JacquelineM

Having a very quiet afternoon in the office – the quiet before the storm! Tomorrow is Commencement, and one of my jobs is to give out diplomas each year!

I thought some tea would make the down time enjoyable, plus I could go for something sweet :) This is hitting the spot. Carmel corn date tea. Two nice steeps today. Now that I’ve had some naturally sweet oolongs, I think I prefer them to this (and I was crazy about this when I first tasted it!!). I’m going to lower the rating a bit – I think it’s now a solid 85. Delicious, and I’ll enjoy every curlywavycrazy leaf, but I rather have an Oriental Beauty or Dragon Ball!

I am entirely too grumpy today for a gal who has found out that she earned an A in her class! I am hoping that this tea full of delightful things – berry! caramel! bergamot! – will calm my cranky mood. Many thanks to the quiet life for this sample!

I am taking it with just a pinch of sugar, and I think this is the way Kusmi teas like to be drunk! The tiny bit of sugar brings out all of the flavorings and the tea is pronounced and delicious. Last time I made it at 5 minutes but put in milk and sugar, and it overwhelmed the tea and subtle flavors. I like it much better this way! A bit of sweet berry, something citrus-y, a warm sweetness, and good tea. This is SUCH a nice treatment for a sourpuss!!! I’m going to inch up the rating a bit. :)

I made another steep at 5 minutes, just hoping for some more warmth really, but it’s very flavorful. I’m going to need a tin of this when I run out. The quiet life was super generous with her sample and I have a few more cups worth of anti-grump medicine at hand!

If there was ever a cold, miserable, rainy night which needed a cup of stovetop Kashmiri Chai to make it better, this would be the night!!!! That milky gently spiced cup of comfort was just what I needed to take the chill from my bones! Delicious and smooth. Just the right amount of spices. Even though it’s a caffeinated tea, I feel relaxed. I’m even yawning! It must be the warm milk. Time for bed and a novel!

Tea courtesy of Doulton, and idea to drink an Earl Grey courtesy of Miss Sweet! Check out her Ode to Bergamot in her tasting note for Earl Grey Excelsior!!

Taken with a little pinch of sugar.

This one is different! I’m not tasting an overly bergamot flavor. I taste lime! The tea is dark and bold for a Ceylon – I think it would have taken a drop of milk nicely if I had any. It resteeped very strong, too!

It’s not knocking me over – and I think it’s because I really want milk with it! I think I also like my Earls a little less of a gentleman ;) Give me some more Calabrese bergamot of the peasantry, wontcha!

This one courtesy of Doulton! Thank you!!!

I am having such a busy Monday morning! When I saw this nice tea sachet in my tea drawer here at work, asking nothing of me but to put some water in my kettle, I knew it was a Hot Cinnamon Sunset day!

I had a very bad experience with a hot cinnamon tea (not Harney’s) when I was brewing all teas at 5 minutes no matter what, and putting milk and sugar in all black teas. I had brewed up the most sickening bitter hot sweet milky disgusting thing ever, so I knew this was to be taken without additives, and steeped with a light hand.

At three minutes and taken plain, this is DELICIOUS!!! I love cinnamon, and this is a spicy, lively, cinnamony delight! Invigorating! People say “red hots!” as the flavor for this tea, and I would agree – but a less sweet candy flavor to me. I went for a second infusion at 5 minutes and still got a nice warm spicy cup of tea. Not sickening or cloying at all. This really hit the spot this morning.

I have to get some sachets of Harney & Sons teas for days like these! How cute are these tagalong tins for just this purpose?!!

http://www.harney.com/Hot-Cinnamon-Sunset-Tagalong-tin-with-5-sachets/productinfo/72708/

I made a big pitcher of cold brewed iced tea with the last of this. So sad it’s gone! I am definitely going to get some more Darjeeling to mix with other black teas for iced tea. It adds a light and fruity aspect that I adore!

I have been craving this one for the past couple of days. I finally indulged! I find this one such a treat – cashew brittle, tea. The white chocolate is on the end of the sip. The tea is mellow and smooth. With milk and sugar, a true dessert in a cup! My husband and I liked the sample Doulton sent so much that I had to get a full size :)

Let the eating, I mean grading, begin!!

I knew we were going to have delicious sweet things, so I brought a little tin of this in, along with some half and half. I walked in with my cookies, but another coworker already had CINNAMON BUNS out!!! Good, sticky, walnut topped cinnamon buns from a little neighborhood bakery. YES!

