It's A Lovely Day Today

It's a lovely day in the neighborhood.  The sun is shining, I remembered to set the clocks ahead and spring is in the air.  Quite literally, as there are returning birds flying around and singing their hearts out.  The phoebes are back, with their distinctive song, for which they were named.  I realized this morning that although I have been singing the praises of snow, I am sick of winter and want to move forward.  I want to see the bulbs poking up noses with the promise of flowers, I want to know if the lavender survived and will there be enough tarragon, all those green things.

Having said that, I am not quite ready to switch to primarily green teas.  It is still too cold.  However, I noticed a sample of Jasmine Pearls tea from the Tea Spot and I haven't had Jasmine tea in a while, so...  I am as changeable as our weather.

In the packet, the pretty little green and white balls gave off a sweet simple jasmine aroma.  I brewed it for 3 minutes with water about 170 degrees.  There was that same gentle aroma!    This tea is lovely, a very gentle jasmine, sweet, but not overwhelming and definitely not one of the cloying ones.  Just about perfect, I would say.


How's this for a fancy, schmancy altar?  I believe it is in Sorrento, Italy.

Intrigue In A Tea Cup

I have often contemplated trying to grow my own tea bush.  This could be a problem as I live in New York and we can have sustained periods of below zero temperature.  I know you can bring them inside, but I already have 4 gargantuan pots to haul around and I'm not sure I really want another one, especially one which has to be brought in when the temperature goes below 50.  I am simply not that organized.  I did hear a good idea about big pots, which I will pass on to you.

If your plant(s) are shallow rooted, you can put all those peanuts you get in packages in plastic bags and then put them in your pot and then add soil, so your pot is lighter to carry about.  If you don't have peanuts, use perlite.  The other thing you can do is cut a piece of styrofoam to fit inside your pot at the depth you want, making sure to add some drainage holes.  I don't know if this would wok with a tea plant, because I don't know anything about their root system.

I ordered some teas from Siam Tea, www.siam-tee.de which specializes in teas from Northern Thailand.  This company is new to me and owned by Thomas Kaspar, who writes for the English Tea Store blog.  I was very pleased with their service.  The first tea I am trying is Shi Er Black Pearls, Doi Mai Salong, North Thailand.  Black they are, little balls, with some tails attached.  I wasn't thinking and just bunged them in my tea strainer for 3.5 minutes.  When I went to pull it out, it was absolutely stuffed with big  leaves.  Live and learn.

This is easily the most intriguing tea.  The dry tea smelled of roasted wood - not burned, roasted, as if it were meat.  There was also a bit of dark toast and roasted corn.  As it was brewing it gave off a woodsy, flowery, toasted acorn aroma.  The tea was a fairly light golden brown.  To try and describe the flavor is almost impossible.  The nearest I can come up with is flowery toasted acorns.  It was delicious.  One thing to watch out for and that is to drink it in small cups, because as it cools it loses some of its interest and the flavor gets very muted.  Not that that's bad, I just prefer more depth.  Next time I am going to go for multiple brews and give those leaves some room!

I have finished The China Tea Book by Luo Jialin, which I reviewed a few days ago.  The second half was on the aesthetics of tea, setting the mood, which tea pots and cups to use, the role of floral arrangements and calligraphic art.  It was fascinating.  I may apply some of his thoughts, at least as far as tablescapes.  I can't do much about walls and furniture.  Again, there were many beautiful pictures.  One of the best things about the book is that it seems to create a calm oasis in me.

Two Grumps and Two Goodies

I have been in a bit of a grumpy mood lately, and for once, tea related things did little to elevate it.  I got this month's issue of a tea magazine, filled with lovely tea party settings and wonderful food.  I saw some china that I admired and looked in their sources column for the manufacturer.  Ow, ow, ow!  A plate - one plate was $650.  Another I liked was one plate, $450.  Get real.  How many of us are going to spend that much on a plate?  It would be nice if they were a little more realistic.  There are pretty things that are not the cost of a plane ticket to Europe.

