momo

Dear Steepster,
I messed up terribly. Especially with money. Because of tea, most likely. Okay, for sure. So I need to ignore you for a long, long time. Badly.

If we’ve started talking a swap, we’ll still complete it. I’ll still be here for the tea boxes, those I for sure can’t ignore or leave. I missed a credit card payment. Twice. I barely have money as is because I don’t work, and I also just messed up school and at this point I don’t even know if I can keep going, which is an even bigger problem for money.

I’m working on applying to stuff, it’s kind of hard when you have an ear infection.

update if you were interested in buying tea Anyway, all the tea I had to swap, I put it here to sell: I figure it makes more sense than an auction first (thanks for the idea CJ). http://twominutesforbaking.net/2013/05/21/tea-for-sale/ I’ll be home all day so I can keep an eye on it and I’ll go now to look through the rest of my stuff so it’s all posted there.

Also if you ever wanted to buy stuff from my etsy shop I’d really appreciate it right now.

So after feeling like a total miserable fool I thought I needed something sweet, something I’ve loved, yet I’ve ignored in the midst of all this tea. I can’t believe how long it’s been since this one has seen the outside of the cabinet.

In that time though I have come to dislike rooibos a bit. Ok, a lot. While it smells good in the bag, brewed up it has the rooibos scent of taste bud death. I think it’s lost that mapley goodness. Though I do have some maple granules I could add to bring it back. I don’t have much of this left so that will do.

So that’s about it, I’ll miss you, but I need to get off the path of self-destruction.

xoxo,
momo

I’m going through my teas trying to get rid of things I don’t want anymore, so check the US swap thread! In a couple days I may make a box to sell again because I really need to clear stuff out of my apartment and really cut down on how much I have.

For some reason I thought I never drank this, when in fact I did drink it hot. I decided to try it iced.

It brews up very pale, so I may have let it go a little longer than intended. The floral notes of the oolong are so STRONGLY orchid this way to the point it’s almost overwhelming. It hits really hard in the aftertaste.

The pineapple is very subtle, but it blends so beautifully into the floral notes of the oolong. I’m saving the wet leaves to cold brew and we’ll see how that goes.

As it mellows out in the glass, there’s more of a creaminess to it. While this is nice, especially if you like orchid filled oolongs, it just could use a little bit more pineapple. But seriously as a floral oolong this is awesome. This might be the first time I am having an oolong like this iced so I’m still a bit apprehensive but I think I’ll start to love it.

edit: I think I like it better when it’s more room temperature than iced. The flavors are more well rounded which is much more enjoyable than feeling like you’ve been hit in the mouth with an orchid. I’m still going to cold brew the leaves though. Maybe the steep took some of that oomph out of them.

I still have my package of this somewhere…well yesterday my intended cold steep was the rest of my 12 teas of Christmas packet but there was nowhere near enough for even a cup. So I left it for over a day hoping it might work out…and it did! I was worried it was going to taste terrible from sitting that long, and the only reason it did was because it was so light. I think this one is just light colored anyway? It’s been awhile.

So anyway I still want to marry this tea.

When I go to my boyfriend’s, I bring along a reusable bag filled with teas that are small samples, or just a bit left, in hopes I can finish them off. That was precisely my plan to ice Teavana’s Precious White Peach again, but I did not have enough for a full 16oz. I have a very small amount of DavidsTea’s Kanpe with me, definitely not enough for even a cup, but I figure I’ll throw it in there too.

They actually don’t have any ingredients in common from the looks of it, but I figured why not give it a shot. I have more Kanpe but it’s still a sipdown combination of excellence.

I only had this peach tea by itself once and I had to delete the note so I can’t remember much of it. I do remember it was not hibiscus pink, which this turned thanks to Kanpe.

I might have let the temperature get too hot for the white tea? It’s very bitter. Which is weird, since you know, it’s not very much white tea in the first place. It starts off very strongly tasting like Kanpe, with the addition of peach before going bitter like that. The cinnamon is pretty strong too, I really was not expecting this to taste so heavily like Kanpe when I barely had enough for a cup of it hot, let alone iced.

I’ll probably finish the glass anyway but I’m glad that I have no more of that white tea. It really isn’t very good and it seems to be incredibly picky.

I cold steeped this for about 4 hours. I figured no matter what it looked like it was going to taste like hibiscus, and I want something cold now. It did smell like sangria when I poured it into the jar.

