Various Artists

When it get this hot and humid (when you step outside the moisture just envelops you like a hot wet fur shirt), I don’t much care what I’m drinking as long as it is cold. This causes me to be a little sloppy with my beverage concoctions. Over the past couple of days, we’ve tried refrigerator alchemy with:

Red Rose tea with mint and a splunk of sassafrass concentrate

Some embarrassingly old loose leaf pu-erh, gone halvesies with Loyd blackberry/blueberry herbal

Surprisingly, neither were terrible and would have some potential if I paid attention to the prep.

What kinds of crazy things are you schlopping together to stay cool?

Although the Current Unpleasantness has not put a stop to my workweek routine, and although my thin little slice of extroversion is acutely missing my church family, quiet Sunday mornings in the back yard have been an unexpected blessing.

While I was enjoying a few shiny moments of sunrise before it ducked back behind some clouds, I was also enjoying a cup of what is going to have to be a mystery until Eelong, the kind donor, sets me straight. The Sharpie had rubbed off the baggie, which (don’t laugh) could have said “Heicha 2018” or “Hojicha 2018,” but I’m not sure.

What I think I was sipping was a smoky and roasted green tea, which I thoroughly enjoyed, even though I’m not much of a lapsang fan. It had a nice coppery bronze color and led with the savory green flavor with a little campfire smoke in the background.

Baxter, our black cat with a white bow tie and a dumb-lovable personality like Rocky Balboa, jumped up beside me, and sniffed it with me.

I’m actually drinking a Basilur tea entitled New Year’s Gift, but as I can’t find a listing for it here or on the Basilur website, I’m assuming it was a temporary offering. A good one however—a good black tea base with sweet cherry (syrupy without being chemically artificial) and almond that is not bitter. Especially satisfying when taken in a quiet house after a day full of people.

(This concludes the tea comments. It’s OK if you move on from here.)

Day Full of People began with the memorial service for my sister. The family burying ground is three miles out on a gravel road that branches off a two-lane county highway in the little hills of Cedar County, Missouri. Floods have washed out some of the road bed, so you have to drive carefully, but the country stillness is breathtaking. We encountered a bald eagle, a wild turkey that flew over our vehicle, and a second wild turkey (so big it looked like an ostrich!) that flew in and landed on the far side of the cemetery immediately following the closing prayer, a little like a very rural Blue Angels salute. Shari would’ve loved it.

People Day Part 2 was a family reunion in the metropolis of Lockwood with cousins I haven’t seen since I was knee-high to that wild turkey. Plates laden with farm cooking—cornmeal-fried fish, homemade noodles, that cheesy hash brown casserole with sour cream and cornflakes on top that I can’t get my boys to eat…and a great deal of catching up and reminiscing.

A good day, but much to process. Glad I have a good cuppa and a few moments to do that now.

I’ve previously mentioned a pricey loose-leaf black tea that I can’t identify due to the lack of a single English character on the bag. Been saving it for mornings when I don’t have to rush (precious few of those lately). It’s been cooling next to me for quite a while, and the scent and flavor are that of a good dark wheat bread. I want my whole house to smell like this.

One of the reasons I let it cool is because I was distracted by the neighborhood anomaly—a huge white rabbit that’s bigger than my cats munching on the wild strawberries in the corner of our yard. Down the street, there’s a covey of them. Not wild rabbits; these appear to be show rabbit breeds, but they run loose in a neighbor’s yard, strangely unbothered by the dogs and cats. I counted twelve in their yard the other day.

My felines must just think he’s a very strange looking cat. I’m amused by his chutzpah—we caught the tail end of a thunderstorm last evening; iron-gray clouds and a pretty unpleasant wind; the cats went to their safe spots and Mr. B. (he really needs a better name than that) was just lounging in our back yard with his head tilted up toward the sky, watching it all roll by. Oh, my ears and whiskers …

Dagnabbit. Lost a whole tasting note. OK—rerun in 25 words or less:

Turyaga Very Berry. Valentine gift tea chest from The Enabler (hubby). Exceeded expectations. Gentle green tea and strawberry-blueberry flavor that was fruit punch, not tart. (That’s 26, but I hyphenated so I get the bonus deduction.)

To quote Scripture out of context, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Day 5 of a not-flu-but-not-fun virus that has left me a pleghmy, coughing shell of my former self. OK, I’m exaggerating a little. But mark my words, there will be no need for Kleenex in Heaven :)

All those theatrics are to explain why my tea drinking standards have lowered considerably—anything as long as it’s HOT. I’ve done blackberry/elderberry with honey.
Decaf black with honey and lemon. Green lemon with lemon. Sleepytime Vanilla.
Elderberry with turmeric and cinnamon. All temporarily comforting, but just won’t melt the goo. I think I’m about to resort to household lye.

