Global Tea Time

I've had chocolate caramel rooibos tea before. I really tried hard to like it, but I was never impressed because it always had that rooibos flavor to it. So I approached this next tea preparing to be disappointed. When I cracked open the tin, I smelled chocolate. This is a good first sign. The listed ingredients are rooibos, cocoa, cinnamon, and vanilla. Thankfully this is a pleasant vanilla unlike some chocolate teas I ordered earlier this year. Actually it looks like it has cacao nibs in it. This is a good sign. Cacao nibs usually impart a good chocolate flavor to tea. I brewed some and discovered... that I really like this tea! Now I'm trying to decide if I want to buy more of this tea (I can find it on Amazon), or if I should buy some cacao nibs and mix them with some vanilla rooibos I'm less than excited about and add some cinnamon stick chunks. The place where I got the really bad chocolate teas also sells cacao nibs by themselves for tea, so I could just straig...

This box of tea came with two black teas, and two herbal teas. Today we are looking at the other black tea. Blooming rose tea states that it has black tea, cardamom, rose, and saffron. As you can see, I'm still working on things around the house. I painted the outlet covers to match my bedroom walls. They were all in different stages of yellowness from age, so I figured paint would help them blend in. When I cracked the tin open, I smelled cardamom much like the first tea I sampled. The saffron was a bit of a surprise because I have never detected it in all the times I have had this tea. Honestly, I really don't taste the rose petals either. I'm not sure that there's any difference in flavor from the cardamom spice masala chai. I should do a side by side comparison before I drink all of both tins. Now to get on with the rest of my day of cleaning, tatting, and working on art projects. I think you can guess my least favorite thing on that list. My lace guild had a ...

I decided to start with the tea that everyone associates with India. Masala chai. The ingredients are listed as black tea and cardamom. That's it. Pretty simple. The black tea looks like the black tea I bought at the Indian grocery store, and the cardamom looks like cardamom. It's kind of surprising that this box of tea was so cheap given the fact that cardamom pods are expensive in this country. Granted, it could be cheaper in other parts of the world. I don't have any liquid dairy in the house, so I have to drink it straight. Aldi only sells cream in giant containers now, and coconut cream has too much of a flavor of its own to use effectively in tea. Some of the other grocery stores sell cream in smaller containers, but they are usually within a week of expiration, and I don't really use that much. So, it's straight up tea for me. As you can see in the picture, I decided to brew by the cup instead of a full teapot of what I'm jumping into. It smelled strong...