I added honey, since that’s the best thing there is to use at my boyfriend’s, wow, don’t even bother in a cold tea unless you like to stir for 5 minutes. I think there may have been some kind of contamination with this one? It tastes nutty. I honestly do not have that many teas that are nutty so I am confused.

If I slow down on a sip it’s actually the fruit flavors all turning into that…there is so much going on it has like a peanut taste to it. It starts off tart, then I get mango and pineapple, maybe a couple other things, and it fades into what seriously tastes like peanuts and then back into so tart it tastes metallic.

The honey at least brought out the fruit. The jar is still about 1/3 full and I think I am just going to dump it. This isn’t enjoyable and it does not taste like sangria at all. Thankfully I used all I had on this steep.

Thanks, Kittenna!

I wasn’t going to log this because these are tea bags and they are terrible but just a note out there to anyone who might buy these and think to have it as iced tea: don’t.

This is just bordering tolerable when hot, but iced, oh my god, it’s like peppermint mixed in with twigs. Mostly twigs, then peppermint.

I think it’s safe to assume I can taste things again in which case this is relegated to the pantry until the next cold comes along.

Tea down! I decided this had to be cold brewed, but when trying to put the lid back on, it wouldn’t stay down. Next thing I know, I’m giving it one more try held in my hand when pop! goes the bottom. Tea falls. I wonder what on earth just happened. Not to fear, most of the tea was saved, and Vintage TeaWorks is so awesome they are sending me a new tube. They changed them too, mine has a plastic lens bottom and they are now metal like the inside of the top. Yay! And they answered really quickly. I feel silly now that I remember it chipped my nail polish the first time. It’s actually one of my favorite tins to have on display even if it apparently doesn’t get along with me.

So…onto cold brewing. I guess it was in there for 15 hours? It’s very, very apricot scented. It does smell like Riesling but more exciting.

I was not too big of a fan of this when I first tried it, which I believe was hot. This cold brew is fantastic. It’s fruity and floral. I like how the honeysuckle has most definitely come out too, becoming stronger as it warms back up from the fridge.

Only problem is I am slightly finding the lemongrass to still be really strong, at least when I have a refilled, cold glass. It starts off really apricot flavored but gets into the strong lemongrass territory where it tastes like fruit loops.

Still tasty anyway!

Iced tea time again! Although my head’s still pretty messed up, I can kind of taste things again. I can’t tell that it’s somewhat hot outside. Feels so good to me because inside, I’m cold and it’s 74 in here…hahaha.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had this one though it feels like I went through at least 1 1/2 oz of it last year. This is definitely going to be my staple iced tea though. I have 3 pitchers and I’m ready to make iced tea out of them all summer long.

I’ve had my Takeya pitcher since last year and I realize it’s quite difficult to make sure all the tea actually infuses. When I took the infuser tube thing out, the tea up top was bone dry. Anyone have a preferred method for preventing that? I was thinking of just dunking it in the water I put in the pitcher before attaching it to the lid. I really wish I had one like the one DavidsTea is selling where the filter goes down much further into the pitcher :(

Anyway! This is like my ideal straight black iced tea blend. And it’s so cheap! Not even $6 for 125g. It does get a bit plain, I really should just try sweetening it a tad. But honestly I don’t know if I can taste things still, I kind of gave up and have only eaten bread today. Still tastes like Darjeeling and Ceylon to me though so that’s good.

Mostly it’s just thirst quenching, you know. Just refreshing. If the sound of cars didn’t make my head spin, I’d sit on the patio with the pitcher and enjoy being warm.

Well the good thing about just drinking peppermint tea because I can taste it is: SIPDOWN! I still have over 800 teas…lawd.

I’m going to switch back over to spearmint now. I have to say that I like spearmint a lot better. No matter how short I steep, I get that peppermint burn from it. Spearmint for some reason I can better control how I steep. I’d love to have had this cold one last time but I woke up around 3am coughing uncontrollably so hot drinks sound great right now. Even though it’s on its way to being 80 outside.

I used up the last of the 1/2 oz bag I had and didn’t really measure, but made sure not to steep more than about 3 minutes. It’s thankfully not as strong as it was last night when I know I made sure to only steep it for about 4 minutes.

