Blooming tea 7

Which one to choose, oh, which one to choose? I've bloomed half of these now.
Given last week's disappointment of the canopy that flopped over on its side, I decided to choose one with a more vertical presentation this week. I chose the strawberry one. I opened the package to smell the worst fake strawberry ever. It smells like the strawberry candy a kid would stop and think twice before eating. A kid would still eat a hypothetical candy that smelled like this of course, because it was candy after all. However, I'm an adult now, and there are certain things that I would just pass up.
I thought that the top of this one looked intriguing with its little bits of red poking out. As I watched it unfurl, I got the bright idea of taping it on my phone. I turned everything off to give a silent background... until the timer on the microwave went off. It was to tell me that the tea I was planning on drinking was finished steeping.
In the end, it didn't matter because I discovered that the video from my phone is not compatible with this platform. Strange considering that the pictures are. Anyway, it opened. The picture shows 2 pillars side by side. One rose up, and the other one seemed to be stuck down in the cluster of leaves. I'm not sure if that was intended, or a manufacturing defect.
This one made a darker brew, and there was a lot of loose debris in the pot compared to some of the other ones. I'm thinking that maybe this one wasn't so close to specifications as some of the other ones were. I am impressed that the strawberry scent has persisted. Some of them loose their scent pretty quickly once they start brewing. Overall, it is a pretty bloom, and it does stand up correctly for presentation. I kind of feel like I'm looking into a fishbowl with an exotic decoration inside of it. I haven't seen any goldfish in there yet. I doubt that they would like to swim around in a pot full of tea even if there was an interesting plant looking thing in it.

Comments

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