Chai Tea Surprise

I meant to post this a few months ago. In fact, I thought I had already posted it, until Autumn told me she was looking for it and didn't see it. Autumn had a Tupperware party back in January, with the fabulous consultant Rebecca Coffin. She made this tea in the crockpot, with hilarious results, hence my main reason for posting. So this is Autumn's recipe, she said she got it out of a cookbook I would like, but I can't remember anything else about it. I think she either doubled or tripled the recipe for the party but I can't remember. It doesn't seem like 4 cups of milk would go very far.

Chai Tea (Surprise!)
4 cups milk
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbls sugar
4 cinnamon sticks (or 2 tsp ground cinnamon)
4 cardamom pods
4 tea bags (black tea)

Use a 4 quart slow cooker. Put milk into the stoneware and stir in the spices, vanilla and sugar. Float the cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, and tea bags on top. Cover and cook on high for 2 hours or until heated through.

Okay here's what the recipe DOESN'T tell you to do: when to remove the tea bags. So Autumn didn't know to remove them. She thought, as would any person in this situation, that the tea would stay nicely in the bags. Unfortunately, whether it was the prolonged exposure to heat or some other factor, the tea bags disintegrated. How did we discover this? Well, Aura & Amy got the first mugs of it. I watched them using the ladle to scoop the tea into their mugs. I saw some chunks plop into the mug and thought, "well, I'm not drinking that." And drank Diet Pepsi, as per my usual routine. Aura is very naturalistic, and eats and drinks all kinds of things that are good for you, even if they don't taste that good, so she was not alarmed by the chunks in the tea. By the time everyone left, Autumn was like "oh, I never tried any of the tea. Becky, do you want some Chai Tea?" Becky said that sure, she would try it. She asked me, too, but I, having seen the aforementioned chunks, was not at all interested. No thanks, I said. Autumn ladles the tea into the mugs. She sees the chunks. She wonders aloud, "what is that?" It looked like cat hair. But it couldn't be, they don't have a cat because B Rad is allergic. Then Brad asked, "is it the tea bags?" Poor Autumn. Realization dawned. It was the dang tea bags. She went back to the recipe, and confirmed that nowhere does it say to remove them. We all laughed so hard that we cried and replayed it over and over, such as the looks on people's faces when they drank, the way they had to use their teeth as strainers to drink the tea, and so on. I asked if I could post it on New Recipe Night and she consented. What a flipping riot. If any of you want to try this one, you should. We can't even tell you the underlying flavor of the tea, because the taste of the tea bags was too overpowering. So try it for yourself, and remove the tea bags before your guests come. HA!