I quickly put my kettle on and gosh, this tea is REALLY good with cinnamon buns. The natural vanilla and good tea is something special, but does not complete with the cinnamon bun. Pure indulgent synergy is going on :) Yum, yum, yum. I’m soooo glad I took this in today.

I made a batch of my big bakery style chocolate chip cookies for work tomorrow (it’s grade day at the University I work for – we have to make sure all the grades are in and transcripted before we leave for the day, so we all make food and sweets to share to help us get through it!). Of course I had to “test” one to make sure it was good! I brewed up a nice cup of this to go with. Mmmmm. This really is my ultimate chocolate rooibos. Rich and flavorful enough to stand up to my monster cookies!

Mmmmmmmm! Happy tea! I’m on my third steep of this beautiful golden jasminey pouchong. It has that buttery flowery almost tropical/mango/banana like flavor. It is just a tad bitter, and I wonder if it is because I used 185 degree water. Next time I will try at 175. Nevertheless, very enjoyable. I hope a temperature tweak might up the rating next time!

I wanted to make a sort of rooibos chai with this, so I mixed 1.5 teaspoons of this tisane (cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger) with 1.5 teaspoons of plain rooibos. Sigh -serviceable but much too weak in the spices! Next time I’ll try 1 tsp rooibos and two teaspoons of Yoda (he hee).

I couldn’t help myself from putting my review into the Yoda generator!

To make a sort of rooibos chai with this I wanted, so of this tisane (cloves I mixed 1.5 teaspoons, cardamom, cinnamon, with 1.5 teaspoons of plain rooibos ginger). Sigh – much too weak in the spices serviceable but! Next time, try 1 tsp rooibos and two teaspoons of yoda (he hee), will I.

Not too far off from how I put it – I must already speak like Yoda!!!

Here it is if you want to play with it!

http://www.yodaspeak.co.uk/

Today was my final for my class. I should be happy, right? The semester is over! Instead I’m feeling so…bereft. I love going to class, learning, and getting inspired by my professor and fellow students. I have so much to do this summer – my garden needs me, my to-read pile is out of control, I have a painting all lined up, I need to do my knitting for Fall…but – sigh. I love going to school!

I really needed something light and sweet now that I’m in the office (I drank 3 cups of coffee before my test and my stomach is not appreciative!!). I’ve been working through four delicious steeps of this one. Very sweet, and lightly vegetal in the best way. I feel better – more relaxed – nourished. A buttery taste comes out in the 3rd and 4th steeps. I am really impressed with this Indian green tea!

Mmmmm. I steeped it properly this time and I can taste all the flavors! Strawberry is the first thing I taste, followed up by the chocolate then vanilla. I love the honeybush, too. A great combo of sweet and robust. Very satisfying when you want a black tea but really shouldn’t have one! Gotta up this rating…

This tea is just a miracle! A delicious, mindblowing miracle! Now that I had the Wuyi oolong yesterday, I detect some of the same roasty flavors in this one too! I wonder if the tea growing region in Arunachal Pradesh India is similar to the Wuyi region in China (the Dawn description does talk about mists!). This one is chocolatier and darker, but that deep chicory roasted nut like flavor is present in both.

I haven’t had this one in awhile, and I was a little hesitant to drink it again because I had so very flipped over it when I first tasted it. I don’t have to worry – I’m sitting here in wide eyed wonder once again. Gaaah! This tea is great.

I’m going to go boil some more water for a second cup :)

We had the remaining two pots de creme for dessert tonight, so it had to be this tisane :) Such a great pairing. Warm, rich “supporting actor” to the dessert. My husband said, “This is heavenly!”

This one courtesy of the Amazing Takgoti! Thank you!!!

I chose this one for today because Robert Fortune has arrived at the Wuyi mountains in China in the Steepster Book Club book, For All the Tea in China! I thought that it would be neat to drink a tea from the very area I am reading about! I am imagining the mists and the dragon skeleton mountains as I sip!!

I did a rinse in boiling water, then did the rest of my infusions at 195 degrees.

The first three steeps had this amazing dark roasty flavor which reminded me of natural peanut butter from the health food store – no salt no sugar! just the ground nuts. It then morphed into something like the barley tea that I had at the Korean restaurant. I’m now getting a good tea flavor with some deep elements. Seven wonderful steeps. This tea had the most dramatic changes in flavor! It was almost like I had three different teas today! I think it could even go for more but I am so full of tea, and need to leave the office soon!

