redbird | Entries tagged with tea

The "Jasmine downy pearls" tea I ordered recently from McNulty's is good, which is a relief.

I'd enjoyed a different company (Porto Rico)'s jasmine pearl tea, but it was out of stock the last couple of times we were ordering other things from Porto Rico. And I'd been disappointed by the McNulty's non-jasmine downy pearls I ordered last time, enough so that I threw the rest of the bag away after making tea from them once.

But I decided to risk the money (the smallest amount I could order was a quarter pound), because there are days I want a not-very-caffeinated hot drink that tastes more like tea than any of the herbal teas I like. I usually drink black tea, either Assam, Darjeeling, or an Irish breakfast or English breakfast blend, and this is green tea, but it is tea, which matters sometimes.

(When we lived in New York I got jasmine pearl tea from Ten Ren, which was just north of Canal Street; I haven't found anywhere in Boston that carries it.)

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We recently ordered one ounce each of three kinds of loose Assam tea, and a quarter pound of vanilla tea from Porto Rico, in order to get a mostly-coffee order up to the minimum for free shipping.

So I am comparing the teas, not at all systematically, So far, I liked the first one I tried with milk and sugar, enough that I want to taste it black (that's their Assam TGFOP). The Assam koilamari I just drank is drinkable, but blander and less interesting than either my favorite Golden Assam Khongea estate (from McNulty's) or this Assam TGFOP. The koilamari cooled off as I was posting about this to a Discord server, and tasted worse at room temperature than the Golden Assam--but I generally don't like lukewarm tea with milk and sugar, and sometimes pour out part of a mug of tea if it gets cool.

Unsurprisingly, the better of the two Assams I've tasted so far is also the more expensive. Next up, Porto Rico's Assam Khongea, which is the least expensive of these three. This appears to be a not-as-fancy tea from the same estate that produces my favorite Assam.

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I have now tried all the teas from Jo's distributed tea tasting except the pu ehr. All these teas are from Camellia Sinensis.

Si ji chun:

This oolong was recommended as lilac-scented, but contains no actual lilac, which was appealing because I am very fond of lilacs, and @cattitude is allergic to them. Of the half dozen teas we ordered, this was the one I was most interested in trying.

The dried leaves do smell like lilac, as did the first pot of tea I brewed. Other than that, I think I made it too weak, and should use more leaves next time. Cattitude also liked this.

Having now made two more pots, with significantly more tea leaves for each, yes I like this. The advice on the package is for making one cup (8 oz.) of tea, and my little blue teapot holds twice that.

Dragon pearls:

The package says to brew this at 85 C, but I got distracted and let the kettle boil until it whistled, then waited a moment and poured from a little higher than usual. 90? I used eight pearls in one of our smaller mugs. The resulting tea was mild, sort of a background flavor without feeling as though there's something missing. When I described this to Jo, she was surprised, because she always uses more pearls than that, and she almost always likes tea weaker than I do. So, I will use more of the tea next time, but it will do just fine for when I want something hot and little if any caffeine.

Chai:

When I first tried this, my notes were "It's a light (mild?) tea, and the spicing is much lower-key than I expected from sniffing the dry tea. What I'm tasting is cardamom; I think there are other spices in here, but I'm happy to have cardamom as the dominant note." (That was with sugar and a little cool water, but not milk.)

Adding some extra tea leaves (my usual Assam) made a chai that's more to my taste, though milk overwhelmed the flavor.

A third mug worked better, in part because I shook the package of tea before spooning it out: all the tea leaves had landed at the bottom, as had some of the other spices.

This is less intense than the Stash chai I've been drinking, though more interesting. I probably won't reorder this, but might try one of their other spices. The advantage of the Stash is that it's sold in tea bags, so each mug has about the same tea:spice ratio as the next.

