3478 Tasting Notes
Mastress Alita’s Sipdown Challenge – a tea that reminds you of a family member.
This is pear tea but it tastes and smells like those soft orange peanut-shaped candies that we call Circus Peanuts. Why are they called Circus Peanuts when they are not peanut flavored? Why banana? And why does this pear tea taste like banana candy?
My mother loved those Circus Peanuts so when I was in a store that had them (they were rather hard to find) I would buy her some.
The tea is fun and tasty, not an expensive tea and easily accessible. It would have been a good tea for the “cheap tea” prompt, too.
I was going to make it for lunch to go with our salads when I remembered that Ashman doesn’t like pear and says it tastes floral to him, so I ended up having this and he got Glazed Lemon Loaf.
For the August prompt: an Indian tea
I have so little Indian tea because any roughness causes me tummy aches. This one does not give me any problems. Ashman and I had it for breakfast and he liked it plain. If you love Indian tea for the builder tea aspect, this isn’t your tea, but I did share a pot with a lover of Indian tea a while back with the caveat that they might not like it, but she did like it very much.
This is a sipdown! And a fast one.
I am using this for the second August prompt, a cheap tea, because it really wasnkt very expensive to begin with, and I got it free by using my reward points, plus shipping is always free with Harney tea. Can you get cheaper than free with free shipping?
I ordered it for the fig flavor. I can not find any fig flavor. It is, nevertheless, a very good lemon and vanilla tea that goes great with both meals and sweets and is good hot and iced.
July prompt – a tea from an American company.
This is a sipdown today, and wouldn’t you know it? I have been hammering away at it trying to get one more thing out of my cupboard and today it tastes just about the best ever, making me want to purchase more. I will not do so until the cupboard is under better control but it may be a re-purchase someday.
The floral notes really stood out today and I am a sucker for floral notes.
Another sample found during my tea reorganization. I thought I might like this one best, but I really feel like it just left me confused. Some reviews say it was too sweet, but I didn’t find it that sweet, and I don’t add sugar or anything to my hot tea.
The blueberry is nice, and I found the chestnut rather strong, just nothing close to the overwhelming taste of one or two other chestnut teas I tried. (I’m looking at you, Adagio Chestnut.) I didn’t get the maple much. The blueberry and chestnut were shifting and eclipsing each other throughout the cup, thus my confusion.
Not one I am likely to order, but I enjoyed this cup. It’s probably just me.
This is a sample from last year’s Christmas order. I have a student who loves Stash White Christmas and a daughter who probably has it running through her veins. They both usually get some Stash tea for gifts.
I fell asleep at 7 pm last night and woke at 11:40 pm unable to sleep again, so I decided to grab a good book and make a cup of caffeine free tea and get rid of a sample.
At 2 am, this is a surprisingly decent tea. It is nothing worthy of comparison to Cuppageek blends, but there we have it. The chocolate was in front for me with mint running alongside, and the lavender was very mild.
I would possibly even buy a box at Christmas if I didn’t have so much other tea I need to finish.
I put my tea that had been inside a chest with other tea stacked on top into a small bookcase so I can see it all and reach it more easily. I am now cringing at how much too much tea I have, how much I have never added to cupboard, and how much I am fully intent on re-ordering,
On a happy note (and you know how happy this made me, Cameron) I found an unopened pack of CAROL!!!
Ha ha yaaaaaay! A gift from your past self! :P
And you know you’re preaching to the choir here about “too much tea”… I probably have at least twice as much as you! XD
RECIPE FOR A BLACK TEA ICE CREAM:
I have been wanting to try to mimic an ice cream that was brought to me by Youngest. I believe the name of it was something like English Rose Black Tea? It was beautiful. When you opened the pint, there were bright pink crushed rose petals and tiny bits of crushed tea leaf on top. There were a few leaves scattered throughout the pint and it had nuts in it as well.
I had three rose black teas on hand and I thought this was the most likely candidate for making ice cream. The tea needed to have lots of rose flavor and also needed a hearty base to stand up to the sweetness and the rich creamy dairy base.
I added five generous teaspoons of this tea to one cup of hot milk and let it simmer on the stove for five minutes. I strained it and added 3/4 cup sugar, a tablespoon of homemade vanilla extract, a tiny pinch of salt, and two cups of half and half and whisked. (We prefer lower fat. Also, when making our vanilla ice cream and root beer floats, the lower fat ice cream seems to have a better texture than high fat.) That chilled in the fridge while I taught afternoon lessons and then I put it in the Cuisinart ice cream maker. We got the cheap one on an outrageous Christmas one day only doorbuster sale and it has lasted over a decade, so I am very pleased with it.
I added chopped pecans on top when I served it. I had forgotten there were nuts in the ice cream I was trying to replicate, so next time (and there WILL be a next time) I will stir them in prior to putting it in the freezer to set.
It was sooooo good. Ashman loved it, too. The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have some light, thin cookies to serve with it. I think lemon cookies would be perfect with it.
There was a ton of rose flavor, so I am glad I went with my instincts and did not add additional rose water, and the black tea flavor was well balanced, also.
This is for the July prompt: a tea from a US Company.
Harney and Sons is the company that first got me rolling on “good” tea instead of grocery store teabags. This tea will pretty much stay on shelf at all times because it is good with so many different things and we can drink it at night with caffeine worries.
I discovered a couple of years ago that I LOVE having hot tea with ice cream. One of my preferred teas for that was Grace Rare Tea’s Russian Caravan. The contrast between the hot, smokey tea and the cold , sweet ice cream was brilliant. But I soon discovered that the tea was keeping me up until all hours!
Yesterday I made a tea ice cream, which I will post a separate note for, and I wanted a good, hearty tea to go with it but it had to be caffeine free. So I slightly overleafed this and made a big pot, and it was a very reasonable substitute for the Russian Caravan and was delicious with our Rose Black Tea Ice Cream with Pecans, made with Czar Nikolaus St Valentine’s Blend. Perfection, and enough left for tonight!
Looking at tea-sippers review this morning, I nodded my head and said, “Same, same. All my teas are pretty visible so there aren’t any I have forgotten. How will I fulfill this prompt?”
Then I started moving a small bookcase we are repurposing and a chest full of tea and….guess what I found? TEA I HAD FORGOTTEN!
Granted it was only two samples that came with a gift on Mother’s Day, but I had completely forgotten they existed!
I was super excited at first because I knew banane was banana and I have never had a banana tea and so many of you are wild about them. But then I saw reviews that said, “Where’s the banana?” And I must concur.
The tea is lovely and has great blueberry flavor, but I didn’t taste banana. There was a moment, eyes closed, thinking hard, searching the flavor, where I THOUGHT that maybe, just maybe, the ghost of a banana floated by, but I wasn’t sure.
So it was a great tea and I am glad I had it to enjoy with my lunch, but I don’t think I can say I have really tried a banana tea yet.
Circus Peanuts are my most hated candy (though I also hate all things banana). I think I’ll avoid this one, heh…