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Guess you can tell you’ve hit the tea-dious dog days of summer when you have bins and baskets of perfectly acceptable and flavorful fancy stuff and you just shrug, say “eh,” and make yourself a cup of plain brown leaf juice.

This was the leaf juice of choice this morning; not unpleasant; just nondescript. Likely a good base for blending, but that would require thinking. It’s too hot to think.

Prompted by a few of you who have done the same thing, there’s now a jar in the kitchen labeled “Junkyard Tea” to contain the not-quite-enough or a-little-too-old scraps of black tea that accumulate when you’re not looking.

The fun of this is that its personality changes regularly, it’s still reasonably drinkable in the a.m., and if it doesn’t taste right…just add something else, and it’ll change again.

At the moment, the jar is a little Keemun-heavy with some sweetness in the background from odd Assams and a Darjeeling or two. Tomorrow…who knows?

Unpredictably yours till then,
G

OK, k s, you have done it now: created a chocolate mint addict. I had a quart steeping in the fridge to relax with this afternoon and am already trying to figure out where we can grow us a patch on the homestead. This from someone who kills marigolds.

This one isn’t on the Savoy website any longer. It’s just one ingredient away (no chocolate chips) from their Chocolate Cream Truffle. It would stand to reason the Savoy folks streamlined it from their product line since the two are so similar.

Enough chitchat. What does this taste like? A Russell Stover chocolate coconut candy, heavy emphasis on the coconut. Sweet, thick, heavy on the tongue.

A little pricey for this cheapskate ($2.50 for a half ounce sample) but it is tasty.

Thought some of you might like to post to this generic category, something like the Chance Combinations that gets a fair amount of traffic.
Feel free to edit the description as you see fit.

In this case, courtesy of k s and company, we’re enjoying homegrown chocolate mint. You’ll have to ask him for the particulars of the variety, but you better believe this is pleasant! Cold steeped a couple of teaspoons in the fridge on a hot afternoon. There is definitely something in the baseline of this tisane that has a Hershey bar aftertaste. So I ate a Hershey bar with it. It just had to be.

Pinched this one in the fridge with a little baking soda.(So glad you taught me that trick, fellow Steepsters!) Truthfully, I may have overdone it a little bit—the idea is not to turn it into baking soda water, but to take the acidic edge off. But there is a noticeable difference in the sharpness/brassiness of this cheapie tea. And playing alchemist is just fun.

Our friend ashmanra advises that this is chameleon tea: three minutes for rose with apple; four for apple with rose. Opted for the latter. Very Granny Smith; very refreshing. As I was rocking and sipping (watching Tazo the Therapy Cat conduct his morning grooming routine), the thought came that this would be tasty sweetened. I’m not usually a sweetener…but the week’s been full of sour grapes. Maybe that’s why ;)

Equally nice iced when you double up on the leaf. Crisp. If I didn’t know what was in it, I’d tag it as good, plain green tea.

I had forgotten that this has its own listing, but it’s too much effort to backtrack all the chance-combos and re-categorize. It’s just been a “too much” day all around, Charlie Brown. Sigh. Slump.

However, the bright spot was the evening’s steep-speriment: equal parts red raspberry leaf and dried lemon verbena, courtesy of the horticulturally talented k s. Left to steep easily 20 minutes, partly to wring all the herbal goodness out of the raspberry, and partly because it is just too wicked hot today to drink anything warmer than tepid, so I just let it cool in the cup. Perfect pairing. The lemon out-lemoned the strong leafiness of the raspberry leaf and made a nice little evening tisane.