Global Tea Time

Guess what I found! Fresh turmeric! If you look closely, the piece on the right has an "eye" growing on it. That means that my ginger plant is going to have a friend (provided I'm able to grow this piece of turmeric). According to the internet, I'm going to need a larger flower pot than what I have, and this is the wrong time of year to find large flower pots. I started it in the largest pot I have, and will deal with finding a bigger container when I need to. Hi ginger plant. Look how big it's getting! Apparently both types of plants are rather slow growing, and the fall/winter is not the optimal time to try to grow these, but I'm limited to availability, and the fall is when I found suitable rhizomes with "eyes". Heaven knows that I could use a little bit of the tropics during winter, and growing tropical plants is the closest I could feasibly get to somewhere tropical. I got both my ginger and turmeric at the local organic food ...

Today we travel to south central Asia. Bangladesh  is in the northeast of the Indian sub-continent. It is mostly bordered by India with a small border along Myanmar. It is a small country with seasonal floods. Their wildlife includes elephants, Bengal tigers, common leopards, cloud leopards, leopard cats, bears, mongoose, monkeys, and many varieties of birds. Bangladesh also has a very dense human population, and those humans like tea. The video I found about how to make tea in Bangladesh shows that they set themselves apart. We have the usual ingredients: water, milk, tea, cardamom... ... and an egg. Specifically, an egg yolk.  Nothing like a tea recipe with the potential of little bits of scrambled egg in it. I took my whisking seriously. Instead of using cardamom pods, I used ground cardamom and bagged black tea because I was afraid of what I would find if I strained the tea. In addition to what I used, sugar is a popular addition, and I was trying to fig...

Today we travel to Israel, a country somewhat secretive about their tea. I know that herbal teas are preferred (sometimes dried fruit is included), and that they sometimes add black tea to their herbal blends. However, I do not know what combinations of herbs and dried fruits are preferred. Prime among the tea influences in the region are Morocco and Persia. One resource recommended black tea with cardamom to start, but they also said it was one of the less popular flavors in the region. Spearmint was said to be very popular, along with mint, sage, lemongrass, lemon verbena, wormwood, and hibiscus with cinnamon. Another resource I looked at said that mint tea with lemon salt was popular. That of course leads me to the question of what exactly lemon salt is. The internet had 2 very different answers. One is that it is citric acid - commonly added to food as a preservative and vitamin C. The other is that it is salt that has been aged with lemon rinds so it picks up a lemony flavor. I...

Sometimes procrastination pays off. When I first started researching tea in Asia, I didn't come up with anything for Armenia. On a whim, I looked again this morning, and found a charming video about making tea from an Armenian American cooking channel. While it appeared to be a more off the cuff video (at the end, she said she didn't think anyone really would want the recipe for her tea), it was easy to follow, and I made my own version at home. Armenia  is one of the oldest centers of civilization. There is a long history of the country being larger, then smaller, then larger again - depending on who was winning conflicts in the region. Like so many other countries in the region, it was part of the Soviet Union for a time. Just over 60% of their population lives in urban areas. They are a very ethnically homogeneous country, and conflict in the 1990's caused many people to leave the country and live abroad. That brings me back to her cooking channel on YouTube. The prese...