Tea on Pinterest

A lot of the people who are passionate about tea are on Pinterest.  Are you one of them?  I've created a number of tea related boards:

Tea

Teapots and Teacups

Tea Party Treats

Tea Towels

But I feel like I've just barely scratched the surfece.  Share your favorite tea board, or your own tea board.

Tea of the Week: Republic of Tea Pomegranate Green

A friend of mine left this pomegranate tea at my house, and when I opened the canister and smelled the dry tea, I just had to try it.  Republic of Tea is one of my favorite brands, and I like the fact that they have brought two extremely healthy ingredients together.

Liquor -- dark, with a deep purple tint

Aroma -- Very fruity and sweet 

Body -- medium

Flavors -- The pomegranate dominates this tea, and there is a slightly acidic aftertaste.  It is not nearly as sweet as it smells.  You can taste the vegetal note of the green tea, but it has a minor feel.

Tea Recipe -- Black Tea Linzer Cookies

This cookie reciepe was acutalloy inspired by a Vanilla Almond Black Tea that I really enjoy. 

I decided to make a black tea jam by cooking down strong black tea with apples (to provide petin) and lemon (to add acid).  The fragrance of the jam was amazing while it was cooking, with the black tea as the predominant note.  You do taste a lot of the apple.  If you want a purer tea taste, just let the liquid drip through the strainer, and don't press the apple pieces through.  Either way, you will wind up with more jam than you need to fill the cookies.  Put the extra in a lidded jar and store in the referigerator. 

What better way to show off the resulting tea-hued preserve than peeking through the window of a Linzer cookie?  Linzer cookies already have almonds, and I upped the vanilla to make it a little more like the tea.

Black Tea Linzer Cookies

2 medium cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped

2 1/2 c. strong black tea (English Breakfast or similar)

2 c. sugar

Juice of one lemon

1 c. slivered almonds

2 c. all purpose flour

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

1 c. butter, brought to room temperature

2/3 c. sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

2 egg yolks

Zest of 1 lemon 

Combine apple pieces, tea, sugar and lemon in a medium pot over medium-high heat.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture starts to thicken.  Continue, stirring frequently, until the mixutre reaches the soft ball stage.  Place a strainer over a medium bowl.  Pour the apple mixture in, letting the liquid drip through, then press the apples through.  Stir to combine.  Set aside until needed.

Using a stand or hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl.  Add the vanilla, egg yolks and lemon zest and beat to combine.  Use a nut grinder to turn the almonds into nut meal.  Add to butter mixture, and beat to combine.  In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon and salt.  Add flour mixture to butter mixture in three additions, beating between additions.  Divide dough in half.  Wrap each half in plastic wrap and referigerate for an hour or up to overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line baking sheets with parchament paper.  Roll out one half of cookie dough on floured surface to 1/4"thick and cut out using a pair of matching cookie cutters, one of which has a "window" in the middle (or using a separate smaller cutter to make holes in the top cookie).  Bake for 12-15 minutes.  Cool completely on cooling rack.

If you have referigerated everything overnight, heat 2/3 c. of the jam in a microwave for 20-30 seconds, or until it reaches an easily spreadable consistancy.   Use a spoon to spread a thin layer of jam onto the base cookie.  Place the cookie with the cutout on top.  Carefully spoon more jam into the hole to fill it.

Tea of the Week: Republic of Tea Daily Green Honey Ginseng

Reupblic of Tea's Honey Ginseng Green has been one of my favorite go-to teas for a while now.  It has a light flavor, doesn't even tempt me to add sweeteners, and has an added heath benefit from the ginseng.  I usually get it at Whole Foods.

Liquor -- light, but with a warm golden tint

Aroma -- Sweet, but with a slightly herbal undertone

Body -- light

Flavors -- .The main note here is the vegetal green of the tea, which is complimented by the subtler sweetness of the honey.  You do not taste as much of the ginsing as you think you would by the aroma.

