Global Tea Time

Last month I got a postcard for a 10% discount to celebrate the 18th anniversary of my favorite tea shop. You know that there was some shopping involved. I was biasing toward the cheaper teas (although I did opt to spend on more ginger puerh), and decided to try real Turkish tea. As you may recall, Turkish tea is brewed strong and watered down. The instructions say to use 1 teaspoon per 6 oz of water and one extra teaspoon for the pot. They also say to brew 10+ minutes. I had my regular teapot set up, and realized that if I followed the directions I would end up with gallons of tea once I watered it down to a point where I could drink it. I decided to exercise caution on my first brewing. I used 1 teaspoon per 6 oz water, and brewed it for 5 minutes. Longer brew times bring out more of the bitter flavors, so that may be why they serve their tea with so much sugar. When I opened the bag, I could see that the leaves have a finer cut meaning that they will brew a stronger tea. Thankfull

Thanks to a year or so of decluttering, I found the handouts that I got when I visited the Chemogo tea estate in Kenya! They had been tucked away in a different place from the rest of my papers, and I had forgotten where they were. Now they can join everything else so I will be able to find them again. I can also scan them so I will always know where to find a digital copy if I want. Actually, in reading up on decluttering, a lot of places recommend just scanning papers. I'm not sure how far I will go with that consindering that I spend a lot of time at work scanning documents, but it is a good idea. Also, the scanner part of my printer seems to work pretty well most of the time (I know I just jinxed it). There are some other issues besides volume when scanning my papers from Kenya. I have a standard size scanner, but their standard size of paper for printing is 8.25 x 11.75 inches (I couldn't find a ruler with centimeters on it) so my scanner does cut off a little of the lengt