Hats off to Liberteas in Fond Farewell.

This is Mieringen, Switzerland, my grandmother's home. The bell tower and old chapel. Home of meringues and Reichenbach Falls, where Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes met in a fatal fall. Except Holmes, naturally, survived to thwart yet another dirty devil.


I have sad news for you, with a little bit of good mixed in. Liberteas is going out of business. The only bit of good news is that she still has some teas in stock for sale. She makes wonderful blends, which I have reviewed here previously. I am reviewing one today and as of two days ago, she still had some left.
Potpourri looks and smells like its name – a gentle old-fashioned mix of flowers and herbs with a lovely scent. It is made from Gunpowder green tea with jasmine, roses, laurel and lemon myrtle. I brewed it at about 175 degrees for 2.5 minutes and it smelled wonderful. The real test is the taste and this passes with flying colors, as you can taste all the ingredients in a lovely mix, first one, than the other coming in. Overall, I think the lemon myrtle predominated, but that is fine with me, it tasted great! If you think you might like this, hustle on over to www.liberteas.blogspot.com and see if there is any left. You'll be glad you did.

Green tea in a green season. The grass is finally growing - all of about 1/2 inch. Cute little spears poking up to greet the sun - or the snow predicted for this week in these parts. Our creeks and rivers are very high and we watch them closely, as 4 years ago we had terrible flooding in the area. It was what is considered a 100 year flood, meaning only once in a hundred years. Except the last one was in 1935. Every 70 years still isn't bad, in the over-all scheme of things, but if you are going through it, it is awful. One year in Ohio, we had 10 inches of rain in 15 minutes. The flooding was terrible, just unbelieveable, tiny streams, only a foot or two wide suddenly had the power to sweep away buildings. We pulled together and helped each other and that was good.

Happy February

Happy February. It is Black History Month and today I would like to lift my cup of tea to the “Freedom Riders”, a group of about 12 black and white Americans who rode buses into the South and courageously rode and ate, sat and used bathrooms in all the wrong places, whites in the "black only" areas and blacks in the white areas and they did it together. They had no National Guard, no police, no sheriffs backing them up. Their suffering and brave acts began the breaking of the back of segregation. We all need to honor them and the brave men, women and children who gave bravely of themselves in this cause. None of us is free until we all are free.

Do you sometimes get wound up and can't relax? Everyone does. When this happens, “a nice cuppa tea and a sit down” can really help. Especially if the tea is an herbal tisane. I got a very pleasant one as a sample in an order from LiberTeas. It is called Meadow Nocturne, which immediately calls up an image of a flower studded meadow on a hill, just as evening is really beginning to come down. Relaxing already. This is a pretty tea, as most of Anne's are. It is chamomile with many blue, pink and yellow flower petals. It has a really pleasant fresh apple like flavor, with wonderful floral notes. Just the thing to make a pot of, sit down with some pleasant music, and relax, even if it is only 10 minutes. You'll feel better and so will those around you.

Another tisane that has many good things about it is mint. Mint cools you off, warms you up and does wonders for a troubled tummy. For some reason, I've been reading a lot of mint tea reviews lately. I guess mint is one of those all purpose herbs, tea wise, good both summer and winter. However, all I ever see included in tea is spearmint or peppermint. I have nothing against either, I like them both. But there is also chocolate mint, apple mint and my personal favorite orange mint, to name only a few others. All of these, as well as spearmint and peppermint are easy to grow. Keeping them from taking over is another matter. Buy a couple plants of ones you like, put them in an area that can be overrun with them and enjoy in hot or cold tea. No garden space? A biggish pot, [about 8 inches] some seeds, and a bit of sun and you are all set. Easy to grow, easy to use, minty fresh mint!

Sweet Life, Sweet Tea

Did you go shopping on Black Friday? I did, but it was pleasant and unhurried as I was with a bunch of my oldest friends at small shops way in the country. Mostly we laughed and caught up and tried samples of cookies and wished we really did need that basket or this carved swan. We ate fast food, which we never do, but it was quirkily right, and drank tea or coffee at the kitchen table and planned our next get together. We all came away refreshed instead of half-dead.

I decided to try a sample I got with an order from Liber Teas, Sweet Caramel O Mine. The dry leaves are all small, a very pretty warm brown with pieces of caramel. They smell like tobacco with caramel as a top note. I brewed them for the standard 3 min at 212. This is a mild tea and does taste like caramel, with, for me, a bit of chemical mixed in. I seem to be hyper-sensitive to that, so you can probably ignore it. I wasn't really impressed, but I added milk and then I was, a touch of sugar further enhanced it into a very nice tea indeed. For those of you who don't know, caramels are basically cream and sugar boiled together until they make candy. Lovely stuff. I may buy some of this, as a dessert tea for friends, but not for me because I really don't like sweet tea.