Taking Tea in Dallas: The Adolphus Hotel

Yesterday we were able to get reservations for afternoon tea at the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas.  It was everything you could expect from a historic hotel (the Adolphus is turning 100 next month).  They have been doing afternoon tea since the early 1980s, so they have had plenty of time to get everything right.  Tables are set up in the lobby living room, and there is a live pianist playing classical music to set the mood.  The hotel has hosted a number of connoisseurs for tea, from the Queen of England to food writer Kerry Vincent (who featured the Adolphus on the Finger Food episode of Food Network's The Best Thing I Ever Ate).

Yet, we still felt special, seated among the antiques, and treated to impeccable service.  Louis, who served as our guide to the teas presented, was both knowledgeable and accommodating.  

For the first course, we received an assortment of tea sandwiches (our favorite was the egg salad on brioche, followed by the curried chicken salad) along with a pot of Africa Amber (a red rooibos with hibiscus).

Next we got a scone with clotted cream and raspberry preserves (it was so delicious I forgot to take a picture), alongside a pot of Orange Jasmine (a black tea with a delicate citrusy/floral note).

The third course was an assortment of mini-desserts.  We both agreed that the tie for best flavors was between the mini-cheesecake and the pistachio macaroon.  This came with a pot of pear caramel (another black tea, with a pleasing flavor, though I had a hard time actually tasting the pear).

Louis did offer other teas, and we listened to other tea drinkers describing their choices.  Next time, I definitely want to try the vanilla black tea and the Provence-inspired blend.

If you want to attend the afternoon tea at the Adolphus, tea is served Friday through Sunday from 2pm to 4pm in the lobby living room at the front of the hotel.  Reservations are required.

You can contact them at (214)742-8200.

Where Did Tea Bags Come From?

Over the course of history, tea has been processed in different ways in the name of convenience for transport and consumption.  Individual leaves have been rolled into pellets,  and larger amounts of leaves have been molded into bird's nests.  But perhaps no packaging method has impacted the way people consume tea as the tea bag.

Legend has it that in 1908, tea importer Thomas Sullivan decided to send samples of his tea to his customers.  He packaged them attractively in small silk bags.  Said customers were delighted when they found they could steep the entire sachet in their teapot.  They started clambering for more (and complaining when their orders did not show up in sachets), and voila, the tea bag was born.  Cost constraints caused Sullivan to switch from silk to gauze, and later producers moved to the paper fiber bags you often see today. 

But, romantic as this story is, was the tea bag really invented by accident?  There is some question, as there were patents for tea bags on file as early as 1903. 

For the manufacturer, the tea bag was an obvious benefit.  It allows small bits of dust (fannings) to become a useful grade of tea.  Tea could be marketed as a portable, mess free affair.

It is also useful for the tea drinker, if you want to take your tea on the go (making it easy to order a cup of hot water at a restaurant and still enjoy your favorites), if you don't have time to wash a tea infuser, or if you have a lot of people over, and you want an easy clean-up.

However, higher grades of tea are reserved for loose teas, and tea-bag only consumers were never motivated to taste truly special infusions.  And some people claim they can taste the paper.  Today, some tea makers are trying to offer the best of both worlds by packaging broken leaf, or even whole leaf teas in large nylon sachets (which allow room for the tea leaves to unfurl properly).

What are Tannins?

If you steep your tea for a long time, you may notice a bitter, astringent aftertaste.  This is causes by tannins, naturally occuring substances that are also found in wine and chocolate.  And interestingly, in rooibos, an herb also known as "bush tea," pictured below.  This herb does not come from the same plant as true teas, but it does have many of the same characteristcs. 

These are not the same as the tannic acid used for preserving leather (those acids are extracted from oak leaves.)  Rather, they are antioxidant-rich bioflavonoids, as well as catechins (which may help you loose weight).   Everybody wants more antioxidants, right?  And to get the most benifit, many sources claim you need to be drinking 8 cups of green or black tea a day (as the different varieties contain different phytochemicals, only some of which are tannins).

