Tuesday, March 2, 2010

March Came in Like a Lamb

An old gravestone I liked. If you turn your head sideways, is that Adam and Eve dancing under a tree? Probably not.
Hey, hey, it is March and around here it came in like a lamb, with warmer temperatures, sunshine, snow melting. It makes your heart lift and shout "Yes!!!" Spring is really coming in. Two more weeks to daylight saving time, two more weeks and the Frog Pond, our local farmers market, will be open, complete with a whole raft of new piglets, chicks and bunnies.

I am trying a sample I got with my order from the Tea Spot. It is called Boulder Blues and surprisingly, it is a green tea flavored with strawberry and rhubarb. I am amazed I am trying it, as I dislike strawberry/rhubarb pie or jam. I much prefer raspberry with rhubarb or any of the three on their own. I am also a bit taken aback, because I would have expected this to be a black tea. However, here we are, with a most attractive tea, lovely fresh, long leaves of the Chinese Dragon Well variety and a few bits of strawberry. It smells like ripe berries. Following directions I brew it for 2 minutes at about 170. I don't think it's quite done, so I do it for another minute. Don't faint, but I actually liked this tea. It tasted like very ripe berries, but it was saved from being cloying by a good dollop of tartness from the rhubarb. I couldn't decide if it really tasted like a combination of the two or not. You can taste the freshness of the green tea as well and that makes this, in my opinion, very well done. I think it would make an excellent, refreshing, cold tea for summer. The Tea Spot recommends having it with dark chocolate. That sounds like a plan for my next pot!

I am looking for a new infuser for a large teapot, so I decided to go to http://www.amazon.com/ – every one's go-to-one-spot-shopping mecca to see what I could find. I quit after 300 and there were still pages and pages to go. Everything from tiny stars, seashells, hearts, through very strange concoctions by Copco and others, on through Finum and Swissgold. This last one is what I will get. It is large, it is Swiss, it is gold, what more could you ask for? A lower price. But, you can't have everything and I want to use my pot without using two infusers, especially if there is anyone but us chickens having tea. I shouldn't give in to the desire to look good, but I did anyway. So much for becoming an eccentric old lady.




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