From Oprah's Kitchen: The Beauty of Brewing the Perfect Cup of Tea

In a one-room home in India, Oprah learned just how powerful a cup of chai can be.

Two years ago I met a family in India whose entire home consisted of one 10-by-10-foot room. This husband and wife ate, slept, and raised their three daughters crammed into a space so tiny, they didn't even have room to change their minds!

But they did have chai.

As we sat together on the floor of their living room/kitchen/playroom/bedroom, the husband reached behind the scrap of cloth that curtained off most of their few possessions, pulled out a tea set that had probably been around for generations, and proceeded to brew me the most incredible cup of chai I've ever experienced. Was it the pungent mix of spices or the openhearted welcome that made it so unforgettable? I asked the man how he made it, but he only smiled and said matter-of-factly, "Tea is just a part of our lives."

READ MORE: 

Tea Nation: The Drink We Can't Get Enough Of

We're going gaga over a beverage that's healthy, heady and delicious. Here, some passionate proponents share why it's teatime in America.

Humans have rarely agreed on any subject the way we agree on tea—a beverage that the Chinese, British, Thais, Kuwaitis, South Africans, Sri Lankans and Gambians all find delicious. Tea is a global infatuation that spans cultures and continents, savored by royals (Louis XIV), rock stars (the Beatles) and everyone in between (like the family in India who served Oprah the best chai she'd ever tasted). The most popular beverage in the world besides water, tea is in many places a ritual, a time of day, a religion. In the United States, however, it has long been the forgotten sister of coffee, that pulse-quickening enabler of our national religion: work. If coffee is a blunt instrument with which to attack one's to-do list, tea has seemed in comparison both fanciful and bland, a fusty affectation of the mother country and an inferior caffeine delivery system.

READ MORE: 

JUSTICE

SEE VIDEO:

Why Mount Everest Is Shrinking

The world’s tallest mountain is losing its cool, and it might be our fault.

On Thursday, Chinese scientist Kang Shichang told the country’s official Xinhua news agency that Mount Everest’s glaciers have melted by 10 percent over the past 40 years, and that the shrinkage is due to climate change. Shichang, a researcher at the Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said the statement was based on a long-term compilation of remote sensing and on-site monitoring data.

READ MORE: 

The New, Innovative And More Efficient Way Of Feeding People

Don Kent, President of the Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute, was standing in the seafood aisle of a Whole Foods in the affluent San Diego neighborhood of La Jolla recently when he took out his phone and snapped a photo of a fresh-looking branzino.

“Branzino is European sea bass,” Kent explained. “It’s grown in the Mediterranean. And it’s flown 6,900 miles from Greece to here and then it’s put on ice in La Jolla.”

READ MORE: 

LEFKAS (IONIAN ISLAND) Greece

Pelican books take flight again

As the non-fiction Penguin imprint relaunches, Paul Laity tells the story of the blue‑spined books that inspired generations of self-improvers – and transformed the publishing world

READ MORE: 

BYZANTINE CASTLE OF ANGELOKASTRO (CORFU)

Japanese women's healthy diet is the key to a long life, study suggests

Forget fad diets and Hollywood celebrity endorsements: Japanese women could hold the dietary key to a long and healthy life.

A new study has indicated the benefits of a diet rich in raw fish, vegetables and green tea, with Japanese females having the highest life expectancy of women in selected countries, living for an average of 86.4 years.

READ MORE: 

KALAMI BEACH (North-East CORFU) My village

Stunning photos show Africa through African eyes

Every week, Inside Africa takes its viewers on a journey across Africa, exploring the true diversity and depth of different cultures, countries and regions.

(CNN) -- Can a photo competition change the world? Probably not, but when paired with the brainpower of IBM and the problem-solving capabilities of the world's most advanced artificially intelligent computer systems, it might just stand a chance.

READ MORE: 

How to make the perfect chicken tikka masala

Is chicken tikka masala the ultimate spicy comfort food or a shameful British abomination – and is it worth making at home?

Like many great dishes, the origins of chicken tikka masala (or CTM, as it's known to aficionados) is a subject of spicy debate. Ahmed Aslam Ali claims he invented the dish, which bears a strong resemblance to Punjabi butter chicken, in his Glasgow restaurant in the early 1970s after a customer complained that his chicken tikka was "a bit dry" – a story repeated by innumerable others, often embellished with the detail that the original sauce was made from tinned tomato soup

READ MORE: 

SEE VIDEO:

Jackfruit heralded as 'miracle' food crop

Researchers say the large, smelly fruit grown could be a replacement for staple crops under threat from climate change

It's big and bumpy with a gooey interior and a powerful smell of decay – but it could help keep millions of people from hunger.

Researchers say jackfruit – a large ungainly fruit grown across south and south-east Asia – could be a replacement for wheat, corn and other staple crops under threat from climate change.

READ MORE: 

THE GREEK VOICE  2014

Looney Tunes Echo Backstage as Opera Dies: Manuela Hoelterhoff

Mad scenes help make opera so enjoyable. Think of Lucia di Lammermoor, her nightgown soaked in blood, singing cuckoo duets with a flute.

But it helps if the people running opera houses and music halls are generally sound of mind.

These last few weeks, it’s hard to ignore evidence that not being nuts (or clueless or greedy) is no longer a requirement for top jobs in many aspects of the classical entertainment business.

