Chocolate Rose

Huzzah for propane! To celebrate I pulled out my black teas and blended my Rosebud from Stash and the last of the Chocolate Chai. I added my usual spice blend and !boiling! water. I ended up steeping it for longer than I meant to due to dealing with fussy baby and overactive toddler but luckily it didn't seem to affect the taste at all.

Roseberry

Yesterday the family went to Denny's after church. I got two orders of the chocolate chip pancake puppies thinking that my son might want a couple. He was more interested in Daddy's vanilla milkshake though so I brought the leftovers home and had them for breakfast this morning.

Now, pancake puppies are dollops of pancake batter that have been deep fried and dusted with powdered sugar. They are rich and heavy and the chocolate chip variety is even more so. I needed a tea that was light enough to not leave me feeling like my stomach had turned into a cement mixer, but heavy enough to not be overwhelmed by the pancake puppies.

I chose Stash's Rosebud Black blended with Strawberry Black from EnjoyingTea.com. Though this is lovely with or without milk I chose to go without as the milk dulled the lightness of the floral notes.

Spicy Rose

Today I woke up to a light blanket of snow covering the trees and ground and decided to stick with chai again. I chose EnjoyingTea.com's Bangalore Rose Chai as a base and added Rosebud Black and Jasmine Yin Hao from Stash as well as my usual spices. I absolutely love the deep red that the Bangalore steeps to and the opaque peach-orange that results from adding milk is lovely as well. I should try brewing this the traditional way sometime.

Cherry Blossom

So for lunch guess what I had. If you thought "breakfast" go get yourself a cookie. Maybe I should get a cookie too after I write this... Anyway, I decided to have a nice floral green blend and chose the Cherry Rose Kyoto Sencha and Jasmine Dragon Pearls from EnjoyingTea.com. It was so naturally sweet that I almost didn't even have to put sugar in which is saying a lot from a sugar-lover like myself! I was eating French toast with syrup though so if I hadn't added the sugar the flavor would have been overwhelmed. I didn't add much though.

Chocolate Seduction

So this morning I decided to give the China Seduction from Design A Tea another try. I measured out two heaping teaspoons, double what I had used before, and as I was doing so I realized that only about a third of the mix was tea leaves. The other two thirds were chocolate nibs and rose petals respectively. Perhaps that was the cause of the weak taste last time.

After steeping the liquor was a murky red-brown. Very murky, I could hardly make out where the spoon touched the bottom of the tea cup and I use a small cup.

First sip...WOW! Now THAT is CHOCOLATE! Milky smooth but with a slight dark coco bitterness. It actually tastes a lot like the jasmine-infused chocolates that I have. I'll have to try blending this with some jasmine tea at some point.

It also went marvelously with the bagel I had spread with spiced blackberry peach jam!

Vanilla Rose Chai

Today dawned cloudy and chill so I decided to return to spiced black tea for the morning. I chose Stash's Rosebud black blended with the Vanilla Chai from EnjoyingTea.com and added my usual spice blend. I think it needed a bit more rose in there. I'll have to try that after our roses have bloomed and I've had the chance to dry the petals. Anyway, it was definitely what I needed this morning. And it even went well with the spiced blackberry-peach jam I had on my bagel, which I find amazing because usually the spices in the jam overpower the spices in the tea. While there was a bit of that going on the vanilla and rose flavor notes complimented the jam so well that it was totally forgivable.

Sweet or Savory

This morning I had waffles and eggs so I needed a tea that would work well with both sweet and savory flavors. I chose the Winey Keemum English Breakfast as a base with some of Stash's Rosebud black tea, orange peel, and my usual spice blend plus some cardamom scavenged from another tea in my cupboard. The resulting blend worked perfectly with both breakfast foods.

A late start and a good buy

Wow, I'm posting this late...of course breakfast was more like lunch today anyway. Blasted time change. Anyway, today's blend was a base of Stash's Rosebud black tea with French Vanilla and Strawberry black tea from EnjoyingTea.com. Wish I'd had something chocolate to go with it but the bagel with cinnamon sugar was a decent match.