Y’all stay healthy.

There’s tired, then there’s VBS tired. The kind of tired from hiking a mile upstairs each way from crafts to rec to music, which has choreography that would wear out a World of Dance contestant, and three more miles in additional back-and-forth trips for restroom escorts and “please, may I have some more to drink?” Oh, and did I mention rec is outside today? It’s going to be 95 with rain forest humidity.

Wouldn’t give it up for the world on a plate.

But, as I will be dragging anchor when I get home, I have a treat in the fridge: steeped a jar of good-quality spring-pickin’s green tea a friend brought home from China. Tossed in 3 fresh cucumber slices (courtesy of my sweet student VBS helper) and and a filter bag of dried honeysuckle; let it chill overnight. My first taste was tasty; I’m sure it’ll be more so with my feet up and my eyes closed and the blinds drawn later today.

(Hoping this is the beginning of a new respect for lowly cucumbers—my childhood memories are still tainted by the smell of Mom’s ice cream tub of cucumbers and onions in vinegar that was perpetually in the fridge three months of the year.)

1 quart jar. 2 large sprigs of fresh apple mint off the back porch. 3 plain ol’ Red Rose teabags. 4 lime quarters. 5 hours chilled in the fridge. Gone in two minutes. What’s wrong with the math here?

US buddies, hope your Thanksgiving was blessed and bountiful. While I was feasting Thursday, I took a 24-hour fast from social media, and do you know what? Much as I like y’all, I didn’t miss it much.

The best part of Thanksgiving weekend, at least at my house, is not hurrying and having plenty of putter time. I did a little tea puttering as well while I was messing around in the kitchen.

Experiment #1 — One part no-name bulk pu-erh from local indie grocery + 1 bag Bigelow Salted Caramel. A tasty surprise. The pu-erh lent a little muscle to the Bigelow, which has a good flavor, but not a lot of body strength.

Experiment #2 — Straight up peppermint + a sprig of rosemary from my own plant. Tasted like air freshener. (But the rosemary tasted great on the turkey.)

(Post-posting edit. I wrote the following paragraphs last night, clearly inattentively, because I didn’t actually tell you what I was drinking. ELDERBERRY. DRIED ELDERBERRIES. Good grief. )

Some travel and heavy conferencing ahead (it’s a little like Rumplestiltskin, they lock you in a room and require you to be creative until the whole kids’ curriculum is planned—straw into gold), so in prep for alien environments, I intend to be steeping a whole lot of this over the next couple weeks. Mema swore by it during cold and flu season and she lived to a very cheerful and perky 92.

These are just the bulk dried berries from local health store; they do a lot of Frontier Natural Co-op stuff, so that’s the likely candidate for brand. Steeped straight up with no additives, it tastes like raisins. I’ve had it with cinnamon before, tasty; and I suppose I could sweeten with honey. Other stir-in suggstions from the audience?

Well, we’ve hit “anything as long as it’s cold” season. I didn’t have a full tumbler’s worth of any one thing in the fridge for my Mowing Mug, so I dumped in half a pint of chilled Barry’s black tea, and half a pint of St. Dalfour’s Black Cherry in together.

Did the trick washing the dirt and sweet clover out of my throat…and then I noticed the enterprising younglings on the street corner (1st grader, 3rd grader) selling Black Cherry Kool-Ade. The Marketing Specialist had even written her prices on a markerboard and was twirling the sign like a Little Caesar’s pizza guy. So I gave up my quarter, and asked her to dash a little into my tumbler with the tea leavings that were still cool. By that time, the blend was so adulterated, it reminded me of monkey spit, but ya just gotta support your local beverage vendor.

Drink options should improve shortly. I have a jar of Red Rose with several sprigs of chocolate mint bathing in it for midafternooners.

I posted elsewhere that now that I’m a farmer (aka helping elderly father with farm paperwork and writing checks for fertilizer) I bought me a Pierce City FFA t-shirt (Future Farmers of America) at a garage sale so I am appropriately dressed when I look at the fields. Usually I look at the field and say, “Yep, that’s wheat.” That’s cause I’m an expert, y’know.

So I needed some tea to drink while I was in farm mode. Mason jar sun tea with three Barry’s tea bags, almost strong enough to strip paint, with three tablespoons of Pappy’s Sassafrass tea concentrate. Chilled extra-cold. Perfect for a humid early summer afternoon.

Maybe it’s just me, but after I go see a theater movie, I need some space and silence to clear my head from the sensory overload—more so as I…continue to no longer be twentysomething. So after a noisy and swashbuckly afternoon chasing Neptune’s trident, I’m enjoying nothing but ambient neighborhood sounds in the back yard and pondering … if I had a compass that pointed to what I truly want, would I be proud of what it pointed to? Hmm.

