In the last 24 hours, I have slept through 16. Yeah, yesterday was a rough day. But now I feel better except for the massive headache I have from too much sleep. I will count myself lucky that it didn’t trigger a migraine though (mental note: have some white tea later as a preventative measure).
I decided to try this unfortunate little tea this morning (I have 10 minutes until noon – it is still morning) for two reasons. One, because I want to share with the husband to see what he thinks of this and Two, to try out Angrboda suggestion of using lots of milk to improve this.
I knew there was a reason I followed Angrboda. Not only does she review nifty teas (and entertainingly, too), she’s a pretty smart cookie. For my 12 oz cup of tea, I used maybe 1/3 cup of milk. No sugar since it did horrible things to this tea before. This is a massive amount of milk for me. But it worked. The tea is better. Not good mind you. Just better. It tastes like an overly mild chai now. Not super-flavorful, but at least the spices blend better. Honestly, I still can’t really taste the pumpkin. My taste buds might be defective or something because apparently it’s able to be picked out without hunting. Not sure why I miss it. Though in general pumpkin tastes pretty bland to me. I do think it is that ‘nothing’ taste I get right after the initial sweet spice. But yeah, while this is definitely better with lots of milk, I’m still kind of ‘eh’ about the whole thing.
I gave the hubby some of this and I didn’t tell him what it was – I tend not to and then like to play the game of seeing what he can pick out with zero expectations. He used to be not so great at it but in the past months he’s gotten pretty impressive. So anyway, I didn’t tell him what he was sipping on, asking for him to guess. He took a sip… “This tastes really nutmeg-y.” Another couple of sips. “Is that pumpkin or squash?” Wow. Go him. Especially since that’s the most elusive flavor for me. Then, “Didn’t you have a pumpkin pie tea at some point? Is this it?” Ding ding ding. We have a winner.
When asked what his overall thoughts are, he replied, “I can taste the flavor but I really don’t know if it belongs in tea.” He gave it an overall 2.5/5 stars and I probably have to agree with him. It’s better with the milk and I probably could up the rating based on the with-milk taste to maybe the low-40s. But I don’t think any tea should have to have that much added to it to make it nearer to tasty-ville. And the relative mildness of the spices with this much milk tells me I can’t even judge this by chai standards. So the rating stays where it is.
