Global Tea Time

Happy Halloween! Being the second Halloween of the pandemic, I'm not going anywhere, but I did dress up - well kind of. I got this t-shirt for I think 50 cents at Michael's after Halloween one year. I thought the angry kitty face was adorable. I've certainly known many angry kitty pumpkins in my life, and they can be quite adorable. That's the most effort I'm putting into dressing up this year. Since I rarely went trick or treating as a kid (and was forced to go to the dentist instead - way to make kids hate the dentist mom), I always feel inadequate when coming up with Halloween costumes. This year I did help a friend make a Cruella coat for her daughter to wear. Other people like to dress up as unicorns or pricessesses. Older women may consider dressing up as the queen, which brings me to today's tea. I've long been curious about this blend, but I never got around to ordering it. This is another tea that my coworker ordered and gave me a sample of. The ...

There have been a lot of changes in my life lately. New position at work, new apartment, new daily routines, and new room layouts. I will eventually get my life sorted out. Thanks to one of my former co-workers, I also have some new tea ware. Specifically, a new tea towel, and a ceramic mug with a strainer basket and lid. This woman obviously knows me. Of course I did have a cat themed mouse pad and wrist rest for my computer. I also liked to include pictures of cats when I sent out the "evening sheet". The evening sheet was when we looked up who was staff for the next day on all of the non-teaching teams in the hospital. Thanks to my new position, I discovered that there were 2 versions of the calendar that got sent out. My former department got the one that did not list staff for the non-teaching teams. I talked to the person who sent the calendars out and asked her to start sending the calendars that listed all staff. Now my former co-workers do not have to make the even...

I'm still working on getting my new home unpacked and set up. I'm so tired of cardboard boxes, and not being able to find anything. I'm also realizing just how small this apartment is, and how little storage space it has. In all truth, I knew that any apartment I could afford would be smaller than my previous one. That's one of the reasonswhy I resisted getting a bunch of stuff to fill up the old apartment. I knew that I would not live there forever. I did not anticipate, however, why I would move out. I had hoped to spend at least a decade there, if not 2. Maybe this is best considering I don't have to worry about shoveling snow this winter. I've also enjoyed my morning tea on my deck yesterday and today. It is getting a little chilly out there, but nobody pays any unwanted attention to me sitting outside, and there's less ag dust in the air. While there are some farm fields around, I can't see them from any of my windows. I'm working on making my a...

I was always curious about this tea. I liked its name because of a beloved children's book by the same title. In all truth, I vaguely remember the book, and was glad to find some descriptions of the plot online to refresh my memory. In my defense, it has been somewhere around 30 years since I have read that book. I was always trying to keep up with my older sister who seemed so much smarter, and such a better reader (and failing). This tea, however, has nothing to do with books or horses. It is a China black tea flavored with lichee fruit. Thanks to Aldi's foods from around the world, I have tried canned lichees. The canned version are little white balls with the center punched out to remove the pit. I honestly wonder if any of the grocery stores in the area where I grew up would even have canned lichee. Thankfully food trends and variety have progressed since I was a kid. When I opened the bag, I thought it smelled like vanilla. I have no objections to that. When I brewed t...

I will admit that the name is part of the reason I bought this tea. I figure that I need all the help I can get. I've contemplated this tea for years, but it never made it on my list to try until now. It is a beautiful blend of sencha tea along with sunflower, rose, and conrflower petals. The description of the tea posits that the secret to ancient happiness is developing a desire for what you already have. I'm not sure about that last part (although it sounds like it would be true), but the tea smells fantastic when you open the package. It has a bright, fruity scent. After brewing, it retains its bright, fruity scent (and flavor). It produces a light colored tea that is a fantastic late summer refresher.

As I recall, lotus green tea was a suggestion for Vietnam. Green tea leaves were carefully sprinkled into open lotus leaves before dusk, then left inside of the closed flower overnight. Actually I think it was a process of several days being spent inside of lotus flowers for the tea to become scented. I never wanted to commit to buying a whole bag of lotus tea because I'm not a huge fan of floral teas. Since I know one of my co-workers is wanting to get into tea, I offered to order her some bags of tea in my last order. She chose 5 teas to order (4 flavors I had not tried before), and she gave me some samples of those teas since she knew I was curious about trying them. One of the teas she ordered was lotus green tea. This tea looks like any other green tea. When I opened the bag, I noticed a slight floral scent, but I couldn't identify it. Strange given the fact I live near a huge pond filled with lilies. I also grew up in an area where we had big beds of water lilies near t...

Today we are reviewing another new tea. This tea is named for the blue mountains in southern India where this tea is grown. Unlike Darjeeling and Assam, tea grows year round here. I looked up some pictures of the Niligiri mountains. It brought up pictures of snow covered peaks, and verdant slopes. If you looked closely you could see the fine lines of crop rows and terracing on some of the hills. Mountains always amaze me, probably because I've always lived on the plains. I've flown over the Alps, and the Canadian Rockies, I've seen the peak of Denali emerge from behind an airplane wing. I've spent time on the ground in the Appilachians, Alaska, and the Rift Valley (with associated mountains and volcanoes) yet mountains still seem somewhat abstract to me. In all reality, few people who live around mountains actually go mountain climbing. They are either undeveloped areas that you just kind of look at, or highly developed areas that are paved over and barely noticeable. T...