There is one possible concern.  Tannins may interfere with iron absorbtion, but this is only something to worry about if you are restricting iron intake (such as if you are vegetarian/vegan) or if you are anemic. 

Tannins are also thought to kill bacteria in your mouth an help prevent bacteria, so if you don't have iron issues, the more unsweetened tea the better.

Some cultures steep tea to intentionally extract more tannins.  An example of this is Thai-style tea, which is steeped for about twenty minutes.  It begins to take on a character similar to coffee, and is then sweetened with a large dose of condensed milk.  This concoction is uaually served iced, and it is only for those with a high tolerance to sweets.

People In Tea: Brenda Meyers, Sterling Tea

I was able to score a phone interview with Brenda Meyers, founder and owner of Sterling Tea, a local company that specializes in small batch blends of loose-leaf tea. She is a definite people person, and a delightfully gregarious speaker. He here are the highlights:

Q: What got you into the tea business?

A: I started drinking tea when I was 8 years old. I had a wealthy aunt in Michigan, and I would go over to her house, and she would serve me tea in her fine china. It was just Liptons or Red Rose, but I got to use the fine china and no one was afraid I was going to break it. I grew up in a coffee centered household, but I always drank tea. Eventually, I started collecting tea cups. My aunt gave me part of her tea cup collection. In 2006, I opened a tea house. I was repackaging mostly German teas, with the goals of getting Rockwall interested in loose leaf tea. At first, you could hear the crickets, but over time, the interest grew, one person at a time. I love doing the “show and tell,” education work. I started blending my own teas in 2008. It is trial and error, like baking a cake. We have over 60 different blends, and the outlets are growing. We are at Central Market, tea rooms, coffee shops and high end gourmet stores. People may be drinking my teas and not even know it, as we sometimes sell to people who repackage tea for themselves.

Q: Tell me a little bit about Sterling Teas

A: We are a Go TEXAN company. I am very big on using local ingredients when possible. For instance, we use Texas Pecans. We by US produced ingredients (such as Washing State apples, and West Coast peppermint) wherever available. We are also an all-woman company

Q: Do you have a favorite tea? (either yours, or someone else’s)

A: I love to pair my jasmine pearls with dark chocolate, especially in the afternoon. I love the floral hint.

Q: Do you have a favorite teapot or teacup?

A: My favorite teacup is the one my best friend gave me. She knew I loved tea, and gave it to me before I started the tea company. This is that teacup.

Q: What do you love about tea?

A: I love everything about tea. Tea people are the nicest people in the world. I’ve never had a mean customer. We are a growing clan. I do demonstrations weekly, and I find that a lot of people identify themselves as a tea person or a coffee person. More and more people are trying to add tea to their daily lives.



If you are local to the DFW area, you can meet Brenda in person at one of her demonstrations. Brenda’s next demonstration will be:

Central Market, Forth Worth – March 4 – 10:30 AM – 2:30 PM

Get a free sample of sterling tea, and get tea instruction, and general tea info.

Sterling's Apricot Oolong and Yerba Chai

Drinking Tea in Plano

When we were in Plano, TX, I visited with Denise Brady (better known as Nee Nee), owner of Nee Nee's Tea Room.  It is a family place, with pictures of Nee Nee's grandchildren up on the wall.  Denise has built the business from the ground up over the last four years.

She creates all her own recipes, and is most well known for her chicken salad and her scones.  We sampled a scone.  It was tender and delicious.

Her goal: Delighting tea drinkers.

The evidence: Her favorite tea pot.  It is actually a music box that plays when the pot is lifted to pour.  She holds down the button when she delivers the pot to the table so as not to spoil the surprise.

Why does Denise love tea?  She says, "I have always loved the experience of the tea room.  It is fun.  I never experienced loose leaf teas before I first visited a tea room."