And of course it tastes like mint. Nostril clearing mint.

ooh by the way I finally got go to see my garden yesterday, after almost a week. I started an album now: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4985004551900.1073741828.1503090120&type=1
I really need to take care of the stuff on my patio a bit better now, oddly though the cucumber plants in the garden plot are way smaller than the ones at home. I almost want to switch them out haha. I’m getting sad everything else on the patio is very slow, I would love to use fresh spearmint for some tea too.

I’m hoping it’s just that my taste buds still don’t entirely work but this is entirely terrible. :( This is driving me crazy. It’s been almost a week since I could drink tea :(

It just tastes like burned malt. Wah I just want to be able to write tasting notes and taste things. Good news is I am on antibiotics now and know what has gone wrong (sinus + ear infection, argh) so hopefully soon I can taste again.

Since I’ve regained the ability to taste and smell, I grabbed the first ridiculous tea I laid eyes on. Since this one could double as trail mix, perfect.

The only problem is I have a lot of pressure in my ears now to the point I probably have to go to a doctor tomorrow, it’s making drinking tea really obnoxious, my right ear pops after every sip.

This tastes oddly sweet, and it’s really light. It isn’t very nutty this time. I tried to use more than the bag calls for, but it definitely needs maybe twice that? Did I not pay attention to the last time I had this…hm. I ended up steeping it awhile because I was on the phone and it really seems like all that did for the tea was sweeten it and not really flavor it much.

Also don’t eat the bananas after they’ve steeped unless you’re ok with the flavor of banana with the texture of potato. So weirded out right now.

I needed to grab peppermint tea since this movie theatre with its eat in menu shows “herbal teas” and I was like, oh good, I can get peppermint. No. They had four teas and only one of them was herbal. So finally today I am getting my peppermint tea especially because today is the day of the cold where it feels like everything’s trying to leave via coughing.

I was hoping to get an organic peppermint but meh, I couldn’t find one in the other section of the store so this one would have to do. It does brew up way too quickly, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since it does say 3-5 min on the box.

The good thing is that it’s not actually super minty, I can actually taste it and it’s not like that immediate menthol feeling in my mouth. YES I CAN TASTE AGAIN. It is fantastic.

So yeah really peppermint. Nothing special. Feels good. Far prefer a larger cut of peppermint but when Kroger’s all you have what can you really do. (Though one I used to live near had some, I feel like.)

btw so totally getting all the dried herbs to make/improve that blend of herbs for a cold. Felt soooo good after that.

So since I can’t really taste I have no idea why I went for this. I just knew I wanted puerh and well this doesn’t seem like a waste on useless taste buds.

First I just have to laugh again at the packaging of this tea. TEMPT your water to a boil. Whatever.

I tempted my water to a boil by subjecting it to heat in a closed container and steeped it for three minutes.

While really this was just hey maybe puerh helps get rid of colds, I was hoping for chocolate. I could taste chocolate. And just a bit of hay, I was worried this was actually going to be terrible and I’d be able to taste fishiness since I didn’t give it a little rinse off first.

I don’t understand puerh in a tea bag but I guess when you want it really conveniently, it works. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go cry because of hockey.

Since this will probably be awesome and I will have to make it again and hope I don’t stunt the poor lemon balm, I have decided this will get its own tea listing.

I took 3 sprigs of lemon balm for probably 15 leaves, tore them to bruise them up, then I added some dried peppermint and put some schisandra berries through the food processor just to tear them up a bit.

I wasn’t sure lemon balm was gonna be a good choice until I read it had anti-viral properties, and well, a virus is what I have. Peppermint I already knew was good, I had some of that yesterday. I really wish I had some ginger but I don’t think I even own ground ginger. Meh. Oh and then schisandra is supposed to be good for boosting your immune system since I don’t know why mine has failed me.

Now the worst part is waiting for this to steep. Which means I can complain: it is terrible to have a cold and it’s 80 degrees outside.

So. Taste. I wasn’t really going for taste here. It’s a bit like minty berry juice with a hint of lemon? It’s not terrible. It’s certainly a lot better than last time I thought I was getting a cold, got some Yogi tea thing, and it was just gross. I probably could have used a good bit more water to make this less strong, so I just diluted it.

It’s a mix of like tasting really herby/green and sour. Of course I don’t even know how well I can taste. It might just taste terrible but hey, resteeping these things for later might just help me out. I need to kill off this cold by Monday. Badly.

I would highly recommend mixing up stuff yourself for a cold, it is kind of entertaining in the midst of feeling sick to play herb mixologist. I would like this with a bit more peppermint I think, and I’d love to get ginger and maybe elderflower in here too.