By the way, we had out first, brief snow yesterday, up in the hills. Some of them looked quite funny, with little topknots of snow in the tops of the highest clumps of trees.

Breakfat in Bed with Darjeeling

Another cold, nasty day. Nasty means the sun is not shining and the
damp goes right through your body to your bones. I really am not
ready for this. We get little enough sun in the winter, we'd at least like it in the fall.

Yesterday I tried Liberteas "Breakfast in Bed" blend. A combination of black tea, vanilla, rose petals, and cinnamon. Especially cinnamon. That was definitely the scent upon opening the container. I didn't catch any of the rose or vanilla, except for a somewhat sweet scent that just teased around the edges. The brew was also heavily cinnamon scented, again with an elusive sweet wafting through. The tea itself didn't taste like much of anything. I threw it out and brewed another pot and while there was a more strong taste of cinnamon, there wasn't much else. I have to confess I really didn't like it and didn't finish it. This was a real disappointment, as the other Liberteas I have tried I have been very impressed with.

Today's trial was Adagio's Darjeeling #2. I usually buy single garden Darjeelings, but I thought I would give it a try as it had very high ratings. I am glad I did. The dry leaves were huge - I had trouble getting them out of the can. They were a lovely dark twisted brown with some white tips. I actually followed directions and brewed it for 5 min at 212. The leaves were so big I didn't think that any less would allow them to unfurl. They smelled almost perfumed - not exactly floral, but I am not sure just what. There was a definite hint of lime and then some floral overlaying a very clean earth/woods smell. The taste didn't disappoint, either. My first sip filled my mouth with a lovely floral taste, with the lime and woods following after. As it cooled, more of the depth of earth came out, still with the overlay of perhaps lime flowers. At the end there was just a touch of astringency to add some piquancy. A very nice tea and one worth getting again.

The photo above is the Meiringen Church, which has perfect acoustics - something to do with the length of the church in relationship to the height and angle of the barrel vaulting and the number and circumference of the support pillars. One of these days I will show you the interior. There has been a church on this spot from before 800 AD.

Tea and Scones

A cold day, but it is not raining so off we went to the Apple Fest. There were a few fun things, but it is basically a craft show - not my cup of tea. The lines were too long for the real goodies, the apple fritters, the apple dumplings, the other apple treats. So we settled for Spiedies, Cokes and sweet potato fries. For those of you not from New York, Spiedies started as a State Fair treat. Generally chicken or pork marinated for 2+ days in a vinegar based barbecue sauce, grilled, and served on a bun. Very luscious and now available almost everywhere, at least in NY. If you've not had the fries, get some, they are definitely worth it.

So how do you top that? Since I was cold, I decided to make scones, nice orange currant ones. A treat and a way to warm up the house with the oven. The scones I got from a nifty little book, Simply Scones by Leslie Weinert and Barbara Albright. It is about 5x5 inches and has about 70 scone recipes and 20 spreads for the scones, plus a short but accurate discussion of tea - both the beverage and the meal. Most of the recipes are for sweet scones but there is a goodly section of savory ones as well, including the one I want to try next - Uptown scones with a mix of Italian cheeses, sundried tomato, basil, hot pepper and pinenuts. I think a very strong Ceylon or Keemun might go with these.

What did I have with my much more demure scones - Liberteas "Chocolate Rose Romance".Can you tell I didn't get my treat today? Upon opening the tin, I am taken in by the wonderful smell of good chocolate and good tea. It is a pretty tea, with some nice Ceylon leaves, pink rose petals, chocolate nibs, chocolate shavings, tiny chocolate chips, some bits of perhaps dried apple? Can you say "yum"? As it brewed it of course smelled of chocolate. I have to say I am reluctant to taste teas like this because I like to taste the tea itself and I am always afraid they will be sweet, which I don't like. This tea, for me, is a great success. I can taste the very good quality Ceylon, with the chocolate as a lovely embellishment and it is not sweet! Really a great success as far as I am concerned. I added a bit of cream, which brought out more of the chocolate, but no sugar, which perhaps would've brought out more. Why ruin such a good thing? It went very nicely with the scones, too, the chocolate and the orange peel setting each other off nicely.

The photo above is of a Swiss mountain goat; perhaps it is one of Heidi"s?

An Earl Grey Day

A gray day on the Rhine, a gray day here, with Earl Grey to lighten it.