She now serves loose leaf tea from Sterling Tea, a local producer of hand-blended teas.  She also serves Stash teas.  

Eactly What IS a Flush Anyway?

You go shopping for loose teas.  Somebody mentions that this is a first flush green, or that is a second flush oolong.  Have you ever wondered what exactly that means?

A flush refers to the new growth on a tea plant.  It is more specifically the first two leaves and the bud (this is a leaf bud, and has nothing to do with the flowers) on the end of each branch.  If the bushes are harvested regularly, they can produce around seven flushes a season.

However, the taste can be very different, depending on what time of year the flush was produced.  First flush teas tend to have a lighter, greener, more grassy taste, while later flushes become progressively more full-bodied and astringent.

First and second flushes are most desirable.  In India, these come in March and June, respectively.  This is followed by tea produced in the rainy season, (hence the Monsoon flush), and finally the autumnal flush.

In Japan, tea producers use a different naming system.  Sencha, which means, "New Tea," is the name for the first flush of the season.  Bancha ("Coarse Tea") is harvested afterwards (at a time corresponding to a second flush).  This harvest takes older leaves (not just a flush), and produces a more vegetable-tasting, almost "woody" tea.   The next harvest of new flushes is labeled Second Sencha.  A harvester can expect three senchas in a season.

White tea is made, not from a flush of tea, but from the single leaf bud, which makes for an extremely light color and taste.

Drinking Tea In Plano

Yesterday, I was in Plano, Texas, where I stopped in at the Into My Garden Tearoom for a quick pot of Earl Gray (they do Stash teas).  I was able to visit with one of the co-owners, Jennifer Minor, who showed me her two favorite teapots.  They both had an Alice in Wonderland Theme.

  Since last October, Jennifer has introduced Alice in Wonderland tea parties in the tea room.

Why does she love tea?  Jennifer says, "I love tea.  I don't really like coffee, but I like how the coffee culture lets you slow down.  Tea can do the same thing.  I discovered English Breakfast and went from there."  

Drinking Tea In Downtown Charleston

While we were in Charleston, we visited the Charleston Tea Co., a tea house/cafe in downtown.

I liked the way the tea was served in an open infuser, so that you could really see the quality of the leaves as they unfolded in thier "agony."  The tea here is the Earl Gray Organic Royale.

Tea Tour of Austin

I went to Austin over the weekend for a writer's conference. We got there Thursday night, which gave us all day Friday to explore. I mentioned to the hubby's relatives (who we were staying with) that I was interested in visiting the city's best tea rooms, and we were off. After one disappointing stop at Momoko, a Tokoyopop memorabelia store where you are supposed to be able to get the best bubble tea in town but which was closed when we stopped by, we had a great time.

We went to the Tea Embassy, which is more about loose tea and merchandise than prepared tea or a food menu (although they have special tastings one weekend each month -- we just went on the wrong weekend) . It's housed in a historic building on Rio Grande steet. They have several teas available for free sampling. When we went, there was a peach flavored red rooibos, which was amazing. They also were offering samples of Thai tea. I bought a very nice chocolate mint rooibos from the very knowledgable Jake (pictured below).

From there, we went to the Steeping Room, which was very up-scale and offered a full restaurant menu. Note that in the picture, it is right next door to a Starbucks, which I find a bit ironic. They had a whole wall of loose teas. I liked the way each had an open sample cup so that you could look at the quality of the leaves and smell the blend. I bought what turned out to be a very light strawberry green tea, which had large chunks of dried strawberries mixed with the leaves. The guy at the counter mentioned that that was one of the day's featured iced teas, but I couldn't bring myself to pay $2.50 for one iced cup of the brew when I'd just bought 2 oz. dry.

The Water's The Thing

There have been reports for a long time about the effects of overchlorination, bacteria and other problems with tap water. Now, where I live, they're finding traces of antidepressants in treated water. But that's not what really has me worried.

