What special tea blend will you be enjoying for Valentine’s Day? How about one that contains black tea, rose petals, natural chocolate flavor, natural strawberry flavor, cocoa nibs, dark chocolate chips and strawberries.
This romantic blend from Adagio tastes like chocolate covered strawberries. Whatever you’re sipping, hope you have a lovely Valentine’s Day.
I’d never heard of Tipson Tea until I came across this pretty tin of their Ceylon No. 1 tea at Ross.
This is a nice black tea to drink in the morning. I found it to be full-bodied, yet smooth. A nice change from my usual morning cup of London Cuppa or PG Tips.
This Tipson tea is supplied directly from tea gardens in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) within weeks of harvesting. Now that I’ve tasted this brand of tea, I’ll be on the lookout for other blends to try and their other decorative clock tins.
Some of you may recall a post I did last November describing my visit to The Southern Living Idea House. During our visit, Lynn and I deposited ballots (that I had printed online) to win gift certificates from several Senoia merchants. I was quite surprised when she called me with the news that she was the winner and wanted to share this windfall with me.
We decided to include our hubbies and have a days outing in Senoia. It is a charming little town with a lovely historic downtown area with lots of interesting shops and restaurants. After enjoying lunch at Founders Restaurant, it was time to get down to some serious shopping.
I did come home with some great items including an antique box with a mirrored lid, lavender scented soap, tea towels, a decorative birdhouse, luscious strawberry rhubarb jam and peach cobbler, gourmet artisan chocolates from Oh Chocolate, ribbon candle from Table Talk and a necklace and earring set from Gypsy.
There was a good selection of downtown Senoia merchants who participated in the Southern Living giveaway. We stopped in at Maguire’s Irish Pub (one of the three restaurants who donated gift certificates) for some refreshment before heading home.
It seemed rather odd to me that with a prize package worth hundreds of dollars, Southern Living magazine did not take photos of Lynn to be included on the Idea House website. I know that when I take the time to enter a particular contest, I’m curious to see who won the prize.
If you ever have an opportunity to visit Senoia, GA, I think you’ll find it a pleasant experience.
And if you didn’t get a chance to visit the Idea House in Senoia, GA, Southern Living has already broken ground for their 59th Idea House in Fontanel, near Downtown Nashville, TN.
“What kind of tea do you want?"
"There´s more than one kind of tea?...What do you have?"
"Let´s see... Blueberry, Raspberry, Ginseng, Sleepytime, Green Tea, Green Tea with Lemon, Green Tea with Lemon and Honey, Liver Disaster, Ginger with Honey, Ginger Without Honey, Vanilla Almond, White Truffle Coconut, Chamomile, Blueberry Chamomile, Decaf Vanilla Walnut, Constant Comment and Earl Grey."
-"I.. Uh...What are you having?... Did you make some of those up?”
― Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little LifeIt’s hard to believe that we are into the second month of 2013 already. Now, if only things would settle down and I could find time to visit all my blog friends.
Oh well, the daffodils are coming up in the garden, the sun is shining and there is lots of tea in the cupboard. Have a great weekend.
It is such a treat when my mail includes a package from Teavivre containing samples of black, white, green, oolong and Pu-erh tea.
The tea samples included Bai Haoyin Zhen (white), Long Jing (green), Taiwan Tung Ting (oolong), Dan Cong Phoenix (oolong), Golden Monkey (black) and Mengku Palace Ripened Golden Buds (loose Pu-erh).
As I mentioned in a previous post, this tea is very well packaged. I like the individual sample bags that give lots of information including ingredients, place of origin, distributor and a brewing guide. The heavy silver bags protect the tea from light, air and moisture.
Right away I brewed myself a pot of the Golden Monkey black tea. This tea from Fujian province had a pleasant aroma and I found it smooth and refreshing. Obviously I’m not a connoisseur with extensive tea tasting experience – but I know what I like.
Next I tried the Dan Cong Phoenix oolong and the Pu-erh. Both were very enjoyable.
This was my first experience with loose Pu-erh tea. The others I’ve tried came paper wrapped with the tea pressed into little bird nest shapes. This one was not too earthy and I’m now starting to enjoy this type of fermented tea. The Teavivre website has lots of valuable info on each of their teas. For instance, I learned that the Mengku Palace Pu-erh was picked by hand in 2007 from special large leaf tea trees. It is low in caffeine and outstanding in health benefits.
I’m looking forward to sampling the rest of my tea. And while I’m sipping the Teavivre tea, I’ll be exploring all the great tea stories, photos, videos and links on their website.
Tea’s proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
- Samuel Johnson
I don’t know about you, but I am starting off the new year bearing the effects of lack of exercise and indulging in a lot of holiday treats. Time to get back on track and dig out my copy of “The Ultimate Tea Diet” by Mark Ukra.
While trying to tidy up my tea cupboard and find more space for all the new teas I’ve added over the holidays, I came across several tea theme towels. Since I have what now seems to be a “collection” of tea theme kitchen towels, I decided to learn more about tea towels (dish towels as many of us in the US call them).
In the early 19th century Victorian ladies used fine linen towels to dry their precious china, glassware and other tableware. This linen fabric didn’t scratch or leave lint on the pieces. These ladies also personalized their towels with fine embroidery and used them at tea time to cover trays of food or as a cozy to insulate the teapot.
These days most of our tea towels are made of cotton or cotton blends and are easy care. That suits me, since I don’t have the time to hand wash and air dry fragile, hand embellished linens.
One fascinating fact I learned was that the impoverished Vincent Van Gogh actually painted on tea towels out of necessity when he had no canvas available. One (still life with flowers) sold for over 2 million pounds at auction in 2000 and a couple of others are in private collections.
In the 1900s in America, housewives used rough animal feed sacks for dish towels. These were also hand embroidered, but whether or not they made it to the tea table I don’t know.
So, I guess I’ll continue to check out the tea towels at places like Marshalls, Ross and TJ Maxx just in case there might be a new tea theme towel to add to my collection.
