Tea of the Week: Sencha Decaf

Congrats to Marlena (she’s got a great tea blog) for winning last weeks Jasmine with Flowers tea! I need your snail mail addy to get it off to you. I have another one of our top selling teas to feature this week, Sencha Green Decaf. Make sure to comment for a chance to win 4 ounces of this wonderful tea!

Above is a beautiful Japanese tea field, I love the symmetry of it. One of these years I will actually visit one. Just picture the leaves in your cup coming from such a beautiful place. Below is a picture of a Japanese Tea Garden, another place to visit someday. I can imagine sitting there with a cuppa green tea!

All of our decafs are processed using the Co2 Process. The advantage of this decaffeination process is that no chemical solvents are used to remove the caffeine. Also, using the naturally occurring Co2 in a circulation process which carefully uses high pressure and temperature to extract the caffeine, the origin distinct character of the tea is retained in the cup. There is a slight change in the character of the tea due to the process but the end result is an uncompromising cup of tea with no chemical overtones.

On the home front, DH has been fishing every weekend…so there is plenty of fish for meals again. Ethan’s new school schedule is driving us crazy, I’ve never seen so much homework! It seems they want the parents (or grandparents in our case) to do more and more every year. Dogs are rotten as usual, they go to get groomed tomorrow (yah, good smelling puppies again). Leaves are starting to turn colors here, definitely feels like fall this week. They’re calling for frost tonight. You all have a great week!

Tea of the Week: Jasmine With Flowers Green Tea

Congrats to Jason Witt for winning last weeks 4 ounces of Earl Grey tea. This weeks tea is Jasmine with Flowers Green tea, which I have an over abundance of due to a mistake from my supplier (nobody's perfect). Go to the website to get yours at 20% off this week! Don’t forget to comment for your chance to win 4 ounces of this wonderful tea!

Jasmine which is from the Persian (yasmin, i.e. "gift from God", via Arabic) is a genus of shrubs and vines in the olive family (Oleaceae), with about 200 species, native to tropical and warm temperate regions of the Old World. Most species grow as climbers on other plants or are trained in gardens on chicken wire, trellis gates or fences, or made to scramble through shrubs of open texture. The leaves can be either evergreen (green all year round) or deciduous (falling in autumn).

Spring fresh green tea is layered between early spring jasmine blossoms (these blossoms have the most aroma). Air that is slightly warmer than ambient temperature air is passed through the layers of blossoms and tea. The fragrance of the blossoms permeates the new fresh tea resulting in a concentrated heady bouquet of a garden in full bloom. Following this process, some of the jasmine flowers and petals are blended into the tea to enhance the flavor and visual appeal.

It’s been a busy week for us here. Candie and I are by ourselves packing tea again. Actually it’s great to get back to that, but re-organizing everything we do around that has been a challenge. Yesterday our shipping computer died (it’s our oldest), small funeral service for it. Candie and Scott are busy right now getting the new computer set up. My big supply order just came in and I’m off to unpack and do the back orders. Have a great week!

Tea of the Week: Earl Grey Tea

Congrats to silvermage2000 for winning last weeks English Breakfast tea! You need to get your snail mail addy to me so I can get it out to you. I had so many requests this week for our Earl Grey Tea, so that is the tea for this week.

For the past month The Tea Review Blog has been reviewing our teas, look for their button on our teas. Click the button below to go to their review on our Earl Grey.

Since I did the history of Earl Grey in a previous post, I dug up some recipes on the internet that uses Earl Grey tea. Links are below.

• Earl Grey cookies
• Earl Grey pudding
• Earl Grey cupcakes
• Earl Grey ice cream
• Earl Grey rice
• Earl Grey gelato
• Earl Grey shortbread cookies

Earl Grey seems to be a very popular tea to cook with, there are a lot more recipes out there but these are the ones that looked the best to me.

Here’s my scout (Ethan) heading off to sell popcorn this year. It’s been a busy week! Candie and I are getting in the swing of things here at work, since Jen is gone. Hope you all have a great week, I’ll be back next week if the mosquitoes don’t carry me off before then!

Tea of the Week: English Breakfast

Wow, the English Breakfast has gone over so well we are extending it another week! Candie has put up a coupon for an extra 10% off this week, be sure to put in the code SP9909 when checking out.

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. I went to my sisters for a family cookout. My cousins from Illinois came down, what a surprise that was! It was a great time and we got to meet some of her husbands family as well. Below is a picture of my cousins Sharman and Gloria, in the background are Daisy and Apollo two my sisters three Rotts. Man those are huge dogs!

I told you guys I was going to put you on the internet. (Big smile)

Tea of the Week: English Breakfast

Congrats to Katherine Indovina for winning last weeks Summer Punch Rooibos! Katherine I need your snail mail addy to get it to you. This weeks tea is a traditional favorite, English Breakfast. It is robust, full-bodied with light floral undertones (sometimes referred to as "coppery"). When blended with milk, it produces a comforting aroma eerily similar to warm toast and honey. More about this tea.

Today the habit of tea drinking is inexorably linked to the British despite the fact that the British were fairly late on the tea scene in historical terms. Ironically the first mention of tea in English literature is a translation of a Dutchman’s travels to the east. Tea was first brought to England via Holland on Dutch ships. Since tea was becoming an ‘in’ beverage the British government became quite incensed that a tiny nation such as the Netherlands would control the shipment of tea to the UK. In 1651 the British government passed the Navigation Acts which forbade the importation of any products on non-British ships. Traders and Dutchmen, being resourceful continued the trade in the usual manner but for one little wrinkle - The tea was transshipped in Holland onto British ships!

Early in British life tea was known as a health beverage and claimed all sorts of curative powers. Afternoon tea was the invention of Anna, wife of the seventh Duke of Bedford. At that time custom dictated only two planned meals per day: a hearty breakfast and a late evening dinner. Anna in a effort to ease the “sinking feeling” began instructing her servants to prepare tea and cakes in the late afternoon. Thus began a fashionable habit which still exists today.

On the home front, everything is getting back to normal since school has started. The last two mornings I’ve gotten up to less than 50 degrees outside, definitely sweater weather! I’ve been researching old teapot cozy patterns this week, seriously thinking about knitting some. If all goes well I might put them up for sale on the website. You all have a great week!