They've installed a new water tower. Now, the water in the whole neighborhood tastes just a little bit like mud, and when it comes out of the tap, THERE ARE VISIBLE FLAKES IN IT. I've been drinking filtered water from the fridge for years, but most of the time, I get lazy and fill the kettle from the faucet. I'm so creeped out by this new development, I'm getting one of those faucet-filter things this week.

But it got me wondering what effect water quality has on brewed tea. There's a debate going on over at Helium where nearly seventy percent of responders say filtered water improves the taste of coffee and tea. One of the most sensible comments says that the improvement is going to be relative to the quality of your tap water, so if you actually like the taste of your tap water, you may be fine.

E-how has a video where they say to use spring, bottled or filtered water -- but not distilled water, because it tastes flat. Several other sites claim that you can make distilled-water tea palatable by adding minerals or brewing it in certain kinds of stone teapots.

The other thing intersting thing about using filtered water for tea: bottled/filtered water often lacks the flouride cities add to tap water. Tea leaves, on the other hand contain more flouride than most other plants. So, if you drink a goodly amount of your filtered water as tea, it may just all balance out.

image courtesy of Stock Xchng

Tea obsessed and have nothing to do next weekend? I say ROAD TRIP! The only active commercial tea farm in the United States, the Charlston Tea Plantation, is hosting its annual First Flush Festival on May 16. (In case you're wondering, the plantation is owned by Bigelow Tea). They're promising music, food, fun and games . . . and a chance to see how tea is produced.

Interesting, that there is only the one "local" plantation (and a small tea-growing collection of farms in Hawaii), given that tea consumption is going wild. There were other attempts at getting tea to grow stateside, dating back to the colonial times. The British were trying to establish domestic tea in the colonies as early as 1744. A number of failed attempts were made to establish the plants in both Georgia and South Carolina. Early German settlers to Texas also had a try at it. Over time, though, tea drinking faded from popularity. Now that it is back . . . who knows?

Photo courtesty Stock Xchng

Tea for One

While I love throwing tea parties, I also like making tea part of the quiet times in my life. To remind myself to do this, I have started collectinge tea for one sets. I like using a pot with an infuser rather than just dunking a tea ball in my cup because it feels a little more elegant, I don't have to figure out what to do with the ball, and -- this may be psychological -- tea just tastes better coming out of a pot.

These are my two favorites:

They are not expensive peices, but I like the simple styling and size of the cup on the white one, and I like the old feel and floral pattern on the other one.

We tend to think of tea-for-ones at kitshy modern inventions, festooned with puppies and bows or shaped like ladybugs. And there's a place for that. But stacking teapots have a long and elegant history. Royal Wilton has been making these sets since the 1930s, mainly in floral chintz patterns.

They harken back to the French villeuse, which literaly means night-light. Popular in the 1800s, these decorative pieces included a stand (often translucent) which held a candle or a container filled with vegetable or nut oil and a wick. Stacked over this stand would be a teapot. They were usually small, holding a demitasse-sized teapot just right for one final cup of tea before bed.

I've seen other antique stacked sets, some out of metal, from Turkey and Russia. I'm guessing that the elaborate Russian tea ceremony, with its need for a number of pots, coupled with the need to save space, gave rise to these examples.

So, as I sip bush tea out of my discount tea for one, I still feel connected to all this history.

Infuse My Life

In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot writes,

"For I have known them all already, known them all:
--Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;"

He's talking about a jaded, worn out man whose life is focused on the mundane tasks of just getting through a day. Those coffee spoons are what give him the artificial energy to keep going. Coffee, as it is consumed during early morning commutes, costing as much per cup as an hour of some people's workday, is a perfect symbol for the modern age.

Tea, however, is connected with looking to the past, where times were simpler, and people had time to reflect on life and renew themselves. I've let tea infuse my life. Which is not to say I don't enjoy the occasional cup of coffee, as a social activity. But when I'm alone, I choose tea. Through the course of this blog, I hope to share why.