Global Tea Time

Today we travel to Peru . Peru is in western South America bordered by Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador. While this is technically a tropical country because of its proximity to the equator, the climate is highly variable due to elevation (Andes mountains), and ocean currents. Most notably, this is the home of ancient Incan civilizations including Machu Picchu. In my research on Peruvian tea, I did not find a novel way of serving the tea, rather I found a neat way that they used their tea bag. They showed using a teabag without a string. Instead of using a spoon or fork to fish the bag out of the cup after the tea brewed, they showed using a skewer to hold the bag. While I didn't feel like going out and buying skewers, I did find a way to replicate what they did. While they showed using black tea, I'm actually using a bag of rooibos tea. I had to keep the tea bag closer to the edge of the cup so my bag would be held on the top of the cup instead of fa...

At this point I feel like I need a vacation from myself... my life... adulting. Anyway, why not escape to the island of Fiji ? Fiji is about 1300 miles (2100 km) north of Auckland, New Zealand. Fiji consists of 300 islands, and 540 islets scattered over 1,000,000 square miles (3,000,000 square km)! Of these islands, about 100 are inhabited with the capital Suva being on the largest island. The islands were formed by volcanic activity, sedimentary deposit, and coral. Temperatures in the winter average in the high 60s, and summer temperatures average in the mid 80s. These can be lower in areas of higher elevation. The eastern sides of the islands get less rain fall than the western sides of the islands, so climate and agriculture are very different depending on which side of the island it is. Almost half of the land retains its natural forest, and dry grasslands are found in the west. There are very few beach areas on the islands given the encircling reefs and little surf. In the 1997 ...

Honest, I do have some more posts written, but I wanted to take a break from them today to show off some new tea ware I got. Hopefully you have read my blog long enough to recognize the tea box. I wanted a bigger one now that I know I like using them. I didn't take a picture of the other side of the box, but this one has a plastic drawer that slides in and out for collecting and disposing of water. I also wanted to try a kyusu - a Japanese style tea pot with a handle that comes straight out the side. I was hoping to buy a set that included the tea pot, serving bowl, and cups. As it turns out, the full sets they had on Amazon were ugly. I mean REALLY ugly.  I did find some Korean tea sets were similar, and looked nicer. I found that I would be able to save about 10% of what Amazon was charging and order directly from the seller in Canada to get one of those sets. I still had to pause though. It would be $50 with shipping, and I had never used one of these tea pots before. The...

Now that we have some tropical weather, we head to more tropical countries. Antigua and Barbud a are an independent state in the Lesser Antilles island chain in the eastern Caribbean. Their coastlines are fringed with reefs and shoals. There are several inlets, and a deep water harbor that allow for shipping access. Antigua is rather low with an absence of mountains and forests. There are no rivers and few springs, so drought is common in spite of the rainfall. Barbuda is a coral island that is also rather flat, but has woods. Like Antigua, there are no streams, and the only settlement on the island is by a lagoon. The islands were visited by Christopher Columbus, and colonized by the English to grow tobacco, then later sugar. The islands gained their independence on November 1, 1981. In my research on tea, I found that they liked cocoa tea . They also served up lemongrass tea, also known as fever grass tea as it is often given when people are sick. Given the state of the world ri...