But you want to read about tea. Unlabeled baggie from a work friend—I have a lot of those—with some bulk blueberry green tea from our favorite local health food grocer. That would lead me to believe it’s Frontier Co-op brand. Smells like pie; tastes like it a little, too. There was only one dried blueberry in the baggie and it didn’t make this cup. If it had, this would taste like two pies.

I’m not the tea person who weighs, labels, classifies, catalogs, or scientifically approaches any of my brews…I’m the one with an unlabeled baggie of something that sort of looks like green tea with lemongrass that I might have gotten from a work friend sometime last summer, but eh, it still looks viable, so let’s give it a go….

And I’m glad I go’ed. Whatever I’m drinking, it’s a happy golden color, and with a squeeze of lime, it tastes like spring sunshine.

A little “random” never hurts :)

A teaspoon of fair-to-middlin’ bulk decaf Ceylon leaves, teaspoon of bulk chai spices, plenty of half-and-half, and a big fat blop of marshmallow cream. Liquid equivalent of a fluffy fleece blanket.

We did our family-tradition run to Branson for Christmas lights, musicals and my annual Christmas Cry (Little Altar Boy gets me every time)…and my souvenir from the trip is a good old-fashioned nose-drippig, sneeze-induzig, throat-scratching cold that has kept me at about 30% power all weekend. (Aw, shucks. Didn’t get to finish raking the back yard.)

So, at this point, flavor, delicacy, and nuances would be wasted on me. Full throttle, strong-as-you-can get ’em tea is needed at a time like this. The weekend menu has included, in order of strength:

Bigelow American Breakfast (heavily caffeinated, but not a biting flavor)
Bulk peppermint leaf, steeped a good ten minutes
Good Earth Sweet and Spicy (tastes just like cinnamon red hots)

..and this morning, Twinings Irish Breakfast spiked with a spoonful of Bulk Assam. If that doesn’t clear things out, I’ll just have to try Drano. I have a roomful of 10-year-olds to talk over this morning!

Some travel ahead, so for an additional immunity booster, I made a long, strong steep of some dried elderberries. Steeped elderberries remind me of raisins, so I threw in a cinnamon stick. Yep, cinnamon raisin tea! I think that’s going to be a winter winner.

After cleaning up a pound of rather roughly shelled pecans, I ended up with a quarter cup or so of pecan schmutz…not shells, just bits that broke off. Smelled nutty lusciously, and I couldn’t bear to throw them away.

So I didn’t. Tossed a pinch into a cup of plain bulk Ceylon this morning for a sweet, smooth autumn treat. I think I could’ve given it another minute to strengthen up the pecan profile; maybe a little dairy to bring it out, but it was tasty all the same. And I’ve got more nut schmutz to experiment with.

But since schmutz tea doesn’t sound very elegant, what do you think about Cracked Pecan Ceylon?

My favorite local bulk tea venue has a keemun I really like (they stock a lot of Frontier Organic Co-op teas, but I don’t think this is one of them). A while back, at the same spot, we picked up an ounce of maple syrup powder to see what it could do.

After adding (b) to (a), I discovered that what it can do is make a really pleasant sweetener, although I’m going to have to work with proportions to find the “sweet spot,” if you will. Takes about a teaspoon to make the maple kick in, which makes for a slightly sweeter cup than I general go for.

With that said, keemun-maple is an absolutely fitting autumn blend and I will keep tweaking!

Our weather has finally moderated to the point that an evening cuppa is swell instead of sweltering. A tea buddy fixed me up with a little bag of bulk green tea with jasmine, brand unknown, after I made her spit-on-her-palm swear that it didn’t taste like floor cleaner or air freshener. Jasmine and I don’t always see eye to eye.

Got the water going then left it to cool entirely too long, so I ended up steeping in a cup of “tepid” for about two minutes. And in a Bob Ross happy accident, I ended up with a mild, sweet, nearly sugary broth that has upped my opinion of jasmine by couple of notches. Believe I’ll try it again.

A friend of mine experimented with flavoring her own black tea with raspberry—with very nice results. No nasty hibiscus to gum up the mix, just a good Assam with fruit. A nice, well-rounded balance. I cold steeped some in the fridge overnight with a sprig of chocolate mint from my own back porch. Chocolate raspberry mint goodness—no, scratch that—superbness.

Of course, the fact that our air conditioner has been broken for two days and I had come in from mowing the ditchy part of our yard sweating battery acid made it three times as tasty. Fall can’t get here soon enough for me! :)