To continue my rant.  Tea itself.  I got this in a tea swap I am part of and I know the person was trying to please and I am not ungrateful.  I just hate this tea and couldn't get too much past the first few sips.  Even my husband, who is no tea snob, asked if I was sure this was tea.  The tea was DavidsTea Saigon Chai.  The base is Assam, cardamom, pink peppercorns, cinnamon, clove, maybe orange and lots of other stuff mixed in.  It smelled sweet with hints of pineapple, pepper, cinnamon and other things I could not identify.  The brewed cup tasted like that and more - just a mess.  In my very prejudiced opinion, any flavoring should let the taste of tea come through.

On to the good things.  Newspapers are still favorites of mine and I like having them in print.  I like the feel and smell and heft of them.  Not to mention their ability to be used underneath any mess I may be making.
Plus, they often have articles on tea.  Our local paper had a good one on the rise of the importance of tea and last week's NY Times had a full page on East Frisian tea.  Which, by the way, can put any Breakfast tea under the table in terms of strength.  East Frisia is known for being cold, damp and windy, which probably explains it.  Wow!  It's really wonderful to see tea getting mainstreamed.

I think this is Austria - I loved the steeple.

Birds, Mud and Tea

Today was hawk sighting day.  I saw a harrier, a red-shouldered and a red-tailed hawk plus 2 others I couldn't identify.  I'm also pretty sure I saw a golden eagle on the river, near where they nest.  A good day for the birds.  In our woods, not only is the pileated woodpecker busy, but 2 others.  You can tell the difference, if you can't see them, by the rapidity and cadence of their drumming.   The squirrels have been noticeablyy absent and I kind of miss them.

We are beginning mud season.  One of the many we Northerners get in addition to the usual four.  We've been flirting with pothole season, but this year wasn't too bad.  Mud season lasts from when our heavy clay soil begins to thaw until you can actually walk on the ground with out stopping every three steps to clean the mud off your boots.  It's the season that adds about a pound for every step you take, if it doesn't suck your shoes off.  Driving can be very interesting on our back roads, as you can feel the car slithering along and you slow down to about 4 miles an hour, in the hopes you can stay on those curves switch backing down the hills.  If it's a really good year for this season, you may still need to be dragged out of a mud puddle in May.

In spite of which, there is no one happier than a Northerner to see the sun  and count down to seed-starting, garden tilling, or the first blue birds arriving.  We even welcome false summer, the next season, when it is 90 degrees in April just before it is 26 and the daffodils have only lasted for 2 days, again!

The solution to all of this is just to drink tea.  It is good to celebrate the sun, calming for those necessary boot scraping sessions, comforting when it is gray and nasty.  Tea is always available for any excuse.

Mine is another of the Charleston Tea Plantation teas.  It is Charleston Breakfast, a black tea.  The chopped leaves smell like dark fresh wood or rough tree bark.  There was also a touch of cucumber and a hint of malt.  I brewed it for 3.5 minutes with boiling water.  It smelled quite malty while brewing, with a sharp edge.

The tea was somewhat lighter than I expected and at first, I wasn't too taken with it.  It seemed to be a bit sharp, or harsh.  Then I remembered, that breakfast teas are generally in the style that is known as "English", that is, to be taken with milk and sugar.  So in went the half & half  and out came a much better cup of tea.  It was now hearty, almost flowery and altogether much better behaved.  I would rate this on the light side of breakfast teas, which tend to be much heftier.  However, they are also generally a blend of China and Indian teas and this  was labeled as only from Charleston Plantation.  Therefore, if you find most breakfast teas too much of an awakening, you might want to try this one and come to consciousness more slowly.

The pleasant German river town of Bacharach.

Raspberry Tea

This is house in Dickshied where you can see the stone siding.  All those gray shingles covering the wood are pieces of stone.  The siding on the church, in the last post, was in considerably better repair.

Cold and nasty it is today, as Yoda would say.  It snows at night and then sort of thaws during the day and sometimes it snows again, but it is all gray.  My heart yearns for bright sun on the frozen white fields, as I didn't get my fill of it this winter.  But my heart is also yearning for Spring and as I listen to the rapid beats of a drumming Pileated Woodpecker and the matings calls of the owls in the woods, I know it will soon be here. 

I discovered that Bigelow's Charleston Tea Plantation  is finally selling looseleaf teas, so I got some.  The one I am having today is Rockville Raspberry.  When I opend the tine, I was disappointed, as there was a strong smell of chemical raspberry.  Rats.  However, I persevered and brewed some up.  I wasn't paying attention and brewed it for 5.5 minutes.  Nevertheless, it wasn't bad and the flavor was not nearly as chemically as I was expecting.  Of course, it wasn't really raspberry to my mind, that mingling of sweet and tart and intense flavor.  I really find Mariages Freres does a much better job with their raspberry.

