Ceylon Blends

The quality of Ceylon teas has been on a steady rise since tea plantations revived Sri Lanka’s agricultural industry when their coffee crops fell victim to disease. You can have a pure Ceylon tea from a particular estate or enjoy one of these delicious teas in a blend where their flavors harmonize with the qualities of other teas.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

LibreTea Mug Test 2 — Black Tea

Time for round 2 of our testing of the new, larger glass and poly travel mug from LibreTea. In the first round, hubby and I tested a favorite white tea, Snow Dragon. For this test, we chose a favorite black tea, Scottish Breakfast also from The English Tea Store.

As mentioned in the previous article, LibreTea has a great instructional video on their Website that I strongly recommend you view before using this mug. Then, you can decide if you want to follow their directions or go your own path. (If you choose the latter, please don’t blame LibreTea if something goes wrong.)

We chose to bravely go our own path when steeping this black tea, mainly because we strongly prefer to steep this and other loose leaf teas directly in the pot, mug, etc., without bags, sachets, or infusers of any kind. The dry tea leaves were put directly in the body of the mug, not in the filter/strainer/infuser.

This black tea doesn’t put on quite as much of a show as Snow Dragon did. The tea leaf pieces strangely huddled near the top of the water, with only a few pieces falling. (This is the opposite of their behavior in a teapot, where they laze around on the bottom.) This tea, like many black teas, also steeps fast, so there wasn’t a big color change.

The Test Results:
The tea steeped up fine, as it did in the first test and has in other such mugs, but again that dilemma faces me. What’s next? Since I like to put milk and sweetener in this particular black tea, how do I do that without having all those leaves in it, which need to be strained out anyway so the tea doesn’t oversteep?

Once again, the answer is to strain the tea into something else. In this case it was a regular mug large enough to hold the full amount of liquid in the LibreTea steeping mug. As you can see, this tea liquid has a beautiful ruby color (some tea connoisseurs call black teas “red teas” based on the liquid, not the dry leaf, color). The tea leaves stayed in the mug, ready for a second infusion, which we did.

What do you do if you’re in the office or other workplace? One option is to follow our example above. Of course, if you tend to drink your tea a bit at a time instead of downing the cupful fairly quickly, the tea could get cold. Another option (and one which I suggested in the first test) is to buy two, one to steep in and one to drink from (tip: keep the cap on between sips to keep the tea hot). Your tea will stay hot and the pleasantly warm exterior of this mug will be a great hand-warmer both in Winter and Summer (excess air-conditioning). As I previously stated, the volume of this mug is sufficient to last during the most grueling commute.

Disclaimer: This mug was provided to me by LibreTea for this review. My assessment of it is strictly objective, however. If you’ve read my reviews of other products, you know this is true.

Tea Cozy Tea Party

Have you ever wondered if your teawares have a life of their own? Do they hold their own tea parties, inviting their buddies and serving up some of your pricey teas along with your stash of cookies and other teatime treats? No, you say. I say, “Are you sure?”

Recently, my supply of teapots, tea mugs, teacups and saucers, tea kettles, and more, had four new members added to their ranks: three teapot cozy prototypes and one final version in a very special design. Each one fits some teaware I own (and sits behind it in the photo below), with that special cozy fitting only the little yellow teapot.

Well, I stored them safely, cleaned up the kitchen, turned out all the lights and headed upstairs to bed. Just as I was dozing off, I heard a faint clinking sound, and the scent of a freshly steeped breakfast blend tea wafted to my nostrils. I laid very still and listened. “Clink! Clink! Giggle!”

I gave my hubby a nudge. “Psst, someone’s downstairs!” We tiptoed our way through the dark rooms to the kitchen and peaked around the corner. Nothing. Hubby was about to head back upstairs when we both heard another “Clink!”

“It’s coming from the dining room,” he said. We crept over that way. The door was ajar, but the room was dark. Stealthily, I slipped my hand in the gap between the door frame and the door and flipped the light switch.

Caught in the act!

Proof positive that those teawares have a life of their own.

Read about the persistent woman behind the tea cozies on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

GinghamgrlVA has an Etsy.com shop. She makes all sorts of cute teapot cozies, along with crafters aprons and lots of other “sewn stuff.” I encourage you to check it out.