Having gotten such a lovely package from LiberTeas I decided to try Anne's Earl Grey Creme. As I opened the package I caught a faint whiff of bergamot and... could it be chocolate mint? Yup, there it was again. The tea itself is very pretty with blue and white flower pettals mixed in. As it brewed there wasn't much scent, a sort of astringent smell and something I could not identify. Kind of a creamy minty smell which reminded me of the mints my great-grandmother would serve to compnay with their tea. The tea tastes very nice, but alas, that elusive Earl's bergamot can't be pinned down. It is a good base tea and there is the cream, mint and cocoa, but where's the Earl? I actually like it , the flavor lasts and it is nicely elusive. The kittens also like it and I was forced to pour some in their dish or risk having it all over my desk.

I just got a "new" book. A Decent Cup of Tea by Malachi McCormick. I got it from Alibris books - http://www.alibris.com/. They have a wonderful selection of books about tea - almost all are used or overruns but if you have a low budget, you should seriously consider them.

Malachi McCormick is an Irishman who bemoans the loss of a good cup of tea, especially in public places and in a very small book, admonishes us to get it together and use real [ie loose] tea, in a teapot and have the good stuff. The book is only 4x6 inches and 80 pages, but in it he manages to cram a short history of tea, the different types, care and selection of tea and all its accouterments and a few recipes. Amazing and a very good read.

In fact, if you are so-minded you can hustle right over to Harney's Teas and buy some "Malachi McCormick's Blend" so you can have a decent cup whilst reading his very decent book.

If you really get into it, the company Malachi buys his tea from is on line and their teas are very inexpensive - www.portorico.com - I've not tried any, but I am going to, just for the sake of completeness and it is located in Greenich Village, NYC, an old stamping ground of mine.

Liber-TEAS La Vert Pear

As I mentioned yesterday, I just got a shipment from Liber-TEAS. I couldn't wait to try one because they all smelled so good and are so pretty to look at. I decided to try Anne's green tea with pear - La Vert Pear [there's a bit of Franglish for you]. What a nice tea. The smell is a delicate combination of really fresh pear, [ just as if you were eating one, perhaps one a tiny bit green, so that it is not all a sweet scent, but has a very small bite, like a fresh pear off a tree], and then there is the nice earthy grassy scent of green tea. It is attractive to look at too, with some very nice almost shiney green leaves offset by pear bits and sunflower petals. As it brews there is no strong scent and in the cup there is no strong scent either, but just pleasant whiffs of pear and green. The taste is delicate, but so well rounded, all the parts melding into one really delicious whole. An excellent tea.

When this tea was throughly cooled, it had quite a different character. It was much heavier and sweeter, a bit more pear-y. The sweetness I could not pin down to a particular taste. It sort of reminded me of hard candies that don't have one identifiable taste. But it was much nicer, of better quality than that. Very interesting, still excellent. Don't know which I like better.

Lazy dayz of summer

Today is a perfect, late summer - early fall day. Perfect day to transplant the lavender and iris and make one more batch of pesto for the freezer, repot the rosemary, feel the sun and the breeze on your back - aaah, perfection.

Another lazy day, tea wise. Tried the Earl Grey Rose and Lavender from yesterday iced and it was soooooo strong. It finally dawned on me I made it too strong, so another day I will try again.

Breakfast tea was just PG Tips in a bag - really a pyramid. When a non-tea drinker makes it for you, make it easy for him! For a non-specialty tea, in a bag, these are my go tos. Sure, they are not great tea, but they are definately more than adequate. Afternoon tea is just one of my favorites - Culinary Teas Lady Londonderry, which I love and I wasn't feeling one bit experimental. It also is very fresh and crisp/soft on the palate.

However, my package from Liber-Teas finally arrived - due to bureaucratic snafus, it's been a while. Anne, the company's owner and tea crafter, has been marvelously patient. If there is a contest for packaging, she wins! The box was like opening a present - all this marvelous purple tissue paper with little samples and candies - oh my! And the teas are in wonderful purple tins with silver ribbons and pretty labels. Really day brightening. I had to sniff all the teas I got, so I just may have to sample one or two, as they smelled alluring! I have high expectations for her teas as I have read her tea reviews and have found them thoughtful and imaginative.

This summer I bought something new from Lipton's - cold-brew ice tea bags. Use two per quart, brew in cold water for 3 minutes. Voila, your typical American summer ice tea. Not to be confused with super duper tea on ice, but for those of you who don't want to fuss, want it NOW, etc., like my husband, they are perfect. Having never been a big fan of ice tea - I really like water or Squirt - this is fine with me too.

Aah, Squirt soda, you can hardly find it anymore. When I was a child growing up on the farm, it was kept in the big milk coolers where the 30 gallon cans of milk were stored until the milk truck came. The coolers were filled with very cold circulating water and the lids were about 3x5 feet. I could lift them to sneak a soda, but I could never get the lid back down, as all the cans would bob up in the water. But I had an indulgent grandfather who would rescue me, shut the lid and not tell on me. Every child should have one.