Global Tea Time

Today we travel to Sweden . Considering the fact I live in a part of the country originally settled by people from Nordic countries, Sweden feels pretty close sometimes. Actually I think there are more Norwegians in the northern part of this state where I used to live, and one thing I did learn is that Norwegians and Swedes like to differentiate themselves, at least in this country. Sweden and Norway actually share a peninsula in northern Europe. It makes sense that they live side by side here as well. Sweden has a 1000+ year history of being a sovereign state, and rose from being an impoverished, "backwards" society to a nation with one of the highest standards of living and life expectancy in the world. I really don't know what my resource means by being a "backwards" society. Being a bit of an oddball myself, I don't really like that description. The land is described as having 3 distinct regions. The north has forests and mountains. The middle part of ...

The first thing I learned about Andorra when searching for tea is that it is snowy at least part of the year. I had to find a map because I had no clue where it was. Turns out, it is small coprincipatlity between France and Spain, and is in the southern Pyrenees mountains. Almost 90% of the population lives in urban areas, and about half of the population are foreign nationals. While Catalan is the official language, Spanish and French are often spoken by the inhabitants. Andorra is not part of the EU, but they do use the Euro for their currency (although they are not allowed to issue that currency), and the description of them being a small country is highlighted by the fact that a small regional airport in Spain provides service to this country. Apparently they do not have a railway system, and depend on their roads to link them to other countries. I didn't see exact dimensions given, but a rough estimate from the scale on the map reveals that the country is less than 16 miles ...

British tea culture is often associated with Queen Victoria. Thanks to earlier posts, we have explored some of these associations. I've seen many references to queen Victoria having a preferred tea blend. Interestingly enough, I haven't seen a consensus on what that actually was. One says Keenum and Yunam black teas which are both teas from China. Others say a combination of Assam and Darjeeling which are both teas from India. The only thing that they seem to agree on is the year, 1876. I'm inclined to think that she liked the Assam/Darjeeling blend because she was the empress of India after all. She is also said to have loved curry, and spent her later years studying Hindi and Indian culture through one of her servants. I figured that even though I don't know the exact proportions, I could brew some Assam and Darjeeling together. So, I dug through my big bag of tea and spices from the grocery store, and discovered I don't have any Assam. Sigh. I substituted a te...

When I first visited Bhutan , I was a bit skeptical of drinking buttered tea. As a child of the 80's, I grew up being told that fat, especially saturated fat, would clog your heart like pouring hot fat down the drain, and kill you. Not only that, the theory went that we would all become grossly obese from eating fat because it was so high in calories. 40 years later, I'll let you make your own judgment as to how well this theory has worked. I started experimenting with low carb to see if it would combat my recently developed asthma. I can say that since I've started it, my symptoms have improved. The problem is, since I've had asthma for less than a year, so I don't know if this improved state is my baseline level of symptoms for this time of year, or if this has really helped. That said, I can't really think of another reason why asthma would improve in the middle of the heat and humidity of summer after being miserable all fall, winter, and spring. Last week...