A Pox On Flavored Tea Bags!

This is a picture of the church in Dickshied, Germany, where many of my

 ancestors were christened.  It is sided in part with small sheets of stone,

about half the size of my palm, that is about 2 inches by 4 inches. 

There are very few windows and they are very small. 

 I would love to know when it was built.  I can trace my ancestors there

back to about 1560.

I had a meeting today at a friend's house and had the opportunity to try 2 new teas.  She even had a kettle, so I could have cooler or hotter water.  Only teabags, but you take what you get when you forget to bring your own,

The first was Lipton's Island Mango and Peach White Tea.  The tea came in a nice large bag, big leaves and additions.  I brewed it around 150 degrees, for about 3 minutes.  It was a delicate pinkish yellow - peach or mango color, surprise, surprise.  It had a vaguely fruity taste, pleasant for what it was.  However, I considered it basically tasteless and surely a waste of money.  I am not a great fan of white tea, being more a black tea person, but I can easily appreciate their delicate flavors.  I really do not understand adding any flavoring to it - there is no possible way you could discern the gentle flavors and aromas of white tea.

The second was a tad more successful.  It was Stash Tea's Ginger Breakfast Black Tea.    I used boiling water, 3 minutes and was rewarded with a fairly decent cup.  The tea was strong enough to have some flavor and the ginger was not overwhelming.

Much as I appreciate my friend's efforts to have tea for her non-coffee friends, (and I really do) this was just another nail in the coffin of tea bag teas, as far as I am concerned.  Maybe I should say flavored tea bags, because I do find PG Tips and Typhoo to be pretty good.  In fact, I got some Typhoo Decaf from another friend and I must say, for having 2 strikes against it, it was quite decent.

Yippee! - Spring is really going to come - the sun is finally shining in my kitchen window.  As it makes it swing through the seasons, I hate to see it disappear from there and rejoice when it is once again dancing across my counters.

China Tea Book, China Tea

Of all the things I do, I love reading the most.  I love to learn new things, love stories about different cultures and people, really love mysteries, and learning about tea.

My latest book is absolutely stunning visually.  Luo Jialin  in his The China Tea Book, has truly wonderufl photos of tea gardens, tea rooms, mountains, forest, rivers and a few people.  There is not a great deal of history or the mechanics of tea manufacture and there are only a few teas discussed in detail.  I am not sure if these are personal favorites or one of the many lists of 10 Best Teas of China.  It doesn't matter.  He discusses briefly not only how they are made, but what spiritual significnce each has, as well as how and when to drink them, according to time of day and time of year.  Somehow, it is a very peaceful book that takes me away to a calm and gentle world.

The second half of the book delves more deeply into the spiritual and aesthetic senses of tea.  I haven't read that far yet, but I'll get back to you.

My only quibble is that fairly often a paragraph is repeated twice in succession.  I think the editors need to sharpen their skills a bit.  I am finding that many books have just huge errors in them, as less careful editing is done, often mechanically. 

Today's tea comes from China, specifically Yunnan.  It comes to me from a tea swap and is Yunnan Imperial from the Wabi-Sabi shop in Taos, New Mexico.  The dry leaves have no particular scent, just fresh tea (Not to be sneezed at).  There is some gold dust in the packet and golden tips on the leaves, which are relatively small.  I brew it my standard 3.5 minutes for teas new to me.

It brews up into a lovely smelling golden brown brew.  There is a hint of wine barrel and one of floral to the aroma.  It is brisk and full bodied, with some spice and some floral, but no chocolate.  Drat, I do like cocoa in my Yunnan.  Nevertheless, it is a decent cup of tea.

This is in the very tiny village of Dickshied, Germany looking across a valley to Hilgenroth.  In the Great Palatine Migration of 1710-12, some of my grandparents left these villages to sail down the Rhine to the "promised land" of the British Colonies in America.  They soon broke with the Brits, who treated them like slaves, and moved from the Hudson River Valley to the frontier of Schoharie Valley (New York State) where they could own their own land and prosper.