Jasmine Tea and Strawberries

Today I am having Jasmine Tea.  This one hails from Sichuan Province, China, via Life  In Teacup, one of my favorite vendors.  It's a good thing the packet says green tea, as the tightly rolled leaves are almost black.  They have a very delicate scent of the flower and there are a few petals scattered throughout.  I brew it with water about 190 degrees, as Gingko recommends this.  The resulting brew is a strongish yellow and now smells more like paint than jasmine.  Odd.  The flavor is rather odd as well, it just isn't what I think of as "true" jasmine. It is flowery, but not overdone, more a jasmine bass note.  It is really only as it cools that the flavor comes true and then is one of those with a light taste, but a substantial mouth feel.  I am going to put it in the fridge and see how it is as ice tea.  What ho, gang, it is wonderful ice tea!

At the World Tea Expo, George and Kim Jage were presented with a special award by members of the world-wide tea community for their efforts in  founding and continuing to guide the Expo, as well as their efforts in promoting tea drinking.  Raise your tea cups high in gratitude!

Some very sad news is that the Chicago Tea Garden, run by Tony Gebley and purveyor of some very fine teas, is closing.  He is conducting sales of all teas and tea products.  They will be missed.

This has been quite the day for bird watching.  There was both a golden eagle and a bald eagle fishing in the river, as well as a great blue heron in the shallows, also searching for lunch.  A kildeer was flying over the meadow while an American kestral was seated in a tree.  Brown thrashers were all around, always amazing to me with their true rust color.  We now have not 2 but 3 rose-breasted grosbeaks at the feeder. The blander birds are either both female or one is a young'un.  They are such likeable birds, quiet and business like in their feeding..  There are more single turkeys wandering around!  Ours is recognizable by her oddly colored pale grey wings.

The mammal family was equally interesting as I spotted a couple of gray squirrels with golden tails, highlighted with cream.  We haven't seen much of "our" deer, only one or two once in a while.  last year there were 11, counting the fawns.  The clean up from the tornado was so loud and long, I think they went deeper into the woods.  They are lovely critters, but very destructive.

Oh Happy Day!  Local strawberries have arrived.  This first lot is not the best - too much rain and cold this past week, but by Monday, after a warm week, they should be wonderful.  Of course we had strawberry shortcake for dessert and strawberries on the pancakes for breakfast and strawberries plain and this next 2 weeks will be a glorious pig out of berries, including freezer jam.  Sometimes I love summer.  The farmers market opened and one of the people is offering herbal teas.  Sadly, I had run out of funds by then, so I didn't get any, but they'll be there next week and so will I.

Lots of Lovely Tea

Yum, yummm green tea ice cream.  We visited some friends near Philadelphia this week and had dinner at our favorite Korean restaurant.  Dinner was delicious, but the ice cream was superb.  it was made with good quality matcha and wasn't too sweet.  Not was it full of too much tea, but a really lovely balance.  It was served with very lightly battered banana chunks that were deep fried.  Altogether a lovely dessert.

There was Korean tea to drink also, which was green, very light and delicate and tasting of spring.  My lack of Korean and our waitress's lack of English prevented me from discovering its name.  We had it before our meal, it never could have stood up to the flavors of the food.

We also went to our favorite Indian restaurant for lunch and savored their masala chai.  It was very milky and heavy on the cinnamon.  The owners of this restaurant are from northwestern India, so it is not surprising their chair is different from that of my friends from southeastern India.  The tea was in an urn on the buffet table, which indicates to me, again, that tea in many forms is gaining a large share of American taste.

Not to leave out breakfast, we had that at Paneras, which has wonderful breads and I had some Tazo Ginger Peach.  The water was actually really hot and the tea was good.  For tea bags, I think most Tazo teas are quite tasty.

The World Tea Expo is next weekend, June 1-3 in Las Vegas.  If you can, I would urge you to go to it.There will be hundreds of exhibiters, many new teas and tea infused products to try, plus a huge range of educational opportunities.  There will also be a Wu-Wo tea ceremony, which is one designed to make all tea drinkers equals.  There is a good description of it on Wikipedia.  At least, I would encourage you to go to www.worldteaexpo.com and check it out.  It's their 10th anniversary, so there are all sorts of celebrations.

Mountain laurel is blooming and the wild phlox is absolutely riotous this year - I've never seen it this fine.  One of my neighbors has a stand of it fronting some brilliant orange poppies - eye candy.  I have very few lilac blooms this year, but the ones that are here are incredibly intense in smell.

Another photo from the museum at Ballenberg

Take Me Out To The Expo, Take Me Out To Tea

The 2012 World Tea Expo Best New Product Award Winners have been announced and I must say, the level of innovation is wonderful.  If you go to the website http://www.worldteaexpo.com/  and click on any of their pictures you can find out more about them.

Speaking of which, The World Tea Expo is June 1-3 in Las Vegas.  There is an extensive educational core, a Taiwanese tea ceremony demonstration, many tea tastings, an art exhibit, a tea infusion contest and announcing the winners for best teas of the year.  This is a tenth anniversary year, so there are sure to be many special events.

The Northwest Tea Festival is the weekend of the 28th of April in Seattle.  The Phoenix  Tea Shop folks are having a tasting of some very rare and wonderful teas.  If you live in the area, make sure you go to this.
I am waiting for World Tea East in Philadelphia in the fall.  I am hoping there are no weather disasters this year so I can attend.