Ohhh also just added in about a tsp of local wildflower honey, that kind of killed off the sourness of what I assume was the schisandra, so it just tastes like grass now. I’m pretty sure I can’t taste anything.

Except cough syrup, it’s gotta be a rule that even if you can down cilantro filled soup with no problems and usually want to be sick from just a little piece, you still taste every terrible drop of that stuff.

I woke up yesterday with a cold. I kept drinking teas I couldn’t taste. I wasted a good one on that. So I decided I’d go to the Numi sampler and this one sounded like it’d be fine.

Except I don’t care for chamomile…I could still taste it. The lemon myrtle part was nice and soothing though. I think I may have just steeped this too long, I was probably distracted by sneezing my face off.

Anyone have a good idea for what I can drink? Hot drinks feel so good. I’m thinking I should stick with herbals or even fruit tisanes? I have no idea what’s good for colds but I’m guessing I tend not to have a lot of it. Would grabbing some lemon balm from my patio make a good option too? I’m too sad to use teas I really like.

I got Indian food today so it’d be spicy and make my nose run even more and they include soup and it was full of cilantro and I didn’t even notice D: And it’s so nice outside but I just want to lay here. Wahhh.

I am probably just going to toss all the teas I have from this company. They are so terrible. They are so overly flavored that it’s absolutely disgusting. Every single one I have tried has been so artificial. This wouldn’t be bad if it didn’t taste like that. I even purposely steeped this short to not get the taste of rooibos, and I had hoped maybe it would stave off that problem at the same time, but it did not.

And I think there’s still two I haven’t tried. Ughhhh.

I decided to give it a shot cold and it was even worse. Another one to toss. Unless someone actually wants this? I can’t imagine.

I got this as a sample way back when I ordered from Persimmon Tree, and I was craving silver needle. I’ve got this and a couple other packets to get through before I open my half pound bag of the stuff. It’s been too long since I’ve had some silver needle, ahhh.

The rating makes this tea look bad, it’s not bad. It’s not as good as Teavivre’s, but it’s not bad at all. I’d think a bad silver needle would be really obvious haha.

It just doesn’t seem as intense, but that’s easily fixed with a bit more leaf. I think normally I drink silver needle pretty strongly, but it still has that taste of spring to it. I miss spring. I went to check the weather earlier and it was 30 degrees warmer in Canada. I didn’t think that was very nice.

This is okay, above average, and tasty. I don’t think I’ll bother resteeping it so I can go drink something else now.

This tea is just weird. It tells you it’s like butter cookies but then cumin, peppercorns, and coriander are in the ingredients….those aren’t really cookie ingredients? So I am kind of scared of even drinking this.

It smells terrible. It smells like butter and spice. That’s fine in food, In tea, I don’t know. Yeah really the actual ingredients say Indian food, the description is just way off. So is the name. Truffle would imply either there’s chocolate or there’s mushrooms.

No. I don’t even want to drink this. I took a couple sips and just no. Whatever it is doesn’t work. It makes me feel sick to just smell it because of the various spices, they don’t mesh, and so it just smells like a poorly stored spice rack where they all hit you at once, and don’t smell great together.

Ok there’s a bit of tea in the package but this is a sipdown anyway, the rest of it can go to the garden and make my plants happy.

And hey this is my 1100th note! I haven’t been drinking a lot of tea lately because I just feel like MEH. But the rest of this week nothing is going on so I’ll probably just sit and drink tea. Except during hockey. Tea has turned to booze during those hours. It’s the only way to survive.

So this is from TeaEqualsBliss a bit back, it looks to be an older tea so I don’t mind only getting one cup out of it. Unlike other stuff in the box this has been in, it is a pretty sturdy bag.

It’s nothing special. It’s pretty sweet, bit of honey flavor to it, but there’s not much else there. It doesn’t have the qualities I really love about Yunnan teas but I think this might be a product of age. Still, not bad, but it’s just slightly flat.

Sipdown! What a blah cold, rainy day. No fun.

I said last time I don’t care for chardonnay. I actually had the most fantastic chardonnay at the Ritz Carlton. Probably because it was the Ritz Carlton. When she said it was chardonnay I wanted to be like GET OUT but I didn’t want to get cut off from that wine. I like the description on here: “Chardonnay has a richness and structure that can be world class….when you grab the right bottle.” They did in fact grab the right bottle. And it turns out it’s super cheap. Well then.

So I was glad I had just enough of this to give it one last try.

I was about to say there is flavor contamination, but no, cinnamon is actually in here. It’s kind of overpowering everything else. As it cools, ripe melon is becoming more apparent. It’s more wine reminiscent this time around compared to the first time I drank it.

But it just doesn’t do it for me like a couple of the others. Was still worth trying, and that’s one less row in my spreadsheet, woo!

PS: I’m sorry to everyone about the tea boxes going around, or not so much going around right now. I hate not being able to be in control about things going wrong and it gets to me to have people waiting this soon after they started. I hope they’re found/moving again soon.

sometimes I regret my favorite hockey team being my favorite hockey team. I had an AWESOOOOOME time w/some people originally from Montreal last night (I’ve been told I can just tell people I am from there too so I don’t have to answer why I’m a fan of them ever again ahahaha) but it was kind of overshadowed by a terrible hit that pretty much busted the face of one of my favorite players b/c of a bad pass by another of my favorite players and all I see everywhere is the blame on the guy who passed and IT’S MAKING ME SO MAD.

But I have gotten two people’s phone numbers in a week! FRIENDS.

I figured I’d come home last night and drink tea, I have no idea why I didn’t have any earlier in the day…but anyway coming home last night turned into 1:30 in the morning. And poor Sebastian was so sleepy I did not want to keep him up.

So finally this morning I could have my tea! Especially because it’s suddenly really windy and cold (ok it’s 62 but that’s way cooler than it’s been). I got this from JoonSusanna awhile back and I really wanted to try it as close to how Frisian tea is made as I could. I didn’t have the right kind of sugar but I used demerara sugar and then coconut milk creamer.

I am pretty sure I did not make the tea strong enough, I probably should have checked on that because that would have helped. Just maybe a teaspoon max more would have helped. Still. I didn’t completely overpower the tea.

It is good, still could get malty notes, I think that sugar made it really kind of caramel-y. Definitely a hearty tea that’s a good choice for waking up. Actually I still don’t want to be awake.

I can’t decide if this one survived sitting around too long or not.

It’s definitely citrus heavy, though it’s coming off to me this time more as grapefruit and orange. But something beyond that just doesn’t taste right. Just kind of pecans filling the void of the sadness of a Darjeeling that sat around too long.

I am going to let this one go. Goodnight sweet prince.

I was drinking this yesterday afternoon but it was so terrible I only drank a quarter of my glass before heading off to the Ritz (ohmygod). They just kept pouring wine. I had to hang around there for like an hour longer before I felt ok to drive except then I was super sleepy! Since I was there and it was free I tried oysters and seabass tartare but I was not a fan of either.

And I found people who really want to do fancy afternoon tea with me there! So now I just need almost $60 to pull that one off. Jeez. A bunch of Yelp people are going to Fogo de Chao tonight and that’s $50 a person and I had been like that’s two weeks of groceries. But I guess since I’ve been there a couple times and like tea more than hot Brazilian men bringing me steak (okay when you say it that way, momo…) and it’s an experience! I guess it’s time to save up.

Ok back to this terrible tea. I have no idea why I bought it other than ooh green rooibos, cool name, might be good iced tea.

I was excited to see pear. Then I saw raisin. And carrot. And lemongrass. No this stuff can’t possibly work together, but I’m going to try it anyway.

Ugh it was just awful. I should have probably sweetened it, but you would have though the fruit pieces might have done that even just slightly.

Maybe cold brewing will make it better.

I’m pretty sure drinking an old Darjeeling is a dumb thing to do. I thought I got these recently until I realized a) March was last month and b) it’s not 2012.

Oops. I drank another one before and it was alright but not my favorite harvest. Autumnal is second fave, so hopefully this goes better.

It does not taste a thing like my previous note. I get the impression it was average and nothing I really cared for. This time around… It’s SO sweet. Like nut brittle.

It’s also really good cold now, I thought it was going to taste terrible or turn bitter but I guess I did a decent job on protecting this one.

Also I am so excited because being an awesome person on yelp means I am going to the Ritz Carlton tomorrow! Super fancy, one day I would so love to do afternoon tea there.
Also their website gave me that feeling where you’re like wow I want to have a wedding. They have passionfruit filling for cakes! A dark chocolate cake with passionfruit filling, all of a sudden I’m like oh my god I want a wedding cake.