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It is that time, darlings! Well, actually, I guess I’m late, because Walmart, Dollar General, and The English Tea Store all have put up their Christmas displays. Yes, Halloween has not yet come, and Christmas shopping has begun. Then there are those people who shop all year. I applaud their diligence, but I myself have tried it, only to forget where I tucked the gifts away. And then there are those gift ideas that thrill me, so I buy in July, only to forget I bought it and buy it once again.
Anyway, I’m excited to provide suggestions for tea gifts from The English Tea Store, because they have great ones this year. I’ve been making my list and checking it twice. Take a look at these~
Home for the Holidays Gift Basket
Christmas Tea Gift Baskets: lovely selections from the elaborate Home for the Holidays basket, containing, among other things, a shiny, Christmas-red teapot, various Stash tea, and Matthew Walker Luxury Christmas pudding, to the simple Christmas Tea Hamper, a small woven basket with lid, containing bags of Christmas Eve Herbal tea and Christmas Morning black tea. Tie a ribbon on that sweet thing and give it as a hostess gift.
Create your own gift basket: if you are particular (I prefer that term to picky) as I am, you might enjoy putting together your own choices. Choose your holiday themed container, choose your tea or any of the wide variety of offerings from lemon curd to teapots, and The English Tea Store will assemble the basket for you and cover it with shiny shrink-wrap. Instant gift! Among my favorite containers are the small green tin planter and the golden wire sleigh, with a lot of bling, and very reasonably priced.
A plethora of gift ideas: check out the tea watches. Too cute! A couple of them are tea and roses themed; for whatever reason tea drinkers very often are rose lovers, too. There are bone china tea sets, and for the expats on your list British flags, and Irish Gifts.
Tea Chests: you must see the selection of tea chests. My favorite, just in case you might be interested and plan to buy me something– Davidson’s loose leaf tea chests. I think the reason these delight me is that I adore containers. With a Davidson’s loose leaf chest, you get not only the chest but little tins of tea inside.
One last selection I want you to see because it would suit many a tea drinker on all counts and is economical, and possibly my very favorite. It is called simply Gift Basket #1, and is a small basket with delightful small tins containing 25 bags each of English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Darjeeling, and Camomile. I think I shall suggest they rename this little but stellar basket Matlock’s Choice.
I started out to just feature a few things, but I kept going from one gift to another, like in a Christmas wonderland, and never having to leave my chair. Now I’m outta here to email these links to my family.
Let the shopping fun begin!
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Estate Tea Sampler
If you are like me and hesitate to try new teas because of the high probably of spending the $$, only to be profoundly disappointed, have I got a deal for you. I just discovered the English Tea Store’s Tea Sampler Packs.
When I get set on something, I stick. I rarely change the arrangement of furniture in my living room. I have been known to buy two pairs of the same shoes so that I can keep wearing a favorite style for years, and I settled on my favorite three teas years ago and have remained there, quite happily. Some might call this boring. I prefer to think of it at not tampering with perfection.
Still, I am curious, and I’m aware that sometimes my taste has changed, or I’m simply in a mood for something different. Discovery of the Sampler Packs has prompted me to boldly go where I have not gone before, trying new teas with abandon. I have begun with the Estate Teas Sampler Pack, loose leaves: eight 1 ounce packets each of Margeret’s Hope and Mim Estate Darjeeling, Assam, Oolong Orange Blossom, Nonesuch, Formosa Oolong, Kambaa, and Lover’s Leap Ceylon.
The funniest thing — I got to measure my favorites against new ones in this pack, and I find that my favorites are still just that! I am also realizing that I’ve grown an ability to discern faint nuances in the taste of tea.
I am going to keep on, heading around the far east in tea with other sampler packs– Chinese Sampler Pack, English Favorites tea bags Sampler, Japanese loose leaves Sampler, and Far East tea bag Sampler. There are also herbal loose leaves, herbal bags, and flavored black tea Samplers.
Check out all the Tea Samplers, and discover new favorites, or that you are perfectly happy with exactly what you have. A plus is that these Sampler Packs are in golden-toned packets that would make a very nice gift arranged in a pretty box or basket for the tea lover in your life.
Don’t miss Author Curtiss Ann Matlock’s official blog.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Glass is a must for true cold tea
…or How to Make Good Ice Tea.
