Various Artists

cocktail recipe:
1 teabag Celestial Seasonings Peppermint/5 oz boiling water
steep for 10 minutes
add 1 oz Kahlua
add 1 oz Bailey’s Original
stir
microwave 20 secs on high

Minty boozy awesomeness! Coffee, cream and mint blend perfectly, with a nice alcohol kick. This reminds me of peppermint bark. A word of caution: the alcohol is definitely present in the flavor, but this is such a smooth drink that it goes down faster than expected. Huzzah for no work tomorrow!

Many thanks to MissB for the inspiration :-)

I was planning on a different cocktail for the stroke of midnight, but I was still sipping on this when the ball dropped. Happy New Year everybody! I’m so glad to have found Steepster in 2013 and look forward to being part of this wonderful community in 2014 and beyond. Best wishes to all for a happy, healthy, and safe year. May all the bad events of the past year stay in the past and may this year bring only good tidings. Hey, a girl can dream. :-)

I haven’t a clue what I’m drinking.

Teaja, for whatever reason, only lists a handful of teas that they sell on their website. There’s a good 20+ more in-store, including their “award winners”. Coolio. Not sure how to buy, or even review the tea though, if I don’t know what it is or how to reference it.

So, this is a black tea… it won an award at the tea championships this year… it’s quite floral yet really robust… and super expensive. I, however, just grabbed a cup for $4.

I won’t bore you all with the conversation we had about their pricing; I’ve ranted about it elsewhere ad nauseum. It, literally, brought me to tears… but then again, I’m really struggling today, so take that with a grain of salt.

<3

Is this tea? I took pumpkin pie spice from Whole Foods, steeped it into canned, organic coconut milk and added a touch of xylitol. I think this is a Chai, but, whatever. It’s amazing. :)

What tea is this I’m drinking? I forget. I’m upset. Tea always makes it better, right?

Went for Hot Pot today; it was fantastic! Ate way too much however. With the meal came some unnamed green jasmine tea. Nice, if steeped too long, even though I took the bag out as soon as it made it to the table.

Went to this fabulous local pub that bills itself as a “geek’s dream”, where the front page of the menu looks like an old D&D book, and you can roll a D20 for a $5 shot, or order by number for a $6 shot. Shot #20 however is only available if you roll 20, and it comes with a free, specially branded shot glass. Guess who rolled a 20 and then promptly forgot the glass at her date’s house?

After my celebratory shot, I asked for a ‘hot boozy drink’. She made me a lovely Hot Toddy, complete with tea steeped IN the hot booze. Perfect.

I was carded tonight! Holy moly. Let’s just say I gladly produced my ID, and told the gal I was easily old enough to be her Mom. She corrected me after seeing my birth date, saying I just looked really young. Still hilarious.

What was I carded for? Tea. Well, a Peppermint Toddy, to be exact. First time I’ve had one, and it was delicious. Peppermint tea, Kahlua and Baileys, served hot in a mason jar with a cute paper napkin tied around the rim like a bandanna to keep my fingers from scorching. So much fun!

Norbu Hong Mao Feng black tea w/roasted mate. 3:2. It’s not bad.

Teavana Yunnan Gold Puer with Lavender Citrus Sage.

TeaVivre Loose Ripe Puer with Verdant Ginger Sage Winter Spa Blend: -)

Davidson’s Tulsi Chamomille, with Teavana Lavender Citrus Sage.

We are into 40ºC+ days here and it is far too hot for tea. I’ve switched to gin and tonics and with a stretch of the imagination they are almost like a tea… right? Gin is really just botanicals infused in alcohol and tonic water is the same but with water?

I need to get my iced tea jug going again but if I have to be honest, I much prefer other chilled [read: alcoholic] drinks to iced tea.

I still cannot post a review to Yunnan Black by Little Red Cup Tea Co.. After today I guess it doesn’t matter as I finished it off. Well, actually this is leaf I first used Saturday. I left it in my press. That kind of stuff scares some people. I assure you it was fine. In fact it was just as tasty as it was two days ago. Fact is I enjoyed it even more today. Rich molassesy goodness. Consumed on a sunny 75 F porch with a bowl of rice. A wonderful escape from the sadness of the news.

This review is for Yunnan Black from Little Red Cup Tea Co.. For whatever reason Steepster refuses to let me post my review where it belongs. Spent the afternoon with my oldest son and his wife. They took us to the home they will be moving into sometime soon. Right now they live next door. They are only moving across the county but it will be a change. Afterwards we stopped for sloppy joes and shakes. Fun time. Now I’m home on a Saturday evening. How did that happen. What to do with myself? How about tea? Sold.

I love Yunnan. Never met a bad one. This one smells so nice. As it steeped I noticed grapes, raisins, or something similar. I don’t recall that with other Yunnans but I didn’t check my notes to see. The taste is nicely sweet, no bitterness. It’s mostly honey, malt, and molasses. I don’t really taste the fruit element but it s still in the scent. Nice bit of soothing comfort to end my evening.

I have managed to use up all my bulk straight black teas with the exception of golden monkey. I have mixed them together for iced tea. I dug through my boxes (yes I still have boxes of tea) and found 3 oz of Earl Grey I didn’t know I had. Part of it was used to make my latest gallon of iced tea.