Maple tea:

Another flavored tea, which I got on a whim. Like the chai, it's milder than I expected; the maple is an undertone to the black tea flavor. I was surprised to find that it needed sugar (the tea blend contains enough maple sugar for flavor, rather than aiming for sweet).

Jin Die is a noir de chine and wasn't to my taste at all--vaguely grassy rather than tasting like tea.

Overall, this was fun, and I will probably get more of the si ji chun, though maybe not until I get to visit Montreal again.

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I now have two tomato cages, and am not sure I can use both of them, given the size of the planter I put the first tomato plant in. I think I'll transplant the second tomato into a smaller container, that being what I have anyway, put one tomato cage in the ground around the planter, and then see. Maybe it will be useful for the cucumber plants and/or trellis.

I have been coughing a little, and my upper respiratory tract seemed a little clogged earlier, so I should stay home for at least a few days, and wear a mask even in the garden, because I might encounter a neighbor. The chances of me being sick right now, with COVID-19 or anything else, are low, but I will be careful for at least a little while.

I emailed my doctor yesterday, saying I'd like to see her in person rather than as telemedicine last week, for specific reasons, but at this point I would double-check whether "coughing 4 days ago" is sufficient reason for them not to want to see me in person. If so, I won't be getting that second dose of the hepatitis A vaccine within six months of the first, and maybe try to get in to see her in person as a separate appointment for the wrist.

My order of interesting teas from Camellia Sinensis arrived today. Those are for a distributed/socially distant tea tasting Jo put together, for which everyone ordered one tea the same and one or more other teas, hoping for some variety. After talking this over with cattitude I ordered five different teas, spending enough so I could get free shipping. (This doesn't exactly save money, but it means I get more for what I do spend.)

The teas:

Si Ji Chun (this and the Jin Die are the two teas everyone got, for the tasting)
Jin Die
Chai Camellia organic (I selected this from among the several chai options because it has cardamom)
Dragon pearls (I wanted some last month, and discovered we didn't have any)
Pu Er Shou 2011 Butang
Maple tea (black tea and maple sugar, because why not?)

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I ordered three pounds of tea from McNulty's a couple of days ago, as soon as I learned they had reopened, and the box arrived a few minutes ago. I just made

cattitude lapsang souchong tea, which is steeping as I type.

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I got email from McNulty's this morning, saying that now that the apex of the pandemic is over, they are reopening for mail order and in-person pickup, and here are the things they're doing to protect the staff and customers.

This is good news personally, because we're completely out of lapsang souchong,

cattitude's tea of choice, and I'm starting to run low on the Golden Assam. It's also a hopeful sign more generally: McNulty's is in New York City, specifically a shop in Greenwich Village.

I ordered a pound of lapsang souchong and two pounds of the Assam, using the website. Usually I order by phone, but email seemed less likely to be an interruption. They don't, or didn't, have a lot of mail-order customers: the person who answers their phone mentioned having a card with my information, and once apologized for "not recognizing your voice" after asking for my name and address. (For standard things, I can get a better price elsewhere, including within walking distance in the Village, but I haven't found an Assam I like as well anywhere else, and it took a little experimenting to find a lapsang souchong that

cattitude is happy with.)

ETA: Having now looked at a couple of news sites, I hope they're not taking dangerous risks. They're allowed to be open, as an essential business, but that was true when they were closed last week and the week before, too.

Tags:

covid-19,
tea

The last time I ordered the Golden Assam tea I like from McNulty's, I asked them to also send 1/4 pound of the "blended chocolate tea." I just tried a cup, and there's no there there. It's a not very interesting blended black tea, with little or no detectable chocolate. I tried it black, and then added sugar: the sugar made me think vague chcolate thoughts, but I think that was because all the chocolates I eat are sweetened, almost always with sugar. With milk and sugar, it might as well have been Red Rose: drinkable, but no more than that, and weaker than I expected for the amount of tea I used.

