Just when you thought there weren’t enough holidays in the year, you discover that other countries have ones you’ve never heard of. Here are a few from the UK that are probably new to you and that deserve a toast of the teacup: Twelfth Night – Yes, that Twelfth Night after which Shakespeare named one …
Month: February 2014
The Tea of the Irish
For some mysterious reason March seems to be the time of the year when many people turn their thoughts to all things Irish. But seriously. Of course the impetus for all of this Irish-centric behavior is the occasion of St. Patrick's Day, an official holiday in Ireland and a few other points around the globe …
Why Tea Blends Can Vary from Batch to Batch
See if this scenario sounds familiar: You buy a tea blend, you love the tea blend, you run out of the tea blend, you buy some more of the tea blend, you don’t like the new batch of the tea blend. If it does, then read on to find out what might have happened and …
Continue reading Why Tea Blends Can Vary from Batch to Batch
Monthly Tea Gadget and Offbeat News Report 16
There's an app for that, as Apple's popular trademarked phrase might put it. It seems that nowadays there's an app for just about everything and tea is hardly an exception. I've reported on various tea apps in these gadget reports every now and then. But the good people over at the Apple-focused publication Mac Life …
Continue reading Monthly Tea Gadget and Offbeat News Report 16
A Different Kind of Tea Garden
We usually think of tea gardens (also called estates and plantations) as those places where the tea bush Camellia Sinensis is cultivated. The very term “tea garden” brings up images of neatly tended rows like those in Japan shown in the photo below. But in this case, I mean a very different kind of tea …
Recipe for Tea Sausage Quiche
The warmth of a roaring fire, friendly voices, a pot of tea and a warm quiche fresh from the oven. Brunch anyone? What is the point of having a late breakfast if you must wake up early and prepare the quiche? Quiche is generally made in a pie shell with an egg based filling which …
5 Tips for Fitting GOOD Tea into Your 15 Minute Break at Work
The 15 minute work break. Some of us get one, others don’t. For you that do, make the most of those 15 minutes by knowing how to fit a really good tea into that short timeframe. A few ideas are presented here to help you do just that. 1 Travel Mugs Rush in Where Teapots …
Continue reading 5 Tips for Fitting GOOD Tea into Your 15 Minute Break at Work
Obsolete Jobs: US Tea Examiner
As noted before in these pages, we citizens of the United States put away a fair quantity of iced tea and a little bit of the other stuff, but we don't quite measure up to the big time tea drinking countries. On a list of top tea drinking nations that I ran across recently, we …
What Is a Hand-Crafted Tea?
Just as the terms “artisanal tea” and “artisan tea” are being applied to just about any tea under the sun (as I discussed in a previous article), so are the terms “hand-crafted tea” (sound of audible heavy sigh) and “handmade tea” similarly misused (both basically mean to refer to what is more appropriately called “hand …
Thoughts on a Chigusa (Tea Storage Jar)
If you'd asked me not so long ago what I knew about ancient Japanese tea jars, I'd pretty much have been stumped. I've been studying and writing about tea for more than eight years. But I don't recall hearing much about these items until I ran across a recent book called The Story of Chigusa: …
Tea Blog 