Fragrant Flowers

This morning I decided to have a blend and wanted something floral to celebrate the lovely weather we've been having. I chose the Che Sen Lotus and Jasmine Yin Hao from Stash. Amazingly, even though the two floral notes were easily identifiable, they also combined to add a lovely lilac note. Or perhaps that's just my wishful thinking considering I recently found two tea companies that sell lilac tea.

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.

Che Sen Cherry

We've been out of propane for nearly a week now so I've been drinking a lot of green teas since the coffee maker I use to heat water with at times like this only reaches about 200F, not quite boiling and not hot enough for black teas. This morning I decided I'd rather make my own blend than pick just one. So I picked the Cherry Rose Kyoto Sencha and Che Sen Lotus green teas from my now-organized cupboard. Yes, I now have all my teas organized in nice covered boxes ($6 at WalMart), I'll have to get photos later. Anyway, back to the tea.

The bright yellow liquor smelled like cherry syrup (like what maraschino cherries are packed in in those little jars), luckily the taste wasn't quite so candy-like. The Lotus tea gave this blend a mellower flavor and a very distinct lotus note.

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.

The Rescue

This morning I decided to try something different. After my brother admitted the other day to not liking fruit-flavored teas, and having not even opened the tins of fruit-flavored teas he had grabbed from the smorgasbord of samplers, I went down to his desk in the basement and liberated the two tins from their lonely exile. I decided to try the Passion Fruit Black Tea first. It was a lovely red-amber after 5 minutes of steeping and tasted like honey and black tea with a fruity note. Slightly floral. Absolutely lovely. I am very glad I rescued this from my brother's uncaring clutches.

It also brought out a nicely contrasting lemon flavor in the blueberry muffins I was eating.

Lemony

I made up some of my Pad Thai again and wanted a green tea blend to go with it. I decided to use the lemongrass I had bought from Tavalon with Pingshui and Dragonwell teas from EnjoyingTea.com. I might have used a bit more of the lemongrass than I needed but it had a very pleasant, lemony flavor that went wonderfully with the Pad Thai.

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!

A little something before bed

I wanted to have some tea before bed but I also didn't want anything with caffeine in it since my five month old refuses formula and I don't want to risk having her up half the night. Enter the fruit melanges I bout from Old Wilmington Tea Co. I blended the Berries n' Cream and Harvest and added a few cloves (love cloves, love love love) for a blend that was deliciously tart, creamy, fruity, and spiced all at once.

Headed South

So, yesterday afternoon I had gotten everything set up so I could make an omlet for lunch, including cracking the eggs into a bowl. Between one thing and another I ended up not getting any further than that on the lunch front. So this morning I decided to finish that omlet idea. I topped it with my black bean salsa and extra cheese and had a couple slices of banana bread as well.

Seeing how I seemed to be heading south for breakfast I decided to have some of EnjoyingTea.com's Roasted Mate Chai, rounded the flavor out with some Winey Keemum, and added my usual spice blend. I added a bit more nutmeg than usual though which gave the tea a pleasantly warm bite that complimented the salsa and the banana bread nicely.

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.

Raspberry Takeover

So I decided to try one of the flavors I made from Design A Tea, the Chocolate Raspberry with a black tea base. There was definitely a strong raspberry note! The chocolate, sadly, seemed to be in hiding. The leaves smelled strongly of chocolate, the liquor smelled strongly of chocolate, but the taste just wasn't there. So, strike chocolate from my list of flavors to use but at least the raspberry has potential!

The rest of the story

Sorry about how late I'm posting this but I had to rush off this morning and didn't have time to tell this like it should be told. Anyway, remember my post about the wonderful shopping experience I had over at Design A Tea? Well, the package came in last night! The package smelled absolutely divine even before I opened it (hmm, might need to get tins for these) and inside were, not only the teas I had ordered, but another designer sample and a coupon for a small, no-frills packaging tea...FREE. If this company is looking for return customers they have one right here!

I decided to try the second tea I had ordered, the one that came free. It is a black tea called Ice Wine and it does indeed smell, and taste very much like wine. The smell of the tea liquor actually smelled very much like one of those old timey country/antique shops, very potpourri. It's not as sweet as I had hoped but still very good. I think I might try this iced next time.

Breakfast for Lunch

We had french toast for lunch today so I decided to try the Port City blend from Old Wilmington Tea Co. I over-steeped it a bit (seven minutes instead of five) but it turned out OK for all that anyway, so...*shrugs*

The liquor was a bright amber with a very lively, brisk flavor. Strongly lemon with a bit of a floral note and a slight astringency. It reminded me of Earl Grey but tasted a lot better, in my opinion anyway (my first, and only, pot of Earl Grey got poured down the drain and the package swiftly disposed of to a more…interested party). Although I usually take my black teas with sugar and milk I decided to forgo the milk with this one because of the strong lemon flavor.

It is a pleasant afternoon tea. It didn’t wow me but I would consider drinking it again.

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!

Well...I didn't think that would work

I had an omlet for lunch and decided to try doing a blend with some Genmaicha. Unfortunately I was not feeling very creative so with the thought of "This is so not going to work but I'm going to do it anyway because I'm too cussed stubborn for my own good," I grabbed some Che Sen Lotus green tea, nutmeg, and peppercorns and tossed 'em in the pot with the Genmaicha. Once I put the water in to steep the tea I turned away to cook my omlet...and totally forgot that Genmaicha tastes absolutely terrible when over-steeped!

So there I was, with a pot of tea that I was absolutely certain would be the fifth brew to travel down the drain. A bit of sugar in the cup, pour the tea, and wait for it to cool a bit. A few minutes later I took my first sip...WOW! Not only drinkable but it tasted pretty good too!

Isn't it nice when what you think will be a disaster turns out to be one of the best parts of the day?

A little fruity

Today's blend: Orange Rooibos and EnjoyingTea.com's Pineapple black tea. I definitely didn't add enough of the tea to the rooibos though, I could hardly taste it over the marmalade flavor. Oh well, at least I like marmalade even if that wasn't the flavor I was going for.

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.