Disclaimer: I get no monies for the sales this post might generate. I just wanted to thank someone very special for her example to us all.

Catching Up With Canton Tea Co.

In the sometimes fast-paced world of tea, companies pop up overnight and go full steam ever after. I began following Canton Tea on Twitter awhile back and decided to catch up with this “shooting star” to see how they ranked. The results of my search were quite illuminating.

Tea seems to be luring more and more people away from stodgy occupations in finance, Website design and engineering, public relations, and a variety of other fields. Canton Tea’s founder, Jennifer Wood, is one of those who succumbed in 2007 to the Siren song of Camellia Sinensis, otherwise known as the tea bush, to make it a living, not just an enjoyable beverage.

Wood had been a copywriter, preparing content for various venues (press releases, etc.). Fine Chinese teas had been an increasing part of her daily intake. She finally decided to turn this aesthetic acquaintance into an occupation, to the joy of tea drinkers both in the UK and other countries. Her venture was joined in 2009 by Edgar Thoemmes, Director of Yellow Monkey Web Design and a financial analyst with a major bank. He’s an absolute dynamo who is not shy about traveling to where the tea is grown and getting a feel not just for the tea but also for the culture and the local cuisine.

Canton Tea is one of those companies that is leading the way out of “tea darkness” (a land where dust in a bag has reigned for several decades). Though a small company, they are big on tea knowledge and on having the right connections with tea growers. In an age where we usually have no idea where the green beans, potatoes, etc., in the can, plastic bag, etc., comes from, knowing where the tea comes from is quite refreshing. If you are ready to take a step up the ladder to greater tea drinking heights, this is one of those tea companies to cultivate a relationship with. They’re in Twickenham, UK, but have not problem shipping to the U.S.

I’m going to be trying a couple of their teas:

White Bai Mu Dan
Traditional Shui Xian (Oolong)

Wood is quite dedicated to bringing only the best teas to your teacup and is part of a movement to improve tea labeling so that you can tell the specialty teas from those others. Imagine buying tea the way you would buy a fine wine: year, grower, etc. With a bit of knowledge, you could zero in on just the right tea to suit your taste.

Their Website is chock full of tea info. The section on Health Benefits is ahead of most at citing actual studies, but it would be better if they linked to those studies instead of just naming them.

Don’t miss the section on teawares. The right type of pot will make quite a difference in your enjoyment of different teas.

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving was quite a feast, even though it was just hubby, me, the Little Yellow Teapot, and his wonderful new tea cozy from GinghamgrlVA. Little Yellow took a shortcut and decided to steep a bagged tea. We insisted on our fave: Devonshire Tea. It is very mild and tastes great whether straight or with milk and sweetener. With all this rich-tasting food, and of course pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert, we needed that milder flavor. Ah!

Tea Traditions — Asia

To say that tea is part of Asian life is sort of like saying that football, basketball, and baseball are part of American life. The role it plays differs in various parts of Asia. For example, tea in China is part of their traditional medicine and used in Chinese cuisine, plus their approach to tea is different from Korea which is different from Japan. They’re all different from Europe (especially Britain), India, Sri Lanka, Africa, the Middle East, etc.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

LibreTea Mug Test 1 — White Tea

There are lots of new steep-and-drink tea carafes/mugs/whatever coming on the market every day. They all make claims to be a great way for you to enjoy your teas on the go or just steep them in a more compact way. The LibreTea mug is one of that crowd, but it’s quickly becoming a standout. Made of poly and glass, it’s sleek and stylish in appearance and, as I showed in a previous article, it’s one tough cookie, surviving shipment to me in a flimsy padded envelope instead of a shipping box.

The LibreTea Website has a great instructional video on it which I strongly recommend you view before using this mug. Then, you can decide if you want to follow their directions or go your own path. (If you choose the latter, please don’t blame LibreTea if something goes wrong.)

For my try-out of this mug, I decided to do two tests. Their video shows two different ways to steep, one for green tea (which will also work for whites and oolongs) and one for black tea. I chose a favorite white tea for my first test, Snow Dragon from The English Tea Store. It’s a hand-picked two-leaves-and-a-bud tea that is best steeped loose.

We followed the green tea steeping method from the video. We heated the water, put some dry tea in the mug, added the water, screwed on both the filter and the cap, and watched the magic. One of the best features of this mug is the show it puts on, making your tea steeping experience a visual as well as olfactory and taste adventure.

The Test Results:
The tea steeped up fine, as it has in other such mugs, but this is where the dilemma with all of them starts. What’s next? The video says to drink straight from the mug. But if you do, the tea leaves will still be in the liquid and therefore still be steeping, getting overly strong and possibly even bitter. Our solution was, since we were doing this test at home, to pour out the liquid through the filter into another container (a measuring cup). The tea leaves stayed in the mug, ready for a second infusion.

What do you do if you’re in the office or other workplace? You’ll need to decide if you want to risk oversteeped tea by just leaving the tea liquid and leaves in the mug and drinking from it, or if you want to pour your tea into another mug or cup.

I strongly recommend pouring the tea (through the filter) into another container so your tea doesn’t oversteep. Then, you can add hot water to the tea leaves in the mug to get another infusion. That helps you stretch your tea dollars.

There is another solution, but you might think I am getting paid to say this. I assure you most whole-heartedly that I am not. That solution: BUY TWO!!

Yes, I said, “Buy two.”

That way when you are done steeping in one, you can pour the tea into the other and drink it (tip: keep the cap on between sips to keep the tea hot) and add hot water to the other for another steeping. Some teas can be steeped 4, 5, 6, or even more times. This mug is a great way to take advantage of that when you’re away from home or even at home.

As for the volume of this mug being sufficient to last during the most grueling commute, unless you really like to gulp your tea, it will. Also, in the video they claim that the outside of the mug stays cool enough to be touched. Actually, it’s pleasantly warm, great when the weather is chilly.

Next up will be a test with a black tea, which introduces another set of issues.

Disclaimer: This mug was provided to me by LibreTea for this review. My assessment of it is strictly objective, however. If you’ve read my reviews of other products, you know this is true.

What Is "Orthodox Assam"?

Assam teas have two basic quality designations: CTC and Orthodox. There are further distinctions from there, but these two are the starting points. I already explored CTC. Now it’s time to look at what “Orthodox Assam” tea is.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Tea Traditions — Russia

Russians took up tea drinking long before the Dutch began trading with China for it. No surprise. Russia spans two continents: Europe and Asia. They are, therefore, in closer physical proximity to the source (China). Caravans reached them easily on the “Great Tea Road” (part of the famous “Silk Road”), carrying that special cargo.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

The Boston Tea Company Lemon Poppyseed Scone Mix

The Canadians are coming…to a scone mix near you! Hubby and I tried the third and final of three Cobblestone Kitchens (a Canadian company) scones mixes from The Boston Tea Company. The first was the Blueberry-Cranberry Scone Mix, just right for the Winter Holiday Season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s). The second one was the plain mix that you can top as you like. This is the lemon poppyseed scones.

We began by pulling the plastic bag containing the mix out of the diamond-shaped box. (The box is a little large, with the bag only filling up about half of it.) You need a bit of milk and vegetable oil to add to the dry mix.

The mix, oil, and milk stir up easily and quickly form a sticky glob in the bowl. Plenty of poppyseeds in this mix, that’s for sure.

Once again, hubby and I used our drop method for the scones and once again got 8 scones, what we expected based on the weight of the dry mix (7.5 oz.). The quality of these scones more than compensates for the small quantity. Buy several different flavors and fix ’em all for your hungry horde, or fix just one for your special intimate teatime with a “certain someone.”

The black tea we chose to have with our scones this time was Irish Breakfast from The Boston Tea Company, which we had reviewed a little while ago. Our buddy, Little Yellow Teapot, did the steeping honors of course. We opted for some sausage patties as part of our scone breakfast.

The scones were, as our previous experience went, definitely the star of the show, lightly browned and crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside. The poppyseeds, though plentiful, were not overly strong. The lemon flavoring is very delicate, not overdone. That’s good if you like your scones au naturel (without butter, jams, clotted cream, etc., on them), and these are certainly light enough to eat that way. However, if you prefer to top your scone, even a little jam or whatever you choose will end up dominating the light flavoring of these.

The bottom line: these scones are also so scrumptious that they made both hubby and me very happy. The sausage patties and tea weren’t bad, either. Yum!

