Highly unnatural natural flavors

Happy March everyone! The weather is living up to its reputation for this month. Yesterday it was so warm and sticky I had to take my coat off outside. We also had thunderstorms with a few tornadoes touching down across the state. This morning the puddle of water on my patio table is frozen. I'm not taking the plastic off of the sliding door yet. It's a good morning to enjoy one of my favorite Japonese teas. Ryokucha is a beautiful, flavorful, grassy, spring like tea. Since I've alreay posted about ryokucha before, I will post about some new teas I got from the place that sells my favorite chocolate tea. When I placed my most recent order with them, I discovered to my delight that they also had a strawberry chocolate herbal, and a chocolate green tea. The green tea advertised 2 types of chocolate flavor, regular chocolate, and white chocolate (vanilla) flavor. I had to get a bag of each since they were in stock. Look at the ingredients, they seem like they would be so good.
I excitedly brewed a cup of the strawberry chocolate herbal when I received my box after work. It was a beautiful red brew from the hibiscus flowers. I sniffed it and thought it smelled odd. I managed to drink about half the cup before I decided it wasn't worth it. It just had a really weird after taste. The next day at work I tried the green tea with chocolate. I knew I was in trouble when I opened the bag and smelled it. That odd aftertaste from the night before was the main smell that greeted me when I opened the bag. I still tried brewing a pot of tea to see how it turned out. It was awful! I dumped it. Thankfully the Swiss chocolate black tea was still good. Obviously the tea, cacao nibs, and various flowers and fruit pieces taste fine becuase they are good in other blends. Both of these teas said that they had vanilla flavor in them, and I suspect that is the issue. I don't know where they get their vanilla flavor. I'm thinking it came from a beaver's butt for the simple reason that it smells and tastes bad enough that I could believe that it came out of the hind end of an animal.
The teas look normal. The strawberry chocolate tea is in the upper left corner, and it honestly looks like it could be some sort of trail mix. The chocolat green tea is in the bottom right corner. I can't think of any way to re-purpose these teas, so now that I have photographed them and posted about them I can toss them in the trash. Hopefully trying new things goes better at some point. Speaking of new things, I've wanted to set up a second bed in the coolest room of my house for use in the summer. I ordered a 10 inch mattress off of Amazon, and after 5 days, it is 7 inches tall. Another product FAIL! Still waiting to hear back from customer service. I suspect I am stuck with a flat mattress. On the positive side, I did sleep on it last night and it is comfortable. I put a cooling allergy barrier mattress pad on it, and it doesn't need any additional padding. It is also way cooler than my other mattress. At least that aspect will work, and as a bonus, I found sheets on clearance at Target that match the blanket I have over it perfectly. Sure the sheets are for an XL twin, but I just tucked the extra under the end. The tag says they were an online only item, and they were originally $36 (I paid $12). At least something worked out!
Now to cut the binding to finish the quilted throw I've been working on. It's not for a special occassion or anything, I'm just in the mood to use up the stuff I've amassed over the years. The projects have to be pretty simple and easy to finish because I don't want them sitting around collecting dust. You can't wash a half finished quilt to get rid of allergens, so when I start sewing something together, it needs to get finished quick.
Have a good Sunday, and try something new, even if it doesn't work out.

Comments

  1. Poppy CrockerMarch 6, 2022 at 6:45 AM

    I hope the mattress works out for you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lace makerMarch 6, 2022 at 7:23 AM

      Me too. According to the internet they can puff up more if you roll on them, sleep on them, stomp on them. According to the tag it was made in October 2021, so it wasn't boxed up that long in the bigger scheme of things. I should take everything off of it again, put it on the floor and jump on it again. It helped some the first time I did it. All these things I was told not to do as a kid I do as an adult. Cut my own hair, jump on the bed, throw out food (or tea) because I don't like it...

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Equatorial Guinea

Image
Equatorial Guinea Today we go to Equatorial Guinea , which consists of "Rio Muni" - Continental Equatorial Guinea, and 5 small islands known collectively as Insular Equatorial Guinea. When researching this country, I found "osang" tea. I found the name only, no instructions on how to make it. Mystery tea Upon doing some research, osang is a generic name for African milk tea. I couldn't pin down any specific flavors used for this region, just a general description of how people all over Africa make this tea. The base is black tea with milk. The suggested add ins are shown below. Tea Masala (thank you Indian food store), ginger, cardamom, or lemongrass. No, don't use them all together. Today I'm in the mood for cardamom, so that's what I used. The one blog I found about making this suggested a 1:1 ratio of milk and tea. I used 3/4 cup (about 200 ml) of each, with 3 cardamom pods. As usual, you can add sugar to taste. I decided to add the c...
Read more

Have a cup of Christmas

Image
I'm skipping ahead just a little bit because of a Central American holiday tradition. The hibiscus flowers are in bloom, and it's tea season. In this part of the world, hibiscus tea is known as "sorrel" instead of " bissap ". While my research on the tea of North America is not complete, I found that several countries make sorrel for Christmas. Trinidad and Tobago , the southern most Caribbean islands. They gained their independence from the UK in 1962. They are a continuation of the Andes mountains from Venezuela. They have a tropical climate, and temperatures vary widely between day and night. They used to grow a lot of sugarcane, but the last of the sugarcane estates was closed. Cocoa and coffee are also export crops. Most of the population is rural, and is made up of people from Africa, East Indian, and mixed race.  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines , are part of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea. These islands gained their independen...
Read more

Ataya/Waraga/Tuareg Tea

Image
"Berber Whiskey" What do you make on a Saturday afternoon when you're tired? I mean really tired. Like you just woke up from a 3 hour nap, and all you want to do is go back to sleep. I will admit I was a bit leery of this one when I found out how it was made, but this is wildly popular so I had to try it. This version of tea has many names, and some sources say that this is used like alcohol in cultures that forbid drinking and using drugs.  Ataya (or attaya - I've seen it spelled both ways), also known as Tuareg tea (so named for the Tuareg tribe), is a very social tea ceremony in West Africa. Most reviews say to expect to take at least 3 hours and have several rounds of tea. Over time, each round of tea is supposed to get milder and sweeter. Sometimes instructions say that mint is added. It is popular in many countries: The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau , Senegal (The Gambia is actually inside Senegal with a small border on the Atlantic), Sierra Leone , Mali , Mau...
Read more