I did not commit a typing error: The term is ‘ice’ tea, not ‘iced’ tea. In the southern part of the United States, one says, “Would you like a glass of ice tea, honey?” This is known as dialect and a perfectly acceptable way of speaking.
I have often had tussles with copy-editors over the ‘ice’ tea bit, so I switched to an older term: cold tea. Let me give an illustration and shameless bit of self-promotion at the same time. One hot July morning, I received a telephone call from my publisher saying a new title for my then-upcoming book was needed; they wanted me to come up with a fantastic, sure-fire best-selling title, and to do it by the end of the day. I, of course, said, “No problem,” hung up, and panicked. To calm myself down and cool off, I went to make some ice tea.
As I stirred the tea, sugar and ice cubes in my grandmother’s pitcher, I thought: “Ah, nothing better than cold tea on a hot day.” Bingo! My Cold Tea on a Hot Day did become a USA Today bestseller. Who doesn’t like cold tea on a hot day?
Instructions for the best cold tea on a hot summer day:
Water — use filtered or distilled. The water will give the tea the clearest taste and appearance. I have exceptionally pure well water coming through my tap, but for my tea I still use a filtering pitcher.
Teas — The same is true with cold as hot: the best teas produce the best brews. Yorkshire Gold is especially formulated for hard water and gives strong, clear tea. Devonshire Tea is smooth and wonderful cold. I’ve also used loose Ceylon tea, which produces a delicious lazy-afternoon cold tea. (Beware, once you use really good tea, you cannot possibly go back to the cheap, even for cold tea.)
For a one-quart glass pitcher (oh, goodness, I’m realizing how demanding I am because one really must use glass, at least until adding ice): Boil two cups of filtered water and pour over 2 Yorkshire Gold tea bags, or two Devonshire Tea teabags. Steep 3-5 minutes. No, I do not recommend what is called ‘sun brewed’; the tea stays far too long in the water, producing a sharp, acid brew.
Pour the brewed tea into the pitcher with 1/4 cup sugar, or more if you like it really sweet. Add lemon to taste; I like a medium half slice. Stir until sugar is melted. Add cool filtered water and ice cubes to fill the pitcher.
Pour over ice in a tall glass, sit in front of a fan and put your feet up, and open a good book.
Enjoy!
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Of course, something as beloved and a part of living as tea (I dare say as much as sex, given the situation) is also much regaled in song.
Lyrics for a new tea song?
There is Tea for Two, and most everyone can sing those three words. The song sort of combines tea and sex as it is a love song about two people who apparently love tea, marriage, and living happily ever after. It was also a Doris Day movie, where she, of course, sang the song.
The year of 1940 brought the hit by the Ink Spots: Java Jive. “I love coffee, I love tea…” are the first five words. Apparently they did not want to leave out tea drinkers. Jive was a popular type of dance in the 1940s and 1950s. On the convoluted line in that song about an onion, I did an exhaustive one-click research and came up with the idea that there used to be an old New York tradition of putting half an onion and a raw egg into a cup of coffee in the morning, which I find a very good reason to stick to tea drinking.
My favorite is a song truly celebrating tea and done, amazingly, by The Kinks, a rock band popular in the 1970s — Have A Cuppa Tea. The song was actually a hit for them and remains a fan favorite. I tend to like any song with hallelujahs in the lyrics. I’ve often said, “Hal-le-luyah!” upon sipping my first cup of tea in the morning.
There are quite a number of songs about tea on YouTube, but the one I don’t want you to miss is this catchy tune that I now find myself singing, and even dancing around, while I brew tea — the Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Song, from the DutchDutchess.
Sing tea!
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Like this:
Image via Wikipedia Camellia sinensis, our precious drinking tea, not to be confused with Camellia japonica, which we prize for blossom in the winter.
If you are from a certain part of the country, usually rural, you will recognize the old saying: “It was a good year for peaches…or plums…or tomatoes, etc.” Many a gardener, farmer, or homemaker spending hours in a hot kitchen filling canning jars has marked a year by the exceptional bounty and fine taste of the produce of that year.