Processing Tea by Hand or Machine

Just as a lot of tea harvesting has been mechanized, so has the processing of the tea crop. (Of course, I’m talking about true teas made from the leaves of the Camellia Sinensis plant and/or its varietals.) This helps tea companies keep up with growing demand, but how do the two ways of processing compare when it comes to taste?

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Thanksgiving Remembrance — A Friend Now Gone

Since it’s the season for giving thanks, I want to give thanks to someone now gone who enriched my life. You may also have had a loved one or dear friend pass away this year who deserves a moment out of your day when you picture him/her clearly in your mind and remember all the great ways this person influenced or affected you.

I first met Mick and his wife, Barbara, through my husband (who wasn’t my husband yet, just a great guy that I had met and decided right away I liked). They were all friends. Mick and Barbara were excited that their friend had met someone nice (me). He would go to their home every week to talk about things going on in the world and invited me to come along so we could all meet. Fine with me.

The meeting went well. Both Mick and Barbara were pleasant to be with and understanding of my being a bit nervous at the “interview.” Mick was someone who definitely had his two feet planted squarely on the ground. He had led a very interesting life, including serving in the military, and it all combined into a package that could be described by the word “competence.” He advised businesses on how to reorganize so they would be more streamlined and efficient.

Over the years, hubby and I actually consulted with him (on a much smaller scale) about how best to handle some ideas we had. He was always willing to chat and provide some input and encouragement. Thanks to him, hubby and I made great strides toward redirecting our lives to what we wanted to be doing as opposed to just a job to earn money.

Awhile ago we learned that he had been diagnosed with cancer. By this time, he and Barbara were both retired and living in a nice house they had selected in a warm climate to live out their “golden years.” It turned out that part of those “golden years” was to be spent doing what they could to fight off the cancer. With his usual level-headedness, Mick made choices on which treatments to pursue and which would be worse than the disease. Hubby and I were able to visit once before his condition got too advanced and were treated to a wonderful time by both of them.

We weren’t able to visit during the last two years when he was fighting the most valiantly. Our jobs and then our lack of jobs seemed to keep us from the long trip. We talked frequently on the phone and were always impressed with how Mick never whined, never did any verbal hand-wringing over his lot in life. In fact, he always maintained the attitude that this cancer was just another fact of life.

Barbara called us a day or two after our last phone call to them and gave us the news: Mick was gone.

He will live on long in our memories, and our friendship with Barbara goes on. At this time of year, we are so thankful for such friends.

Tea Time Book Review: “The Double”

Tea and a good book are two things that, at least to this dedicated tea drinker, go together like cold Winter days and cozy fires. How much you enjoy the tea and the book will depend on how carefully you select which tea to have and which book to read. Fairly obvious.

What’s also obvious is that I did a pretty lousy job of selecting the book (The Double by José Saramago). In fact, I’ll sum up the experience by saying that, as far as this book is concerned, don’t bother. Save yourselves a frustrating reading experience due to an absolutely insane writing style and a feeling at the end of utter futility. I asked myself, after finishing the final paragraph, “Why did I bother?”

A pretty rare thing for this English Lit major to say.

About the writing style, I can’t say enough bad things. Every writer has his or her own style, and that I can applaud. However, to Saramago I say, “Have a heart.” First, some of the paragraphs are several pages long (yeah, I know other authors do, too, but for some reason, this book seemed far more tedious than they did). Second, some of the sentences are also several pages long, winding around in your brain from clause to clause and eventually getting back on the path. Third and by far the worst, the author avoided using any quotation marks, meaning that “conversations” were tricky to follow, with each person’s speaking part being separated from the others with commas and the new person speaking starting with a capital letter. Fine and dandy unless what one person said had a clause in it that needed a comma and the next part of their sentence started with a capital “I”, which happened numerous times. Needless to say, I had to back up and reread more than once or twice or thrice.

Update 28 Jan 2011: At request of some readers, I inserted a photo of a sample page. This is just one of a several-pages-long conversation with no quotation marks to delineate one speaker from another.

Okay, now for the plot. First, it’s totally improbable, yet it’s not being presented as some kind of science fiction novel. Also, I’m used to suspending disbelief when reading a novel (e.g., Peter Pan), especially if the improbable circumstance is an intriguing one, which this was — at least at first. Second, the action in this book could have taken place in about one-tenth of the number of pages if the author had not felt compelled to interject as much useless elaboration and a bunch of winding backs to some earlier philosophical point as he could manage. Third, events went quickly from an opening that grabbed my interest to a tedium of slogging slowly toward an inevitable conclusion.

