make any sense, particularly during the winter. (I lose my brain in the winter, that's my story.)

One of those hot beverages is rooibos tea, which has become quite trendy outside South Africa since the end of apartheid.

I see a lot of expensive varieties of this herbal tea in the shops here, but for my money the mass-market rooibos tea popular in South Africa is just fine for me. It's what I'm used to anyway.

An eighty tea bag box of Five Roses Rooibos Select for R24.49 ($3.10) at the local Pick n Pay will really do me just fine. I've been working on my current box since my last trip to South Africa.

Because I started drinking the stuff there, I drink it hot with milk and sugar, or as sweetened iced tea. It was a great discovery to find a standard tea option that came without caffeine. I basically spent the last five weeks of my trip to Southern Africa drinking it with each meal. It never got old.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask anyone coming back from South Africa to bring back a box. (Of course I'll pay.) The stuff is cheap and light, although the box tends to get smashed on the way home. I put mine in a tupperware container, so the box got back to the States intact only to get crushed in a move from Connecticut. (I might even be able to supply a tupperware container.)