Pitch Pine Pollen Matches Matcha!

Wow, a breeze just came through the pitch pines and scattered pollen in a huge greenish yellow cloud. It is just about the color of the matcha tea I am having, from the Bamboo Tea House.

I had ordered a bowl, whisk and spoon from Rice Tea company because I couldn't really get much froth with what utensils I had and it just arrived yesterday, so of course I had to try it out. I know it is no "super set" but I like it. The bowl fits my hands well and is an attractive creamy beige with brown and green markings. The tea is made, in the beginning, the same way as gyokuro, that is, the bushes are shaded for 6 weeks before plucking, to enhance the amount of chlorophyll in them. Then the leaves are dried and ground into a very fine powder.

I got out my matcha, warmed the water to about 150 degrees poured it over a scoop of tea and whisked away in a "W" shape. Behold! Frothy matcha. I feel so proud of my self. The tea is so springy - a nice bright green color and a nice bright green flavor, slightly sweet, slightly astringent. Altogether a very nice drink and I am happy to have the utensils to go with it. This is not top-quality or ceremonial matcha, but I figure when you are learning to do something, it is best to start with perhaps lesser or different quality and cost.

If I really get into Matcha, I may buy some that is more expensive. For now, this is enough. The grade I purchased is also used in cooking and I am going to see about adding it to my vanilla ice cream and see how it is. Or maybe matcha macaroons, if the weather ever dries out. The first time I ever had green tea ice cream I loved it. It was a nice subtle flavor in good quality ice cream. I have had some since that was not, the makers got too exuberant with the matcha.

Frolicking in the Far East

On my last swing through the aisles of the Asian market, I picked up what I thought was Rose black tea. Nope, it is Roselle Black Tea, distributed by Fujian Blue Lake Foods, from China. Okay, so what is Roselle? Wikipedia to the rescue. It is a kind of Hibiscus. It comes in a smallish glass apothecary jar, with a really good seal.

The tea is quite pretty, with crinkled black and brown leaves and red flower petals. It smells sweet, like heavy brown sugar. I brewed it for 3.5 minutes with boiling water. While it was brewing it smelled distinctly like rhubarb, which I have been having a lot of, lately. It is a fairly light colored brew - medium honey at best. It is rather odd tasting, sharp, dark, medicinal, but tasty. I could really get used to it. The deeper I go in the cup, the more the hibiscus comes to the fore, but very politely, not as sharp as usual. Perhaps the black tea modifies it more than herbals. The medicinal aspect disappears, as well as any heaviness. Altogether pleasant.

I am having this with homemade low carb, sugar free, chocolate chip pecan scones. Oh my, this recipe is a keeper. If there are other low carbers out there who would like the recipe, go to www.tovaindustries.com/carbalose and go to the recipe section. I also made some really good blueberry pecan scones and there are frozen raspberries just begging for use in the freezer.

I bought myself a matcha whisk and bowl, as I do love matcha and I wanted to treat it right. Also, my efforts to whip it into a froth were not at all a success. When it arrives, I'll fill you in as I have matcha waiting from the Bamboo Tea House.

I see Dean and DeLuca, that purveyor of exceedingly expensive food stuffs, which I admit to giving as gifts, now carries not only its own brand of elegantly packaged teas, but a good selection of Mariage Freres, who make some absolutely wonderful stuff. Come Chritmastime I shall have to forward a small selection to Himself as a hint.

A grackle and a blue jay are taking turns at the feeders. They are both bully boys, so I don't feel sorry for them picking on or scolding each other. The rose-breasted grosbeak was here this morning, looking a bit worn. Kiddies keeping you up nights, hmmm? A male Hairy woodpecker was at the suet last night, filling his beak with as much as he could carry several times. I suspect he is doing papa duty as well.

It's Almond Blossom Time

Amalfi from the Cathedral steps.


Oh me aching back and grubby fingernails. I have been putting in perennials this week and my body is a bit unhappy - all those muscles I didn't know I wasn't using. I also don't wear gloves unless it is to handle something prickery or nasty. They just bug me. I like to feel the soil.

This is the last garden I am starting - we've moved so much I've rarely gotten to see them come into any sort of matruity. It's very hard to constantly leave behind carefully selected plants or plants your friends have given you.




Hmm, all of a sudden we really have some green up here. Both understory and trees are leafing out. Hooray!




Today's tea I got in a swap with my new tea friend, Rene, from California. It is from the Bamboo Tea House and is their organic Almond Blossom Oolong. It smells wonderful and has slivers of almond in it. I brewed it up with water at about 205 for 2 minutes. Now it smells nutty and roasty, as this is a more heavily oxidized Oolong. It tastes nutty and dark, with just the barest, barest hint of almond blossom. It is tasty, but I think the scent and flavor would work much better with a lighter roast.
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Not much action at the bird feeders today. Ernie is under a bush, pretending to be a groundcover, but they aren't fooled. Some have given him a good scolding, too. YesterdayI saw the first hummingbird. They are so amazing, with their ability to fly backwards and make right angles in flight. They don't even weigh an ounce and come up here all the way from South America!

Blessed Easter To All

Floral carvings on the choir stalls in Meieringen, Switzerland.
They were recently cleaned and look brand new in stead of several
centuries old.



It's another gray grizzly day, and it is pretty cold. The weather site says we won't see the sun for a week. I guess I'd better keep drinking green tea, although I may have to switch to black to warm these old bones.


I am having the Bamboo Tea House Melon Seed Green. This is also known as Liu An Gua Pian and hales from China, usually An Hui Province. I expected the leaves to be melon seed shaped and they weren't. Before I got all critical about that, I looked it up on several internet sites and none of them are. Phew.


The leaves are very green and very large and they smell like popcorn to me. As it brewed, it came to have more of a Cracker Jack aroma. This carried through into the tea, which was light and sweet, but certainly not cloying. There was still a bit of Cracker Jacks in it. It is delightful to have tea have so many aromas and flavors all on its own.

The First Flush Darjeeling harvest is done, so we can expect to see them in our tea merchants offerings within the next month or two. In Taiwan, the lower slope Oolongs have been picked and the high mountain ones should start to be picked in the next week or two.

I have been making a lot of blueberry scones lately and I have found that if I put them in the batter frozen (I have about 5 gallons in the freezer!!!) they do very nicely and come out with a bare minimum of bursting, instead staying a nice plump berry. I had best find some other way to use them, as summer is coming and I will certainly want to pick more.


I wish all of you an ecstatic Easter celebration and I'll see you again on Monday.

From the Heights

A Gothic soaring goes with today's high mountain tea.

Mt. Everest makes one think of Nepal, and that may be where this tea comes from. Alas, the Bamboo Tea House doesn't give any information, so I don't know. I do know it doesn't grow that high - nothing does except ice crystals. This attractive mix of small black, gold and brown leaves gives off a rich aroma of tobacco, wine and good, clean earth, but not in the sense that Puerh is earthy.

I used a biggish teaspoon of tea and brewed it for 3.5 minutes with boiling water. The brew was a lot lighter amber color than I expected. So was the taste. There were not a lot of nuances to it, which in my book makes it an ideal morning tea. It was mild, with a little earthiness and quite smooth. It went well with some cream.

Yesterday we had one lone Tom Turkey eating the spilled seeds around the bird feeder. This is unusual, as turkeys usually are only seen as a flock. He may be one the eldest tom kicked out to find his own harem or one that is too old and a young turk kicked him out. Or maybe he's just lost. Turkeys are not known for being brainy. We also have a lone blue jay who doesn't seem to be very happy with me and comes to the window to scold. The feeders are too small for him to really be able to get seed and he is too snazzy to eat from the ground.

More Russians

A church in Sorrento, Italy, the Mary altar.

All of you Darjeeling fans may be in for some price rises. There has been a drought in some parts of Darjeeling and now some of the gardens' workers are striking for things like a living wage, better working conditions, education for their children abd health care. Apparently some of the attempted discussions to bring settlement have gotten very heated and there has been harassment of workers. Although I do like first flush Darjeeling, which is now ready to be picked, I am with the workers, who make only about $1 a day and live too far from schools and medical care. If you buy Fair Trade teas, these issues are addressed and some organic companies also are dealing with them.

Have I mention Alex Zorach's fine website http://www.ratetea.net/ ? It is a very worthwhile site, carrying some fine reviews of a wide range of teas and you can add your own if you would like. Another in somewhat the same vein is http://www.steepster.com/. There are many many blogs and review sites about tea and most of them are fun as well as informative.

Today I am in a black tea mood and I am trying Russian Style Black from the Bamboo Tea House in California. http://www.bambooteas.com/ I found their service to be very quick and they even went out of their way to make the shipping cheaper. My only quibble is there isn't much information on their site about the dirrerent teas.

The dry tea isa mix of brown and really black leaves. It smells dark, earthy winey, with some tobacco lurking in the background. I brewed it for almost 4 minutes with water just off theboil. The brewed tea is very dark, rich and fresh tasting, with maybethe very tiniest hint of smoke. The tea is very smooth and rich with a woody wine like flavor, backed up with a touch of astringency at the end. Somehow it conveys a smokey back room filled with intellectuals. (Touch of fantasy there.) I see why it is called Russian. It is not at all delicate, but just as smooth as can be. it takes milk and sweetener well.

An Austrian church and village. I like how their roof colors are all
coordinated,


More Spring signs! Farmers are getting out their planting machinery and a whole flock of robins arrived yesterday - kind of offsets the snow we has last night. But only kind of, as today is bone-chilling raw.



Howsomever - isn't that a great word?! Today I am having some Japanese Cherry Sencha Green Tea from the Bamboo Tea House http://www.bambooteahouse.com/ in California. My tea-swap friend, Rene kindly sent it to me. Right away I could tell this is a different flavored tea. It smelled like real cherries and not cherry candy. A tart sweetness is how I would describe it. I brewed it in my nice little green-tea-only Yixing pot for about 2 minutes at about 180 degrees.



The liquor is a very pretty pale golden green and gives off a muted scent of cherry and green tea. Oh, I like the flavor of this. The tea comes through as a nice springy greenness and the cherry does away with what I think of as the fishiness that some senchas have. The tea has a full mouth feel and the cherry lingers on your tongue. A very pleasant experience. I think this would probably make a lovely ice tea, with just a touch of lemon to cut the sweetness for me.



I know some of you are really into Royal memorabilia and if so, you can go to http://bit.ly/eF9sLq to see an article about an English woman who has a huge collection. In keeping with that, the official Will and Kate wedding site is http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/ Neither is really my thing, but we all have different interests. In spite of that I probably will watch at least some of it. A wedding is a wedding, right?



On a different note, The American Tea Room is donating 10% of its on-line sales until March 23 to Japanese relief. Also, if you order $25 worth of tea, they will send you a 2 ounce sampler of their Nirvana Tea, which looked pretty tasty. Their address is www.americantearoom.com