Our family still remarks on our good year for pecans. It was the first year in our new home built in the midst of a pecan orchard. That fall, the pecans fell on the tin roofs, sounding like gunshot, and we went around stepping on them in bare feet (then swearing), and picking them up, cracking them, munching on the sweet meat like crazy. Pecans were thick as a carpet beneath the trees, and we scooped them into buckets and had people come ask if they could scoop them, too. It was a good year for pecans, which was a contrast to the next year when the trees were barren as the proverbial baby’s behind, a circumstance caused by the weather in our area̶ — very cold previous winter, late frosts, and skimpy on the rain, too.
I thought of this recently as I sniffed and then sipped a Darjeeling tea from an estate I had never sampled. I found it definitely lacking as compared to the Darjeeling I had been drinking for months. “Not a good year for tea,” popped into my mind. It comes from the old farmer part of my genes (and jeans).
No matter the soil of the high mountains or the soil of the low country or the soil of the in-betweens, the tea plants will be affected by the amount of sunlight, rain, and temperatures they receive at varying times throughout the year, all things that man cannot control. Then there are things such as time of harvest — the flush period — and curing, packing, transporting, and storing. How was the weather throughout it all? Did everyone do their job correctly? A million things effect the tea before it reaches my cup, and all of it has been the constant worry and concern of tea growers from every country for centuries. No matter their nationality, traditions, religion or political stance, farmers throughout the world are the same, hoping for a good year for their crop.
Looking up hopefully at the pecan trees and watching the sky for spring rains that have not come, I then look back at my tea cup for long seconds in which a strong kinship with the tea growers and lovers everywhere washes over me. I find myself praying for the tea plants and estate farmers, people I don’t know but to whom I am eternally thankful. I can do without pecans, but I sure cannot do without my good cup of tea.
Where there’s tea, there’s hope. ~Arthur W. Pinero
You might enjoy reading about the tea plant — Camellia sinensis — at Dave’s Garden. You can also buy seeds and plants at the site.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Image via Wikipedia
What is it about a cup of tea? Oh, I know there’s been all sorts of scientific findings about the properties of tea that point to it’s ability to calm, but just now, I find myself calmed as I brew it and carry it upstairs to my office, and I have not yet had one sip.
I pass the red plaque on my wall: Keep Calm and Carry On, and I lift my cup in recognition.
Surely you have seen the slogan. It is everywhere, on plaques, mugs, bookmarks, and t-shirts. The writer of Bagehot’s Notebook, a blog for The Economist calls the slogan a “bracing injunction”– it sure is. I’m fairly certain my back got straighter as I read it. He further says that “It taps directly into the country’s mythic image of itself: unshowily brave and just a little stiff, brewing tea as the bombs fell.”
During World War II, the British government knew that above all they had to keep calm and carry on (I can’t help it; it is the perfect description.) Courage, like panic, is contagious. They were facing the fear of the Nazi army hitting their shores and flowing over the country. In 1939, anonymous clerks in The Ministry of Information office came up with three slogans, advertisements as it were, to boost morale. The first was “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, and Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory” and the second, which I find generates more panic than courage: “Freedom is in Peril.” It is possible it read: “Freedom is in Peril. Defend It with All Your Might,” which I find little better, but quite apt for the world in general today. The posters were quickly printed and place up around the country.
The third, “Keep Calm and Carry On” was hardly seen by the British public. It lay forgotten until an enterprising bookstore owner happened upon it, framed it, and got requests from customers for copies. The rest is history, as is said.
The slogans have now outrun their copyrights and anyone can have them printed. You might enjoy visiting the Keep Calm-o-matic site, where you can make up and print your own slogan. I’m thinking “Keep Calm and Drink Tea.”
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Do you know about FLYlady–the home blessing instructor? If you do, then you know about the lessons on decluttering cabinets and counters. I looked in my cabinet at my various containers of tea, a cabinet that seriously needs decluttering. I have been in recent years attempting to broaden my tea horizons by sampling many different teas. Of course, there turns up some that I just do not like–
The French breakfast tea from a company that reviewers have highly touted, and that cost an arm and half a leg. I did give it good tries. Especially after paying so much for it. When I thought it tasted, and smelled, like dirty socks, I re-read the directions and brewed it carefully. And then twice more, just to make sure. The fourth time I tried adding honey, but ended up pouring the cup out in the sink. It still tasted like dirty socks to me.
