Global Tea Time

While I had some milk in the house, I looked through my decaf options and found that I had another tea that would pair well with milk. Decaf vanilla chai. The ingredient list looked pleasant. Cinnamon, ginger allspice, and vanilla mixed with black tea. I opted to brew the tea bag in a smaller volume of water, and add the milk after. I don't remember if I microwaved the tea after adding the milk to make it warmer. I'll admit it was a couple of weeks ago when I made this, and I'm just now writing it up. At least it was still in March! Back when it was warm. Our winter seems to be inverted. It was warm, warm, warm, and now it's cold, cold, cold even though we are getting ever closer and closer to April. This tea was fantastic with milk. Smooth and creamy with a pleasant flavor of vanilla. Now I suppose I should get my behind up and dressed to go grocery shopping. I remember back before I moved to the country I would always be making little trips to stores when I was ti...

I recently had some milk in the fridge, and decided that I should look through my box for some tea that would pair well with milk. Double spice chai sounded like a good candidate. I tried a swig of it before I added the milk. I would say that the spice blend was clove forward with cinnamon next. Overall it was a fine tea without the milk. The addition of milk knocked the edge off the spices and made for a very smooth, enjoyable tea. Given the time change last night, now I wish that there was a double caff tea in this collection. Okay, honestly there isn't enough caffeine in anything to make this next week tolerable. Now to go continue my efforts of bringing order to this home now that I bought a nice big shelf for the second bedroom.

A few years ago acai berries had their time in the spotlight as a super food. I don't know if it still has that health washing or not. I don't really pay attention to those things anymore because I just can't take the blatant consumerism coupled with BS claims. I did however get a couple of acai berry tea bags in my Christmas box of teas. The other night I kind of wanted something, so I made a cup. It several of the decaf teas in this box have hibiscus in them, and this is one of them. The brew is the expected bright red. I'm not terribly fond of hibiscus. This had a strong hibiscus flavor with a bright berry note. I've been working on making a copy of my phases of the moon doily. It took the better part of the month of February to make it. I think it was probably 20 hours or so of work. Then I modified a pattern to make a gift for a friend who likes aliens and UFOs.

It's winter. Life is crappy in winter. I'm drinking my way through the decaf side of the box faster because I'm craving something warm to drink in the evening. I find it vaguely entertaining that this has a lavendar pouch. I've seen versions of Earl Grey with lavender, but this is straight Earl Grey, but the decaf version. Sometimes decaf teas, especially black teas can have an off flavor. It's been a while since I had the regular Earl Grey, so this tastes like a run of the mill bagged Earl Grey to me. A friend who has helped me with a lot of stuff wanted a copy of my phases of the moon doily. While this one was much faster to make than the original, I estimate that it still took somewhere around 20 hours. I found a background that I like for framing it. One more thing to do today. I have a friend coming over this afternoon to work on crafts, so hopefully I will get it done then.

Mao feng is a light, Chinese green tea. It has a pleasant scent, and a long, narrow leaf. This is what just over 3 grams of leaf looks like. That's about the equivalent of 2 teaspoons of a cut tear curl tea. This looks like a huge amount of leaves, but imagine how few of these leaves would fit in a teaspoon, or even a tablespoon. This is the type of leaf where you really need scales. It makes a beautiful, light brew, and can be brewed a few times. It's a very light, refreshing tea. Now I'm facing a dilemma. I have a code for 10% off an online purchase from my favorite tea shop. Do I order tea again? I just got some 2 months ago, but I just finished drinking up my favorite winter tea. I could also get some of my favorite spring teas in the box. Cherry sencha and ryokucha sound so good right now, along with more of my beloved ginger puerh. I wonder if they will offer a 10% discount for St Patrick's day. Otherwise, the next discount won't come until May for moth...

Today's tea comes from Nepal. Specifically the Himalayan mountains just over the border from Darjeeling India. It is billed as being very similar to Darjeeling teas, but the rules for foods from specific regions of the world apply so it cannot be called Darjeeling tea. It's slightly cheaper than Darjeeling tea, so I decided to try a bag since I just bought a home, and was looking to economize on my last tea buying trip. In the winter I tend to crave black teas. Technically this is a black tea, but it's lighter than most black teas. In the depth of winter, I also tend to crave teas with a floral note to them. This is the only time of year I will drink jasmine tea even though I'm not a huge fan of it. Something about the cold and dark makes me want a little whiff of summer. I got this tea as a compromise. Darjeeling teas usually have a floral note to them without being overwhelming. I set up my Himalayan tea to brew several times using a gaiwan. The first brew had a f...

I don't know what makes a regular Irish breakfast super. Maybe it's a breakfast that is really really Irish instead of average Irish? Maybe it's just better than most Irish breakfasts? I guess I'll never know. You know that this is Irish because the package is green. Usually green packages are for green tea, but this one is black tea. I wanted to use one of my mugs with the ceramic tea strainer in it, but I didn't want smaller bits of loose leaf tea floating around in my tea. By the time I was making this tea, my 16 oz tea pot, my gong fu set, and my 12 oz teapot were all in need of washing. In my defense, I went out with friends the night before, so I was tired from staying up late. As for the tea, it was pretty much your run of the mill black tea. I would probably need to brew some other black tea blends and try them next to this one in order to figure out the differences. After a frenzy of lace making during the holidays, I took a little break. Now I'm b...