The blurb says it’s good for coffee drinkers – I have to agree. Not because it tastes like coffee, but because it has the hefty presence of coffee. I love it. I definitely would pick some of this up for the winter. I want to see what steeps 8 and beyond hold!! Mmmmm.

If anyone told me that I’d be craving mint rooibos in the evenings, I would have told then they were crazy! So simple and good, so perfect to wind down with.

I made dinner, dessert and this tea iced to bring to my mom for Mother’s Day. I made the big 8 cup pitcher cold brewed with some simple syrup and half a lemon. Very refreshing! The cold brewed method makes the bergamot subtle enough to be delicious with food. I still prefer this with lime, but I used all my limes for the pie!

I also gave some tea to Mama Earth today. I compost all my used tea leaves, and my garden got a nice helping :) It’s so great to see my used tea leaves, vegetable scraps, the leaves the trees shed in the winter, etc. become food for my garden, then food for me, then food for my garden, then food for me… :)

Last week I stopped by my favorite thrift shop, and lo and behold – they had brand new oven safe ramekins! A really good brand too! 4 for $3 (they sell these same ones on Amazon for $15). Thrift score!!! Ramekins have been on my want list for the past year, ever since my trip to California, so that I could make pots de creme like I had at Deetjens (see my previous tasting note on this tea to read the story :)

So today I made them with David Lebovitz’s recipe:

http://www.culinate.com/books/collections/all_books/ready_for_dessert/chocolate_pots_de_creme

and we had two of them for dessert tonight. Of course I had to serve them with plain rooibos, just like when I had it at Deetjens. Ahhh, the memories. The plain rooibos was so good with the rich chocolate. Without sweetening, it acted almost like a coffee substitute. Very satisfying paired together.

I don’t know when I’ll get back to Big Sur, but I can always have a little taste of it now and again :)

I chose this one today because the moment I’ve been waiting for for three years has come!!! My lavender plant that I raised from seed IS READY TO FLOWER!!!! Yaaay!!!!!!

I wanted to drink this one without milk (I’m at work, plus I thought lavender and milk would be…not so good. I think this is where I screwed up the rose tea and made Rose Milk Lotion – shudder! Anyway!) so I brewed it slightly under boiling and for only 3 minutes.

It’s really nice! The black tea base has no bitterness brewed like this, and the lavender with the bergamot is not overpowering – just a good old fashioned fruit and floral. This is one of those teas that I would probably only want to have every now and again, when I’m in my nostalgic moods. Since this is the first I’ve tasted, I’d like to taste around a little… if you’ve tasted one from another company that you thought was stellar, I’d love to hear your recommendation!

I did a second steep at 5 minutes and it’s very similar to the first. Mmmm! I also think this would be spectacular iced.

Ahhhh now this is chamomile tea! These loose fuzzy cheerful yellow pom poms are like a totally different tea than the crumbled tea bag stuff. No musty dusty taste at all. The mango and apple add just a touch of sweetness. What a great before bed tea. I’m amazed! …and sleeeeeepy…

I’ve just spent the entire day working like a madwoman with steep after steep of this tea! Total of seven :) I have to say, if you must sit in your office all day and work without a break, brewing a multiple steep oolong with your kettle by your side is the way to go.

I rinsed with boiling water, and then did my steeps with 195 degree water throughout.

I thought that the first three steeps were a sort of a floral nutmeg and cinnamon flavor. This tea reminded me so much of a lighter, more floral, less sweet Dragon Ball from Silk Road Teas! Very delicious. I was getting a not quite milky flavor, but a sort of coating that was like milk in my mouth, if that makes any sense?

The fourth and fifth steeps were a bit less cinnamon and nutmeg, and the milky feeling became even more pronounced. By the 6th and 7th steeps I was getting a light and pleasant tea flavor.

I think this is a great tea, and probably would have flipped if I tasted it before the Dragon Balls, but I prefer the Dragon Balls! They have more gusto and sweetness.

I seem to gravitate toward this one during these mid-spring evenings. One foot in the deep warm just leaving the winter rooibos and one foot in the refreshing and light minty springtime. So nice after dinner – digestive and delicious.

It looks like I may have gotten the last of this tea for the moment, because it is no longer on the SerendipiTea site. This is a SAD thing because this tea is very delicious! The Chinese green tea, papaya and pineapple go so well together. You can taste the added flavors but you can also taste the green tea (which is smooth, slightly vegetal, and satisfying). Perfect warm weather tea! I’d love to try this iced too.

I did a second steep at 4 minutes and it is equally as wonderful. A little heavier on the tea, a little lighter on the additions, but so so so good.