I poured that out, put the kettle on again, and am now drinking a cup of my usual Assam. While I drink an occasional cup of spice tea (mostly various "chai spice" teabags), my day-t0-day tea is the Assam, Irish breakfast (sometimes teabags are easier), and various teas in that direction that are the closest that a given restaurant or cafe has. Until I was writing this, it didn't occur to me that I could have made spiced tea instead of plain after giving up on the "chocolate."

I mostly order from McNulty's by phone, rather than going online and possibly looking at the catalog. The phone conversations manage to be both brief and chatty; they have my address and a credit card number on file, and the guy at the store once apologized for not recognizing my voice after I gave my name(!) This time, I'd been looking at their online catalog because someone posted about the chocolate spice tea she liked having been discontinued/replaced with something different under the same name, and I was wondering whether either McNulty's or Porto Rico had an alternative. I didn't think a non-spice chocolate tea would satisfy, but was feeling curious enough to order some.

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Here's another batch of comments I made on other journals etc.: ( 'five years ago,' some natter about how Cattitude and I cook, expectations about behavior and the ambiguity of 'should,' 'ultralight' packing, tea, artificial intelligence', feeding ducks and other birds )

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We have a new teakettle, which we bought at China Fair (thank you to everyone who mentioned it; despite having been there a couple of times before, neither I nor

cattitude thought of it on our own yesterday).

I'm not sure I like it as well as the one it's replacing, but I'm not sure how much of that is that we'd had the previous one for thirty years and were very used to it. If by some chance I see another of that style, I will probably buy it (it had no label of any sort, and I have no idea if they're still being made, or indeed were made for more than a six-month period back in the 1980s).

Crossposts: http://redbird.livejournal.com/1526058.html

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I visited

roadnotes (Velma) in the hospital again today. When I got there, they were about to take her downstairs for a CAT scan (to see how/how quickly she's healing after the surgery), so I went and sat in the lobby for a while.

Overall, she seems to be doing better than a couple of days ago, which in turn was better than a few days before that. Soren confirms my feeling that the general trend is upward, if not as rapidly as we might like.

Soren's parents were there for part of my visit. Along with some discussion of matters medical, there was general pleasant conversation about things like the Woodland Park Zoo. Velma can now eat anything she wants/can get people to bring her, including chicken salad (courtesy of Soren's parents) and dark chocolate. (I should call Mark Varsano.)

( possibly of interest only to me )

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It was good to visit Montreal, not just to see

rysmiel, excellent as that was, but for the city itself. I realized soon after arriving that I was soothing homesick parts of myself: walking from the bus to rysmiel's apartment, the air just smelled right. About 90% of that smell was clover, and I'm not sure of the rest—and there's clover out here, too. But Montreal has subway trains, and people handing out free copies of Metro outside the subway stations, and the trees and plants look right. (There are deciduous trees here, too, including my beloved maples, but the mix is different.)

So I figured I might as well indulge that feeling of being back at home, and visit familiar places. I'd have done some of that anyhow, I think, like going back to Au Bulle en Carre for the crepes; I might even have gone to Kam Fung for dim sum by myself on Monday while rysmiel was at work. (Sure, there's less variety than with company, but more variety than in a lot of meals: their excellent sticky rice, a few seafood dumplings, and a stuffed crab claw.) I would have gone to Marche Atwater for fruit and yogurt anyhow, but any other visit I wouldn't have bought apples in July; this time I did, because one shop had the northeastern varieties I like, and a few stored Cortlandt apples (they looked better than the Macintoshes) appealed as much as the berries and champagne grapes and red plums—which I also bought. I eat a lot of fruit this time of year. Rysmiel and I went to Juliet et Chocolat for dessert twice, and I had the chocolate raspberry brownie with a balsamic reduction both times, because it was so good the first time. I may even try to figure out how to make the reduction, which I think would go well with any good chocolate brownie.

What I wasn't homesick for was heat waves, but I got one; Montreal averages cooler than New York City, and I think it was even hotter in New York that weekend, but this was humid and oppressive, and

papersky and rysmiel have no air conditioning. During the worst of it, I was lying flat on a bed, wishing the fan was more effective and thinking "rule 1, stay hydrated," because I didn't have much focus for more than that. Fortunately, the Musee de Beaux Arts is air conditioned, and we'd wanted to see their Chihuly exhibit anyhow.

On the way back from lunch after the museum, we stopped at Camellia Sinensis so I could buy some green Darjeeling tea, which they hadn't had in at least two years. I knew from their website that they had gotten it, but I wanted to at least smell the tea before buying. I have now brewed a cup, and it is good. I don't think I can really compare this Happy Valley green Darjeeling [yes, I know, I didn't name the tea garden] with the Selimbong I got years ago, even though I still have little bit I'd been hoarding, just because of the age difference. On the other hand, I might try brewing a cup of each, rather than just tossing the Selimbong or letting it continue to age in my cupboard.

One morning while rysmiel was at work, before the weather got horrible, I made tea and then sat on the balcony with a book, reading and thinking fondly of sitting out there the previous summer, with

cattitude, papersky, and rysmiel.

( some travel details )

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As far as I can tell, Caribou Coffee does not carry any sort of plain tea. They have mango and earl grey and spice flavored black teas; they have a citrus-flavored green tea; they have a total of seven entries for "tea" on the menu board, including herbal, but when I asked about unflavored tea I was offered Earl Grey and grumpily explained that it's flavored.

Starbucks' "Awake" is an English breakfast with about the subtlety of a brick, but it's drinkable. The spice tea at Caribou turned out not to taste of tea, the spices were so strong.

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I need to sort through my kitchen cabinets and see what I actually have.

I was looking for Darjeeling tea. I didn't find what I wanted, only some (rather old by now) Selimbong green Darjeeling, which I somehow went from using sparingly since I can't get more, to not using at all, which is missing the point.

But I also found, among other things, some random oolong; two different orange-flavored teas, which I will sniff when I'm in more of an orange mood; years-old tangerine-flavored white tea (too subtle for my palate); and a box of oolong marked in Hong Kong dollars. That means I bought it in March 1997, and probably haven't used in this century. Out it goes.

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We are now back on standard time. I slept very well last night, though I'm not sure how much that had to do with the time-change: the clock said 9:15 when I woke, meaning I'd slept about ten hours, and it was a good, smooth ten (the night before I was restless, and hence did not sleep enough). Right now I'm at the point of feeling that things are vaguely off, because what the clock says doesn't match what my body is feeling.

I did a bit of balance and other exercise earlier. When did I turn into someone who feels odd if she doesn't exercise at least a little every day unless she's traveling? (My usual walking doesn't count, apparently.) Not that I never exercise on the road, but I don't feel the same need. (Though it may depend on the shape of travel; I'll tend to do a little when I'm visiting

adrian_turtle, but not at Wiscon.)

I just tried out Twinings' lemon-and-ginger herb tea, which sounded very promising. It smelled promising. It tasted quite bland; with some honey it tasted mostly of honey. I am going to try brewing it a little longer, and with less water to the teabag, next time: the flavor wasn't bad, just weak.

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dd_b posted a batch of his photos from the Farthing Party to his website. I found some of myself that I like. This icon is made from one of them; the photo is from the Survivors' Tea Party, and was taken in front of

papersky's refrigerator, though the teacup is

gerisullivan's.

This isn't the only icon I made from those photos, so you may see more GIP posts soon.

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papersky's refrigerator, though the teacup is

gerisullivan's.

This isn't the only icon I made from those photos, so you may see more GIP posts soon.

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Or, as someone else puts it, 5 random things make up an entry:

Mr. Twinings, or his heirs and assigns, no longer love me. They have discontinued the blend of tea that has been my default tea-in-bags (for offices and some sorts of travel), Ceylon Breakfast. There's a replacement, called just Ceylon, which will do, I think, but I'm considering just buying more of my favorite loose Assam and some of those fill-it-yourself tea pouches. (Washing and drying tea balls at work has, in general, proven to be a nuisance, doubly so because I need to microwave the water for 30 seconds to get it hot enough.)

Black Labs are heavy: I spent the ride in this morning with a slightly fidgety guide dog mostly lying on my foot, in between getting up partway and sniffing at another stranger's pants leg. The person he was with tugged him back into place, but didn't speak to the dog (or to the man, but she of course couldn't see what he was doing, only feel him move away slightly). That dog may need more exercise, or a refresher training course.

I'm in the middle of multiple books again, in this case one novel and one short story. Both are recent purchases; I've also got two not-yet-started library books. (I'm borrowing a lot of mysteries at the moment, in part because I rarely want to reread those.)

Somewhere along the line, equinox=spring stopped seeming plausible: it's been spring here for a few days, in the places where some of my friends live for weeks, and isn't yet where some of the others live. Nonetheless, it seems relevant that the days in this hemisphere are now longer than the nights.

There was email at work this morning, to all staff, about their 2006 bonuses, stating that everyone would be getting the details from their supervisors in letters today, and the money by direct deposit tomorrow. Oh, and free pizza for all, as lunch today, with no speeches. Temps, even those who've been there longer that I have, don't get annual bonuses, but we did get pizza. It seems a shame that the person who's been complaining to me that she's not paid enough to eat wasn't there today.

Tags:

reading,
tea

Or, as someone else puts it, 5 random things make up an entry:

Mr. Twinings, or his heirs and assigns, no longer love me. They have discontinued the blend of tea that has been my default tea-in-bags (for offices and some sorts of travel), Ceylon Breakfast. There's a replacement, called just Ceylon, which will do, I think, but I'm considering just buying more of my favorite loose Assam and some of those fill-it-yourself tea pouches. (Washing and drying tea balls at work has, in general, proven to be a nuisance, doubly so because I need to microwave the water for 30 seconds to get it hot enough.)

Black Labs are heavy: I spent the ride in this morning with a slightly fidgety guide dog mostly lying on my foot, in between getting up partway and sniffing at another stranger's pants leg. The person he was with tugged him back into place, but didn't speak to the dog (or to the man, but she of course couldn't see what he was doing, only feel him move away slightly). That dog may need more exercise, or a refresher training course.

I'm in the middle of multiple books again, in this case one novel and one short story. Both are recent purchases; I've also got two not-yet-started library books. (I'm borrowing a lot of mysteries at the moment, in part because I rarely want to reread those.)

Somewhere along the line, equinox=spring stopped seeming plausible: it's been spring here for a few days, in the places where some of my friends live for weeks, and isn't yet where some of the others live. Nonetheless, it seems relevant that the days in this hemisphere are now longer than the nights.

There was email at work this morning, to all staff, about their 2006 bonuses, stating that everyone would be getting the details from their supervisors in letters today, and the money by direct deposit tomorrow. Oh, and free pizza for all, as lunch today, with no speeches. Temps, even those who've been there longer that I have, don't get annual bonuses, but we did get pizza. It seems a shame that the person who's been complaining to me that she's not paid enough to eat wasn't there today.

Tags:

reading,
tea

More saved comments: ( critics and criticism, reasons for coming out, body image, chai, names, how long nations last )

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More saved comments: ( critics and criticism, reasons for coming out, body image, chai, names, how long nations last )

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Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Don't mourn, organize

jasmine downy pearls

comparing tea varieties

tea tasting

three things make a post

Tea!

Tea!

McNulty's "blended chocolate" tea: bland

miscellanueous comments 59

teakettle

Velma update

Montreal visit, July 2013

Grumble re Caribou Coffee

More tidying

Standard time

GIP

GIP

Quotidian

Quotidian

Misc. comments 34

Misc. comments 34

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