As for the characters, the main character has a name (Tertuliano Máximo Afonso ) that is apparently very odd and well-known in Portugal (the book was originally written in Portuguese) but that the author does not bother to explain to readers outside of Portugal and rather assumes we will all understand. This would be okay if he did not also make a big issue about the name at every opportunity imaginable. The way the book was written always gave me the impression that I was just standing on the sidelines watching a very weird series of events and often with very little interest, just a determination to stick it out to the end. So, I never got really interested in this person, nor any of the other characters. Afonso was a divorced school teacher (history) in the cliché relationship with a woman that he was keeping at arms distance. He discovers he is physically the double of a small-time actor who is slowly working his way up to bigger film roles. From here, he is inexplicably drawn to find his double, who turns out to be pretty upset at having a double.

Not to give too much away, I can say that this starts out as a neat concept and, like a full balloon that you lose hold of before being able to fasten the end, flies aimlessly around the room until it is flat. By the end, you could find yourself saying, “Sheesh, so glad THAT’s over!”

You’ll be happy to hear that I faired a lot better in my tea selection. I stuck to black teas that could take milk and sweetener and went thru several potfuls during my push to finish this book. The next book will be selected with a bit more care. The tea always is.

Shown in the photo above: Boston Tea Company’s Irish Breakfast before milk and sweetener were added. One cupful was for me, and the other for my “double.”

Book Review: "The Emperor's Tomb" by Steve Berry

Legend has it that China is where man first started drinking tea. It’s a land with a long history, much of which is unknown outside its borders. Tea, however, is one of the things that for centuries has been traded with, and therefore connected China to, other countries and peoples of the world. Connect further with this land of the inscrutable through a fast-paced adventure called The Emperor’s Tomb, the latest in a series by Steve Berry.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Author Steve Berry joins fellow authors on a USO tour:

According to their publicist:

Five of today's most critically acclaimed thriller writers (left to right) Douglas Preston, Steve Berry, David Morrell, James Rollins, and Andy Harp posed for a group photo during a USO meet-and-greet in Kuwait on November 8, 2010. Part of a week-long USO tour entitled "Operation Thriller," the authors were in the Middle East extending America's heartfelt thanks to US troops.

Thanks, guys!

Holiday-Colored Teawares

It’s that time of year when brightly colored teawares in your favorite holiday colors abound. Conjure up your favorite Winter Holiday image: snowmen, poinsettias, Christmas trees, candy canes, etc. Believe it or not, you’ll be able to find a mug, cup, teapot, or other teaware sporting that image. And many more!

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Mince Pie Mania

Mince pie mania has set in at our house. One of the best things about the Winter Holidays — and that gets our hearts to beating a bit faster — is the reappearance of mince pies on the market.

My first mince pie memories are from childhood. My father would cut a quarter section out of a 10” pie and eat about half of it with one bite…

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Harvesting Tea by Hand or Machine

There are comments being bandied about regarding machine-harvested tea vs. hand-harvested tea, asserting that the latter tastes better than the former. Such statements, however, are subjective and cannot be categorized as strict assurances as if you were saying “This is an apple and that is an orange.” Time for a little objectivity here, if I may be so bold.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

My reviews of teas named in this article:

White Peony from The Boston Tea Co.
Silver Needle from California Tea House
Golden Bi Luo from The Chicago Tea Garden

Silver Needle that was definitely harvested by hand:

Throw Those Tea Dregs Away

You might be tempted to drink your tea to the last drop, but do yourself a favor: throw those tea dregs away.

I hear you thinking, “There she goes again, using those odd tea terms. What the heck is ‘tea dregs’?” Well, I confess to occasionally making up some tea terms, such as “golden pour,” but not this time. The dregs of tea is…

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

The Absent-Minded Tea Drinker

Rush, rush, rush — especially during the holidays, and if one tends to be a bit absent-minded anyway, teatime can be somewhat surprising and challenging.

Tea preparation is a fairly orderly business. Certain steps are required in a certain order. The steps and the order might vary…

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Tea Traditions — Buckingham Palace Tea

Ever fantasized about a “royal teatime” at Buckingham Palace? Me, too, so I checked it out and found that the idea is not as fantastical as it sounds. It’s an annual event attended by over 24,000 lovers of tea time — wow!