This seems to be an Assam base as there is no Ceylon bite present. The bergamot is highly present. It reminds me of EG that add a little orange rind to the mix but didn’t notice it in the mix. I normally add nothing to iced tea but made an exception as I prefer earl grey lightly sweetened. This takes sweetening well. No bitterness. The bergamot lingers long in the aftertaste.

I reviewed the iced tea at our local Cheddars in the past. It was the best tea I have tasted in a local restaurant. Well today I took my first sip and was majorly let down. Beyond bland. Almost soapy. The meal was otherwise good. I mentioned to the waitress they should go back to the old tea. She agreed and said the new stuff is pretty bad compared to the old. Hope she passes the message on.

Stay with me on this one… Last night we had meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I washed it down with a iced tea brewed from random black teas. It gets interesting. My wife makes her meatloaf with oats (no bread crumbs) and uses chili sauce and Splenda brown sugar instead of ketchup. When I grabbed the tea it tasted for all the world like a really good rose tea. We made a gallon of the tea poured into a dispenser. I filled a glass bottle to drink. I used the same bottle before dinner and the tea was a normal tasty blend of teas. Same with the bottle after dinner. The flavor change with dinner was so unique and unexpected I thought I would share. Looking forward to trying again with leftovers.

Started my day with my usual Deluxe Matcha – from Matcha Warehouse (Red Leaf Tea) – in a cold milk latte. This goes perfectly with an everything bagel.

Lunch at Cheddars where I love their iced tea (and ribs). The tea tastes mildly like hoji-cha (but not really) and mildly earthy. There is a nice briskness to it. The best restaurant bagged iced tea I’ve had.

At home now, more iced tea. This is a homemade blend of loose leaf black teas from The Persimmon Tree (I miss them). I use equal parts English Breakfast, Assam, Ceylon, and Darjeeling leaf to make a gallon and a half at a time. Makes me happy.

Barely made it above freezing today and all I’ve had is iced tea. Maybe this evening I’ll heat things up a bit.

I haven’t been on Steepster for a while. Too hot for tea along with too busy and health issues. This morning I sat on the porch trying to dry out my sinuses. Decided it wasn’t working. Besides I could smell the ash from the Amish home just down the road and it made me crave some Lapsang Souchong. This is a good one – sweet, not too smoky, and not BBQ. Unfortunately the sample does not have the company name on it and I have forgotten from whence it came.

Just stopped in to say hey. Now off to get some Benadryl.

My son wanted to download a game on his computer and I have been wanting to try out a rather large mod for my Kerbal Space Adventure game. We both have metered connections so, yeah, Starbucks it is.

I asked for an Earl Grey iced with a shot of vanilla syrup. She rang it up as a London Fog and charged 4 something for it (seriously $4 for iced tea in a disposable plastic cup? but I digress). Sat down with it at the table and my wife looks at it and says, “That’s not what you ordered”.

“I know. That’s just the price you pay for ordering tea in a coffee place.”

Apparently a London fog has milk in it making it a pricey latte. I didn’t order a latte and probably should have said something, however, it was actually pretty tasty. So much so that I will make this my own self for about one tenth the price at home and I get to use a fancy non-disposable tupperware tumbler. Nothing but the best for me and uncle Si. That’s a fact Jack.

I just noticed that 5 out of my last 7 notes are matcha. Well, let’s make it 6 out of 8. This morning I grabbed a really savory and delicious one. I have no idea what it was but it blended completely and created a tumbler of creamy foam with only milk and 1 packet of Splenda added. I sat at my laptop checking my mail when I noticed I had some root beer left in the bottle. Hmmm, why not? Off came the tumbler lid. Well… hats off to the creative ones who come up with all the awesome flavored blends. I am not one of them. This was drinkable but I wouldn’t recommend the combination.

Well that’s just weird. I often add a splash of caramel and vanilla syrup to my morning green tea matcha latte. It is pretty good. Today I decided to use 1/2 tsp each of Red Leaf Tea’s Caramel matcha and French Vanilla matcha. I love both of them, just not mixed together apparently. It is kind of bitter and the flavors clash. Not sure why I keep thinking I am going to improve on something I already think is perfect. Oh well, its gone already and I don’t have to repeat, but I probably will and that’s just weird.

This morning found me undecided on my cold milk/tea latte. I kind of wanted French Vanilla matcha, but I had that yesterday. Can’t I be more creative? I stared blankly at the packets until my eyes fell upon the Strawberry matcha also from Red Leaf Tea. It was one of those moments when the hands start moving while the brain catches up on sleep. I used a 1/2 tsp of each. Frothing more than doubled the volume in the cup. Slowly added more milk until the tumbler was full. I was thinking strawberries and cream, but this is really is its own thing. One sip is strawberry the next French vanilla, and the next is a unique mix of both. At 7:00 am this is about as complex as I can handle. Very good. My brain just woke from its nap and it agrees.

I have posted my blind taste testing of 12 matcha samples. This was sponsored by Red Leaf Tea. Not offering any spoilers here for those bloggers who haven’t finished their reviews yet. Click the link only if you want to see how it all works out. http://theeverdayteablog.blogspot.com/2015/04/matcha-madness.html