Trying to like tea

It's been 4 days since I've had any coffee and I've decided to use this momentum as an impetus for curbing my addiction to coffee.  Currently, I hate tea.  HATE IT.  Hate the smell, hate the look, hate the taste.

But I'm a firm believer than I convince myself to like anything in the world if I really really want to.  For example, I forced myself to eat broccoli so much that it's now one of my favorite vegetables! I'm currently trying to do the same with asparagus and green beans.  My secret with learning to like vegetables (especially green ones) is to eat them with garlic flavored mashed potatoes.  That's how I did it with broccoli and that's how I'm doing it with asparagus and beans.  Mashed potatoes and steamed veggies from a restaurant usually taste the best, so if you're going to try this yourself, I recommend that you NOT start by making these things for yourself at home.  Chefs are chefs for a reason - they make things taste better than you do.  Even when I steam my vegetables, they never taste the same as they do in restaurants.  Neither do my garlic mashed potatoes.  But if you must try it at home and you're not an expert at making garlic mashed potatoes, I would instead recommend a spritz of spray butter and a sprinkle of garlic salt. 

Where was I going with that?  Oh yeah, tea.  So, I'm going to try to convince myself to like tea, but I'm going to leave the mashed potatoes out of it.  This morning I decided to start with a caffeinated version of the free tea that we have available here in my office - Lipton Breakfast Tea.

I figured that drinking it out of my Murphy mug might make me like it more

My first observation?  (Keep in mind, I haven't even tasted it yet...)  It's so dark!!  One of the reasons that I wanted to try tea because I hate that coffee stains my teeth!!  And yet this tea looks just as dark as coffee does and is definitely going to stain my teeth! What's up with that???

I debated throwing it away right then and there, but decided to persevere.

My first taste was just plain, hot tea.  It was awful.  It tasted like stinky water.  Yuk. People drink this stuff?

So then I added sweetener.  Ok... slight improvement.  Now it tastes like sweet, stinky water.  Great.

So then I added some of my French Vanilla creamer.  The taste was much improved, and I almost didn't hate it, but now I'm torn.

I mean, why replace my coffee (which I do usually enjoy) with something that is just as dark and needs just as much intervention as coffee does to make it taste good??  My original idea for trying tea was because I thought I could like it without having to add sweetener or creamer, but that is definitely not the case. In fact, it seems like this particular tea stains my coffee mug even more than my coffee did, so what can that mean for my poor teeth?

I'm not sure that Lipton Breakfast Tea with sweetener and creamer is going to be my new go-to drink of choice.  However, I already have my next selection on my desk and ready for tasting tomorrow - Bigelow Sweet Dreams Herb Tea (chamomile and mint).  It's caffeine free which is already a little scary. But the fact that it's name contains the words "Sweet Dreams" and I'm planning on drinking it around 10 a.m.??? Absolutely petrifying.