And last night I had the most wonderful tea-buying experience. I went to DesignATea.com to try out a couple of their free samples. Well, after picking the flavors I wanted I decided to go look at their other teas before checking out. There were three or four that sounded absolutely delicious but having already blown any sort of budget I might have had earlier in the week I decided to keep my extra spending down to one tea, making the total a reasonable $10 or so.

Later that evening I recieved an email from the owner of the company with a very generous offer. Since I paying more for shipping than I was for the tea he told me I could pick another tea from the site and he would include a small canister free of charge. I was in shock.

I did eventually manage to compose a return email without a thousand repetitions of "Thank You!" and with my choice of tea. I will definitely be buying from this company again!

Bouquet of Green

Today's blend was a base of Che Sen Lotus green with Cherry Rose Kyoto Sencha and Jasmine Yin Hao. With the recent warm weather I've been itching for green leaves and summer so this was just the thing to soothe my desires...temporarily at least. The tea was well complimented by the french toast with cinnamon and syrup also.

Chocolate Blossom

Today's blend: Chocolate Chai from the Bar Harbor Tea Company with Stash's Rosebud Black and Jasmine Yin Hao. It amazes me how much my son likes the floral teas when it took me so long to get used to drinking something that smelled like perfume. Perhaps it's because he's never smelled jasmine perfumes that he drinks it so readily.

We also enjoyed the toast with butter and cinnamon sugar that accompanied the tea.

Tea and Truffles: Take II

So, I still have truffles left and had a bit of time this afternoon so I steeped a pot of Stash's Jasmine Yin Hao and Rosebud Black teas with a bit of orange peel. This blend worked MUCH better than my previous attempt with the Monkey King Jasmine tea paired with the truffles. Truffles are a very rich chocolate and I have found that rich flavors need rich-flavored teas to match them. The Monkey King Jasmine is more like a jasmine scented breeze compared to the Jasmine Yin Hao, which can be compared to standing in the middle of a garden full of blooming jasmine on a warm summer's day.

Vanilla Rose

Perhaps it was the simplicity, or the way the two flavors complimented each other...or the fact that my last two pots of tea were such failures... Whatever it was, today's blend of French Vanilla black tea and Stash's Rosebud Black tea tasted absolutely delicious. Even my son thought so!

A rose is a rose is a rose...not

I had a bit of my chocolate cereal left this morning so I decided to try a new rose blend. It didn't work out too well. I used EnjoyingTea.com's Bangalore Rose Chai as a base with a touch of Stash's Rosebud black and Monkey King Jasmine teas and my usual spice blend. The only flavor note that stood out was the jasmine, the rest was all muddled together in a rather bland mix. I blame the chai.

Timewarp to Summer

More chocolate cereal for breakfast. Today though I went with a green tea: Cherry Rose Kyoto Sencha from EnjoyingTea.com. Not only did it go well with the cereal but it was complimented by the strawberries my mom brought over this morning. Those three flavors, the tea, strawberries, and chocolate, combined for an absolutely marvelous taste sensation. It was like stepping into summer for those few moments.

Strawberries 'n' Cream

Have to have a quick breakfast this morning so I'm having chocolate Frosted Mini Wheats and a very lovely black tea blend consisting of Stash's Rose black and EnjoyingTea.com's Strawberry black.

More Chocolate

Today's blend: Stash's Rose and Blood Orange black teas with my usual spice blend. It went very well with the chocolate Frosted Mini-Wheats I had for breakfast this morning.

Bangalore Rose

There are still chocolate chocolate-chip muffins left this morning (in a house with a toddler...something's not right here) so I am having another rose-based blend. For this one I am using EnjoyingTea.com's Bangalore Rose Chai with extra spices (since EnjoyingTea doesn't put much spice in their chais for some reason) and a touch of French Vanilla Black tea from Tea Francais.

Empress' Spice Garden

Stash's Rose Black with a touch of Jasmine Yin Hao, orange peel, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg.

Teas with rose petals go very well with chocolate so I paired it with chocolate chocolate-chip muffins