Today I decided to try my orange spice tea. I kind of wanted something sweet, but there was nothing in the house. Fruit flavored tea will have to do so I chose my packet of orange spice black tea. When I opened the package, there was a nice orange scent. I brewed my tea (and forgot to take a picture). This is a pretty good tea. It has a nice orange flavor with a little cinnamon and clove added in. It tastes like the holidays even though they are over. I woke to the sound of a blade scraping the parking lot. Thankfully there wasn't a whole lot of snow accumulation. While it did snow more after they did the parking lot, the snow has melted off of the hard surfaces. I fear winter is here to stay for a while. Now to tat some decorations for my home.

Much to the annoyance of pretty much everyone, I stick to a low carb diet most of the year. I get a little crazy at Christmas and indulge in sweets and carbs. This usually lasts into the first week or two of January until my gut stages a revolt. I made this tea on that day. I was still craving something sweet, but after a big plate of fried rice with very sweet (to me) tasting beef and broccoli with crab rangoon at the delayed holiday lunch at work my gut made it clear that it had had enough. Very clear. I decided that I wanted something fruity sweet. As I was waiting for the water to boil (with the tea bag waiting in the cup) it occurred to me that I don't really like mangos or passionfruit. As I look at the ingredients I also see licorice root. I brew the tea and it is as unexciting as I anticipated. Kind of a cardboardy trying to pretend to have a fruity flavor. At least it has a nice color. It's also a good way to remind myself that fruit isn't so fantastic. Sugar i...

The end of the year holidays are a strange time of year. We have Christmas where people pretend to like their family and spend way too much money on trying to make their life into something it is not. Then there's the new year when people pretend that things will be different and somehow better. I also have a friend who is dying a horribly painful death thanks to a brain tumor. I have another friend lamenting on social media how Christmas seems sadder and more subdued this year. She recently shared that her cancer spread to her brain and she was given a year or less to live. Thankfully I have some friends who are not dying, and I was able to go to their house for Christmas. It was a smaller gathering than usual because of all the respiratory illnesses going around. Thankfully I can get free COVID tests through my health insurance, so I shoved a swab up my nose, and went to brunch when I got the all clear. This year's tea related gift was a box of 52 Stash brand tea bags. All to...

Today I decided to compare the cardamom spice masala chai to the blooming rose black tea. To be fair, I did take this picture after I scooped out my tea to brew. As you can see, I'm getting down pretty low on the cardamom spice masala chai. Mercifully I went to my favorite tea shop with a friend when these tins got so low, so I got more tea to drink. Of course shortly after that trip my sinuses started to act up really bad, and when it was all over I realized that I really couldn't smell anything very well. Now my sense of smell is back, and I have teas to compare. The rose petals don't look so pretty when they are brewing. The rose tea is on the left if you couldn't guess. The finished brews are quite different looking when you see them side by side. I was intrigued to see that the rose tea had saffron in it. I can't say that I taste saffron in it. It is a milder tasting brew, probably because the rose petals displace some of the black tea. There's also ...

Yesterday I met up with a friend and went to my favorite tea shop. I had my end of the year 10% discount coupon. You know that is dangerous - at least to my credit card. Even though the public health emergency is long over, we still can't order pots of tea there. I don't know that we ever will be able to again. Thanks for ruining that part of the experience COVID. We did get our paper cups of tea to drink instead, it's just not the same as sharing a pot of tea with a friend. Oh well. We both ended up getting the same tea to try. Spice tea. It's described as having a blend of the Orient's finest black tea and exotic spices. I didn't take any pictures of it since it looked like black tea in a disposable cup. The first whiff when I took off the plastic sippy lid (I don't drink tea with that in place, it just ruins the experience and hinders the enjoyment of the aroma) was of cloves. When drinking the brew, I could taste the cloves, but the main spice flavor was...

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...

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from a friend during my lunch hour at work. They were at String Town, and wanted to know if I wanted them to pick up any tea for me. While I don't really go for bagged tea, I also know that you never know what you will find at String Town - even though I've never been there. I think the store actually goes by a different name, and I know that it is in "Amish Country" (I don't think that they use that exact term around here, but that's the term we used where I grew up). Anyway, it's a store that has a lot of food in various size packages for sale cheap. I also know that you have to watch expiration dates when you get food there because a lot of it is near or past its expiration date. My friends listed off some of the teas they saw, then said that they would send me pictures. There were the standard boxes of bagged tea, but then there was this. A big box of Indian tea. It contains chocolate vanilla herbal tea, cardamom spi...

Guess who showed up nestled away in one of my lace supply totes? Yes, my 3 footed toad! Why was I digging through my lace supply bins? Well, it's October which means I have tatted bats to make. It took me a while to figure out the pattern as it is mostly chains, and then I had to find the beads. They didn't give specific sizes for the beads so I had to guess which sizes would look right. In the end, I think I guessed pretty well. It's also fun to go to a craft store with a list that includes bat eye, fang, and nose beads. You have your hobbies, I have mine. This is my first bat. She still needs the ends worked in and to be blocked. It's surprising how many women I know who love bats, at least in the context of Halloween. Now to get back to cleaning and organizing the house... or spending my day making more bats.

I've hit the point in moving where I have found most of my stuff. There are a few things I'm still looking for. One of them is my 3 footed toad tea pet. I remember wrapping it up and tucking it into a safe place. Now to figure out where that safe place is. Most of my tea pets made the move tucked into a plastic tote with my lace making supplies. Here are most of the pets! In honor of October, I'm drinking with my bat today. I figured that I could say that I was oficially moved in when I made my first piece of lace - a lucky horseshoe - but I still have a missing pet. I hope that my tea pet didn't get disoriented by the move. I would hate for a toad to be wandering around lost with fall coming. Of course it survived the previous move. Tea pets also don't walk around much by themselves, but I can imagine... MISSING! Have you seen this tea pet? If yes, please feed it warm tea and call me!