READ MORE: 

Amanda Owen: Yorkshire's tweeting shepherdess

A chance encounter led Amanda Owen to an extraordinary life on a hill farm deep in the Yorkshire Dales. Meet a woman with a flock – and seven children – to care for

READ MORE:

THE GREEK VOICE: A NEW TALENT

ΤHE VOICE: ITALIAN SUOR CRISTINA: 

The shirt on your back: the human cost of the Bangladeshi garment industry

  Interactive, :  How did the clothes you're wearing get to you? Guardian journalists trace the lifecycle of the shirt on your back via the teeming workshops of Dhaka, where labour is cheap, factories are cheaper and just going to work can be fatal

 SEE VIDEO: 

20 recipe ideas for using up leftover roast meat

Don't let meat fester or be foraged in the fridge. Our Dinner Doctor Rachel Kelly suggests a rack of succulent solutions

If there was just one gadget that would improve the quality of my kitchen life, it would not be a raspberry pink KitchenAid, nor dry ice or a sous vide – all of which are things I would like but don't actually need. The thing I need most of all is a cloak of invisibility. This is not because I have had another baking disaster and want to slink away unmolested to have a gentle snivel. It is not because I foresee the potential for high jinks and hilarity, or world domination or super-stealth powers. No, the simple reason I want a cloak of invisibility is that I am pretty sure it is the only way to hide Sunday's roast lunch leftovers from marauding fridge foragers.

READ MORE: 

CRETAN SUMMER

SEE VIDEOS:

Brilliant recipes from Persiana, Sabrina Ghayour's debut cookbook

Seafood and saffron stew, lamb and sour cherry meatballs, tomato salad with pomegranate molasses, and more

READ MORE: 

Bill Granger recipes: Our chef shares his painless traditional Easter Sunday menu

Easter is not as big a celebration in Australia as it is here – well, it wasn't in my family, anyway. But never one to say no to a party, I've fully embraced the tradition since moving to the UK.

READ MORE: 

Indian fusion food: 'best Indian food and best international food in some wild combinations' – video

Top Indian chef Manish Mehrotra from Delhi restaurant Indian Accent gives us an insight into Indian fusion cooking – traditional Indian cuisine with a modern twist. Mehrotra demonstrates some of his imaginative blends of cuisines and discusses different regional cooking styles in India – while respecting his cultural culinary heritage

SEE VIDEO: 

The work of Jean Paul Gaultier – in pictures

From the Sidewalk To the Catwalk is a new exhibition at the Barbican in London celebrating the French fashion designer's flamboyant style. Here are some of the more eye-catching outfits and artworks featured

SEE PHOTOS: 

What special skills do you have?

To all the people who make things, cook things, fix things, explain things, arrange things… thank you, from someone who is endlessly impressed

There's an article in this month's World of Interiors about a man who bought a Tudor house by the sea. And then, piece by piece, what he did was chop away all the technologies of the past 500 years, all the heating, all the floors. There's an outside toilet. You have to crouch to get through the tiny olden-days doors. It's this mad thing, this dusty sort of monument to the past, a memorial sculpture that he lives in quite happily. And it's been painstakingly constructed out of love and salvaged wood, like a two-storey metaphor that gets very cold in winter.

READ MORE: 

Keeping a Castle Running Is No Fairy Tale

The Chateau de Haroué, an early 18th-century castle built by Prince Marc de Beauvau-Craon, a cousin of King Louis XV, is easily the most striking landmark in Haroué, a tiny French village 190 kilometers (118 miles) from the Swiss city of Basel. The village is home to fewer than 500 residents, but the chateau’s open-air operas and art exhibits help the town punch above its weight when it comes to cultural happenings. But the town doesn’t own the castle. Indeed, it’s still in the family, and is currently owned by Princess Minnie de Beauvau-Craon, a direct descendant of the man who built it.

READ MORE: 

Q&A: Cyndi Lauper

My guiltiest pleasure? Spending the weekend in bed, watching old movies on TV

Cyndi Lauper, 60, was born in Queens, New York, and left home at 17. In 1983 her debut album, She's So Unusual, earned her a Grammy for best new artist and produced four top 10 singles, including Girls Just Want To Have Fun and Time After Time. She has since sold 50m records. Her Grammy-nominated Memphis Blues became the bestselling blues album of 2010; her new album, She's So Unusual: A 30th Anniversary Celebration, was released last week.

READ MORE: 

Our 10 best parsley recipes

The classic garnish is put centre stage in this varied bunch of fragrant dishes from all over the world. It's a shoo-in for fish and ham, but have you tried it in a meringue?

READ MORE: 

How To Turn a Cup of Coffee Into a Work of Art

Fifteen million cups of coffee are served up in the U.K. every day, but some are better than others. Bloomberg spoke with a London barista to get the low down on coffee milk art and how it is done.

SEE VIDEO: 

Photo gallery: Best of Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week

Traditional Indian wear with the latest trends dominated the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW) in New Delhi.

The Autumn/Winter 2014 edition showcased designers such as Tarun Tahiliani and Namrata Joshipira, with Rahul Mishra presenting a collection that won the Woolmark Prize in Milan in February.

SEE PHOTOS: 

National Geographic Traveler photo contest 2014 - in pictures

The 2014 National Geographic Traveler photo contest has opened, inviting photographers from around the world to submit their shots. Here are some of the first entries

SEE PHOTOS: 

Chinese Developer Unveils Plans for Cloned Austrian Village Complete With Imported Alpine Air

Following in the footsteps of the world’s first cloned village, a Chinese developer has announced plans to build yet another copy of the historic Alpine town of Hallstatt to offer an idyllic rural retreat for those looking for a quick, convenient escape from China’s polluted urban centers. However this latest resort will go one step further to replicate the Austrian countryside – it will be housed within an extraordinary 11,880-foot-high geodesic dome that will provide visitors with ‘freshly’ imported Alpine air.

READ MORE: 

Asian Turkey Meatballs With Lime Cilantro Dipping Sauce

READ MORE: