Cooks Tasting Tea

The hills are alive with the sound of music!

Not as stellar a day as yesterday – car trouble, probably expensive car trouble. It always is. But the sun is shining!

As I mentioned a while ago, I am going through my teabag stash to see what really is fit for my baggy friends and what is not. Today I have some Republic of Tea British Breakfast tea. I love to read their catalogs, I love the hype and find it fun. It may not be intended that way, but I take it so. I also use them for gifts, as I have friends who love their tea, but won't bother with loose tea.
Back to the Brits. The teabag is unbleached paper of some sort, individually enclosed in one of those foil/paper packets. It is a mix of Assam, Ceylon, Darjeeling and African. All that in one tiny bag! There's not much smell to it, either dry or brewing. I brewed it up for about 2.5 minutes with boiling water. It really is about what I expected – a strong, somewhat tannic black tea, suitable for breakfast for the baggy crowd. Better than average, and while not super, I'll keep it, at least for a while.

As I've mentioned, we are going to move this year and so, we have been downsizing. This excruciating process means getting rid of about half your “stuff”. All those things you thought you'd have forever – stupid, I know, but we all live in la-la land to a degree. But it is amazing the things you find, like a three year old article on tea tasting from Cook's Illustrated magazine.
In their tasting, they compared supermarket teas with ones from Harney's, Upton's, Mariage Freres, Mighty Leaf and Adagio. They used either plain black or English breakfast varieties.

They had 2 categories – with and without milk. Mighty leaf won in the without milk category and Harney's in the with milk . The supermarket winners for plain tea were Twinings loose, PG Tips, Novus by Bigelow, Lipton Black Pearl and Stash loose. The with milk winners were Tazo Awake loose, Tetely Specialty Tea, Red Rose loose, and ordinary Liptons. I was kind of amazed,as my grocery doesn't carry most of those, just the two Liptons and the PG Tips. Then I noticed these were Boston-area supermarkets. I guess big cities do have some advantages.

Speaking of English Breakfast Tea, The Tea Spot has a new one called Shagadelic English Breakfast. Just heard about it today.

After the tea, the class

Now, that is one classy candlestick! It is about 5' tall and at least, gold-washed.

I got a sample of the Republic of Tea's Cranberry Blood Orange Black Tea from one of my tea swap friends and I must say, I was disappointed. It seemed to have almost no taste and not much smell. I used 3 teabags in a 14 oz cup of boiling water for about 3 minutes. There was a faint scent of sweetness and there was a bit of taste to the water, but that was it. I even tried adding a bit of honey, thinking it would bring out the flavor more. Alas, it did not.

Tea 101: Did you know that all tea – black, Oolong, green, white, or yellow comes from the same plant? I am not talking about herbal teas like peppermint, Rooibos or Honeybush, they are not tea, even though we call them that, they are tisanes. All real tea comes from a tree or shrub named Camellia Sinensis, which is related to the beautifully flowering camellias in some of our gardens. . There are two main varieties, Camellia Sinensis sinensis, the Chinese one, which grows best in colder climates and Camellia Sinensis assamica, which grows best in more tropical climates. There are endless crossings and recrossings of these two varieties, as farmers and tea estates try to find the best plants for their particular climate and soil. There may even be ones from Java and Ceylon (SriLanka) that are named varieties - there is some conflict about that. But they are all camellias.

Tea plants do flower and their flowers are attractive, but it's the leaves we all want, from barely withered as a white tea, all the way up to the very fully processed blacks. You can purchase tea plants and tea seeds on line, a search will yield several sources, and even make a cup or so of tea from the plants. Just don't expect great tea from your efforts.

I neglected to mention that it did indeed snow yesterday - very late in the day and now it is really, really snowing. It's almost over kitty height and the smaller ones of us are bored, driving the larger ones of us crazy. So is that 12 days of snow now?

Crabby ole tea person writing

"Tis the season” when everyone comes out with their teas for the holidays and everything else “just for the holidays” I am curmudgeonly enough that I begin to get tired of it very quickly. However, I was on a “gallivanting” with good friends and saw some Republic of Tea's Comfort and Joy traveler's tins so I bought one – that is 5 teabags in a little round tin. Cheaper in the store than on line from them, even, but expensive for what you get--. I was hoping the cloves in it weren't too strong. And they weren't. The tea has black tea, cinnamon, flavorings, cloves, licorice root and apple pieces. It is a little sweet, a little spicy, not too much clove but just okay. Certainly nothing I would ever buy again. Why bother? To me it tastes like 50 others I've had, nothing at all distinctive, even the name is borrowed from a popular Christmas carol. There, now I don't have to try any more Christmas teas, I've done my bit for this year.

Poor you folks, two days in a row of panning something - I'll try to be nice tomorrow!

But not just yet. I am grumpy about the “holidays”. I might just as well say it. I hate Christmas stuff in October. After Thanksgiving is soon enough. I hate people only giving to the poor, needy, unhappy only at the holidays. I hate the amount of money that people spend on just stuff, and yes, I've done it and that is probably why I am sick of it. For me, Thanksgiving is a time to be reminded of what we are thankful for, not just a time to pig out and watch football. Christmas for me is a religious celebration. I don't want them lost in “sparkle season” and 29 cents a pound turkey. Goodness, what a crab, guess I better go have some chamomile tea and calm down. May I say in my defense that I like to go caroling, give gifts and when there are no small kittens, decorate a tree. It's the hype I can't stand.

Today's picture is a small part of the mosaics in a Ravenna, Italy, church. It doesn't come close to portraying how magnificent they are.