The newest teas have arrived!  Right here in my kitchen!  I ordered some early tea from Life in Teacup and today I am having 1400m Huang Shan Mao Feng, which was plucked and processed on April 6 of this year.  The literal translation of this Anhui Province tea is Yellow Mountain Fur Peak.  This is 2 leaves and a bud mixed with one leaf and a bud of the very first plucking of the year.  The leaves are mostly a bright green, with some tan and there is some golden dust from the buds lining the packet.  The scent is that of hay just beginning to dry in the sun, with the most delicate hint of wood smoke wafting through.  I brewed this at 170 degrees for 2minutes and was rewarded with the most beautiful tea color I've seen.  It is a light, light silvery green.  I brewed it in a glass pot so I could watch the leaves widen and stand up in the water.

The tea liqueur smells of green grass and flowers, very delicate.  It tastes of greenness and flowers, as well, with something stronger at the end that somehow reminds me of hard boiled eggs.  It doesn't taste like them, it's only a fleeting taste I simply can't place.  As it cools, that disappears and a somewhat stronger grass comes through.  There is some sweetness throughout.  It's a delightful tea.  Even if I didn't like it, I would brew it just to look at its beautiful color and to watch the leaves unfurl.

Ravenna, Italy - wonderful church buttresses from about 1000AD

Black Bear Ices It

The walls of a church built in 800, under the Meieringen,
Switzerland church of my grandmother. You can just walk right in. Amazing!

I hope by now you all realize that my tea tastings are one woman's opinion about a particular tea. Whether you will like the tea I review or not is a matter of your taste, since so many things influence an individual's response to a particular tea. When I was starting on my tea journey, I found that some reviewers seemed to share my tastes and if they recommended a tea, I would probably like it. I am sure that goes for you as well.

I admit, sometimes I will try a new tea simply because I am captivated by its name. Such is the case with Black Bear Jasmine, from Kitchen TLC. Because we have bears and because I've had another black jasmine, I tried it - not a reasonable reason, but there you have it. If I had been smart, I wouldn't have bought it, since I never like teas with vanilla flavoring. But I got it. And I hated it. I gave it three tries. Full strength, it was perfume to drink. Half strength more of the jasmine came out and it was better, so I tried it about half-strength as an ice tea - about 2 teaspoons to 2 cups of water, refridgerated overnight. It's almost good, not much jasmine, more vanilla and something floral I can't identify. It actually is growing on me, iced. I probably wouldn't drink much, but I have friends who would love it, so now I feel it has redeemed itself.


I just found out I can go to World Tea East, Sept 9-10! I am so excited! I have wanted to go to the parent show, the World Tea Expo in Las Vegas for years, but couldn't. Many tea people are thrilled this is happening, as for us Easterners, this is so much more accessible. There are expos of one sort or another in Seattle and Western Canada, but it has been years since there has been one in the East. Be assured I will tell you all about it. What I do know is there will be a number of lectures given by some well-known tea people such as Bruce Richardson, exhibitions, tea competitions, etc. More to come!


If you are interested, Dawnya Sasse from http://www.teapartygirl.com/ has a webinar on "Starting a Tea Club for Fun or for Profit". Find out more information at Tea@TeaEvents.com. Dawnya has a regular email feature of tea recipes and often has these webinars. This will be the first webinar I will have tried, but her recipes are good and creative, so I expect this will be as well. You can sign up for the recipes at her Tea Party Girl website.

A Little Bit of This...

Everywhere, the mountains.

I am not reviewing tea today, as we are having unexpected company and I want to clean up what I can and make them food, so I'll just share some bits of information, mostly about tea, with you. Have a pleasant Memorial Day and do remember what it is about. I wish there were a better answer to conflict than war so we would not need to remember so many dead and damaged young men and women. I am thankful for our freedom, but I am appalled at the cost.


I don't remember where I heard about this, but it works. If you are making tea in the microwave – surely NOT one of us, (LOL ) put a plastic spoon in the cup with it. This enables bubbles to flow up the spoon instead of exploding your tea all over the micro and therefore making a mess and negating the calming effects of tea. Some of us do occasionally make tea this way, especially on bleary mornings, but I'm not naming them.


I happened to be awake this morning as the sun was getting up and the world was changing from gray half-tones to color. What really fascinated me was the ground mist, which seemed to rise as the strip of pink on the horizon widened. While there was no sun, there was no mist and once the sun was up for a while, it went away. I am sure there is a scientific explanation for this, but I just appreciated it.


For those of you who like Tea Gschwendner, they are opening a new retail store in Rockefeller Center in New York City. It will be opening the end of June in the Channel Gardens, near the ice skating rink. The company says it will be their “flagship” store. Oh gee, another reason to visit the Big Apple.


The World Tea Expo is happening in Las Vegas in just 2 weeks. If you go to www.worldteaexpo.com you will be able to preview a number of new products. I was pleased to see that Ajiri Tea, which I reviewed a while back, won the top honor for best packaging. Since all their profits go to educate orphans, this is really a boost for them. Their tea's not bad either. Someday I hope to get to this exciting event. It certainly would've been a good break from moving.