Of course, my fantasy was for something a bit more intimate. Afternoon tea is usually for smaller groups…

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Trying a BIG MUG from LibreTea

I happened to remark on Twitter a few days ago that the travel mug design from LibreTea was not something I could recommend. My main reason: It looked too small. After all, it’s meant for traveling. That means road trips, morning commutes, etc. The morning commute, though, could be fraught with such hazards as road construction that necessitates a detour and adds 15-20 minutes to your travel time or a major accident on the road ahead of you where you end up having to sit for 30-60 minutes while the poor victims are taken away by the EMS crew and the vehicles involved are moved out of the way. (Both have happened to me a number of times.)

Well, as a result of this remark, which I still stand by, they informed me that they now have a larger mug available. It arrived a day or two ago and is awaiting the ultimate commuter test. Fortunately, despite being shipped in a padded envelope instead of a shipping box, the mug (made of poly and glass) survived the wilds of the U.S. Postal Service.

I think this mug just passed phase one of the test.

Tea Moments — The Relatives

Thanksgiving is around the corner, meaning that the relatives will be descending upon your house like a horde of Goths. Or maybe you will be part of the horde descending upon one of them. Either way, this usually annual meeting with people you probably hardly know but who occupy a space on your family tree and therefore lay claim to a bit of your time is fraught with lots of emotion and conversations…

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Tea Kettle Philosophy — One More Task

Ever want to just sit down and have a quiet moment with a cuppa tea but there’s one more task to do before you can? Yes? Good — I thought it might just be me and my tendency toward perfectionism.

Of course, those of you with kids, especially young ones who only recently discovered that all those interesting objects are now within reach since…

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

The Boston Tea Company Plain Scone Mix

The Canadians are coming…to a scone mix near you! Hubby and I tried the second of three Cobblestone Kitchens (a Canadian company) scones mixes from The Boston Tea Company. The first was the Blueberry-Cranberry Scone Mix, just right for the Winter Holiday Season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s). This one is the plain mix that you can top as you like.

We began by pulling the plastic bag containing the mix out of the diamond-shaped box. (The box is a bit oversized, actually. The bag only fills up about half of the box.) You need a bit of milk and vegetable oil to add to the dry mix.

The mix, oil, and milk stir up easily and quickly form a sticky glob in the bowl.

Once again, hubby and I used our drop method for the scones and once again got only 8 scones, what we expected based on the weight of the dry mix (7.5 oz.). However, we’re into quality versus quantity, so this was no problem. If you want to feed a hungry horde and each of them consumes 4 or 5 scones each, you’ll need to fix several packages of this mix.

The black tea we chose to have with our scones this time was Pumpkin Spice from The Boston Tea Company, which we had reviewed a little while ago. Our buddy, Little Yellow Teapot, did the steeping honors of course. Since these were plain scones, we got some orange marmalade and seedless blackberry preserves ready, along with one of those tiny jars of Devon Clotted Cream.

The scones were, as our previous experience went, definitely the star of the show, lightly browned and crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside. They tasted so good plain that we almost ate them without the toppings — almost!

The bottom line: these scones are also so scrumptious that they made both hubby and me very happy.

Chais for the Holidays

I love chai — I love the Winter Holiday Season — so it’s natural to have chais for the Holidays! Well, actually, chai is good anytime. It just seems to be especially good this time of year. All that chilly weather and those leaves putting on their color show and then drifting into piles on the ground — they prompt us to get the fireplaces crackling, the snuggly blankets out, and the mugs full of chai for a cozy tea time.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Chocolate Teas

Chocolate and tea — two great tastes drawn irresistibly together through the corridors of time — become even more prevalent during the Winter Holidays. Believe it or not, what seems like such a natural combination now was not always so. “Really?” you ask. “Really,” I say.

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Part of the inspiration for this article was my taste test of a couple of Rooibos Infusions with chocolate. A let down if there ever was one.

A Stirring Tea Experience (or How a Teaspoon Got to Be a Teaspoon)

Teatime can be a stirring experience, with your teaspoon going round and round in the cup, making sure that your honey, lemon, sweetener, milk, etc., are well-blended with your tea. That simple act of stirring your tea has been a part of teatime for as long as there has been a teatime (European-style, that is).

