Global Tea Time

Today is my 4th day off in a row! Shocking, I know. I actually have a few days off. Given my windfall of time, I didn't even kid myself about getting some blog posts done. I was exhausted for 2 of my days off so far, and I spent Christmas day baking so I would have gifts to give to friends. Thanks to a deer, I had to buy a new to me car earlier this month, so I'm feeling less than flush with cash right now, and thanks to a pandemic, I have not been out shopping clearance racks all year. That said, any Christmas gifts this year were homemade. That included gifts.   Ginger puerh has suddenly become my go to winter tea. It's earthy, spicy, and oh, so comforting. Incidentally, I read an article last night that cleared up my confusion as to what people meant by "dark tea". I heard this term used in New Zealand, and thanks to an article from the UK I now know that dark tea refers to puerh! That makes sense given the unique color of this brew.  I used my one pot of ginge...

 Another week done. Thankfully I had this weekend off as it seems like I really need 2 days (or more) off in a row to really feel like I'm rested and ready to deal with life again. Okay, I can't say that I'm ever ready to deal with life, but having some rest makes it easier to deal with things as they come up. Since Christmas is later this week, I decided to post a picture of some tatted stars with my 3 footed toad, and a gaiwan brewing green tea.  And since I have a Jewish friend (who celebrates all the holidays because she is a convert from Christianity, and her husband is Christian), I did some searching online to find a tatted star of David pattern. I didn't actually find any instructions, rather I found a picture that was clear enough that I could count knots. The tension is a little wonky, but considering that this is my first attempt making this without any instructions, I feel like it came out pretty well. Here I'm using my kyusu style teapot to brew ginger ...

 Thanks to a new shipment of tea, and a cyber Monday deal, I'm writing about tea storage today. The basics of tea storage are simple. Store tea in an airtight container in a cool, dry place. Tea should not be stored in the refrigerator or the freezer because of the cold, and humidity. Tea should not be stored on the counter, or anywhere near the stove or microwave because of heat exposure. Tea leaves also should not be exposed to sunlight during storage. The tea shops I buy from say that you can store your tea in the package that they sell them in, but those packages don't always work well for storage.  The large packages of tea consist of a multi-layered bag that is rolled closed at the top which is secured by a heavy plastic strip with wire inside of it. These plastic strips will break before the tea is used up because the bending and unbending of the wire to open and close the package will cause the wire to fail. Plastic zip lock bags are popular. The plastic does sometimes...

 I had planned on making gyokuro a 2 part post. Unfortunately I never got to doing the second part of that post because the sad country song of my life continues. Let's just say that this year a hunter did not get Bambi's father, rather a 2011 Corolla killed Bambi's father. Well, the car started the job, the sheriff finished the job. My insurance should tell me that my car is totaled sometime in the next couple of days. Thankfully I'm okay aside from some rattled nerves, and I was able to get a rental car so I can get back and forth from work. My backup plan if I couldn't get a rental car was to ask my manager if she could get permission for me to sleep at the hospital until I was able to secure some transportation. I'm so glad that I didn't have to spend the last week sleeping at the hospital between shifts. It seems appropriate that the next picture in my lace and tea set series is my Chinese tea set with the meditating monks. They better be praying for my...