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

Thunderbolt Tea — Living Up to Its Name

The Darjeeling region of India is known as “The Land of the Thunderbolt.” This tea company that proudly bears the name “Thunderbolt Tea” is totally dedicated to the tea growers of the region and to making sure that “imposter teas” don’t drag down the reputation of those genuine teas.

Your guide to this tea company and the teas it represents is a friendly fellow named Benoy Thapa. As a native of the area, he knows the product and the people, very comforting to many of us who like to know where our teas are coming from.

We recently received a second round of tea samples to try out and post on Little Yellow Teapot Tea Reviews. The first batch (reviews posted in the second half of March 2010) was excellent and has truly spoiled us for other Darjeeling teas. We want to remain objective but can’t help having high expectations for these teas that are harvested and processed mainly by hand (accounting for their generally higher cost than machine harvested and processed teas).

The company Website has health info on it that is actually supported by studies. Bravo! There are far too many health claims being made about tea these days with virtually nothing to back them up.

You will also find lots of beautiful photos of the various tea gardens that were selected by Thunderbolt Tea out of the approximately 86 gardens in the area as of high enough quality to be represented by this company. And don’t miss Benoy’s blog, Darjeelingcuppa.com. He doesn’t post too frequently, but when he does, the posts are full of great photos and information, such as a tea tasting at Goomtee Factory.

The Tasting Guide from the reviews posted last March of the 2009 samples.

Fruitcake Free-for-All

Lots of jokes are made about fruitcake, but it’s still one of the most popular food items for the Winter Holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and News Year’s). It’s also great with coffees, teas, and hot cocoa. Such versatility! And the variety of recipes seems so great that you can throw a fruitcake free-for-all, with every guest having a different type of cake and no duplication.

Contrary to what some comedians would have you believe, there is not just one fruitcake…

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.

The Boston Tea Company Blueberry-Cranberry Scone Mix

The Canadians are coming…to a scone mix near you! Hubby and I tried the first of three Cobblestone Kitchens (a Canadian company) scones mixes from The Boston Tea Company. Since we both tend to go for blueberry and cranberry and since the Winter Holiday Season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s) is approaching, we started with the Blueberry Cranberry Scone Mix.

The mix is in a plastic bag inside a box that, when seen from one of the ends, is diamond-shaped. Very cute. According to the ingredients list on the package, the mix doesn’t contain blueberries, not surprising since they tend to get pretty mushy in baked items. It does contain cranberries as well as blueberry juice. One thing’s for sure, the blueberry aroma is dominant in the dry mix.

You need a bit of milk and vegetable oil to add to the dry mix.

The mix, oil, and milk stir up easily. You can also see the large fruit pieces. Those are the cranberries, combined with sugar, blueberry juice, grape juice, and sunflower oil.

Hubby and I use the drop method for our scones, as opposed to shaping them into triangles or other shapes. The drop method seems to work fine and results in pretty tasty scones. You may notice that the mix only made 8 scones. Based on the weight of the dry mix (7.5 oz.), this was expected. A package of the other scone mix we usually have has a dry weight of 14 oz and makes about 13 scones of this size. The ratio of scones to dry weight is about the same.

We always like a nice pot of black tea with our scones. This time, we chose English Breakfast from The Boston Tea Company, which we had reviewed a little while ago. Our buddy, Little Yellow Teapot, did the steeping honors. Hubby fried up some bacon while the scones were in the oven. A bit of Devon Double Cream made the menu complete.

The scones were definitely the star of the show, lightly browned and crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, with a blueberry flavor that was enticing. The one drawback: that blueberry aroma and flavor dominated, with no hint of the cranberry. Only a minor issue as far as we’re concerned.

The bottom line: these scones are so scrumptious that they made both hubby and me very happy.

Teas That Are a Real Treat

Trick-or-treaters driving you buggy with their routine of ringing the doorbell and shouting “Trick or Treat”? Had a bad day at your place of work? Relax with a cup of tea so special that it’s a treat in itself.

Autumn around here means things like pumpkins, corn harvests, hearty and hot dishes like soups full of fall vegetables, and fragrant and tasty baked treats…

Read the rest of the article on The Taste of English Tea Blog.