The black tea with real rose petals. Oh, this tea smells of sultry bourbon roses out of my garden! Surely I should love it. I have enjoyed the scent each time I’ve brewed it, and I’ve thought it should relax me. But my taste buds are telling me, “Eweww,” even with a bit of sugar added. The last time I threw it out and went to brew me a good old standard Ceylon. My tastebuds, my entire body, said, “Whew!”
The strong English Breakfast tea, as well as a good old standard everyday tea. I used to like both, but others have taken their place in my affections. This happens with broadening tea horizons. Now these containers of tea bags remain pushed to the back of the cabinet. I’m waiting for some emergency shortage in my tea supply, I guess, like during the next world war, which may not be long off, considering the news reports.
Yes, I can give these teas away, and I did give the dirty-socks tea to my sister-in-law when she visited. (Now, that sounds terrible, but I warned her, and it is in a pretty tin, so I feel I gave her a gift. Besides she uses milk and sugar sometimes, whereas I do not.) But I have no one else to give these teas. I am the only person among my family and circle of friends who enjoys tea. And one does feel a little awkward saying, “Here, I hate this tea, would you like it?”
I must declutter these shelves. While considering my options, I made a tea I adore–Mim Estate Darjeeling, smells and tastes divinely like tea, peace, calm, maybe a hit of fruit, needs no sugar or cream.
Ideas come to mind–perhaps I could sprinkle the rose petal black tea out around my roses, for fertilizer. Or maybe carry the tin around in my purse (it is rather large) and pull it out for bare acquaintances, who might possibly be secret tea drinkers. Or maybe tear the bags of English Breakfast up and sprinkle the tea around my house plants. Or give it to the cats to see if they will play with it.
What do you end up doing with the tea you don’t like?
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I have been sampling different brands of Darjeeling tea and recently tried Mim Estate loose leaf. I find it marvelous. Mim Estate tea has a lovely clear amber color, with a pronounced and enticing sweet-floral scent. I find it a pleasure to curl up with a cup, much like a good classic book that one can read again and again.
Mim Estate
This enjoyment of Mim Estate tea sent me on one of my armchair travels to see the land where it is produced, the Darjeeling region of West Bengal, India. The first thing I found is that there is hardly any original information about Mim Estate. The small bit of commentary I found on the estate was from tea sellers, and all of it word for word the same, clearly a description borrowed and lent around the internet stores. I found a listing of Darjeeling district tea estates, complete with telephone numbers and number of workers. Mim Estate is on the list, but all information blank. It appears Mim Estate is something of a mystery.
Have you tried Wikimapia? It is a marvelous, and mysterious, internet tool providing satellite photographs of the world. When I plugged Mim Estate into Wikimapia, a photograph came up of a cluster of buildings nestled in a valley between rugged mountain ranges. I zoomed in. There, letters written in white on the dark roof of a large building: MimTeaEstate. Really? When I clicked on the Map Type, I got a selection with Satellite + old places, whatever that means. I clicked on it to find out. A square appeared over a house with the title ‘Chandana Mim Residence’. Was there actually a person named Mim who started the estate? Who was this person? Where did they come from? (Or in the South, we would say, “Who were their people?”) The inquiring mind of a writer is insatiable. I wanted details, like marriages, maybe even the names of children and any idiosyncrasies.
Refilling my cup with more Mim Estate tea, I enjoyed a great morning trekking around The Official Website of the Darjeeling District (and I didn’t even have to worry about good shoes or a coat.) I discovered that Darjeeling tea is also grown in the Kurseong region. The altitudes in these mountains ranging from 600 to 2000 meters above sea level, the type of soil and the abundant rainfall is what gives Darjeeling tea its unique characteristics of ‘muscatel’ flavor and strong fragrance.
Mark Twain
I knew, of course, of Rudyard Kipling living and writing of India, but I discovered that a favorite son of the United States, Mark Twain, also traveled the ‘length and breadth’ of India for two months and stayed for a time in Kurseong, a name that means ‘the place of white orchid’. Of India, Mark Twain wrote: “The one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once-by even a glimpse would not give that glimpse for the shows of the rest of the world combined.”
The mystery of Mim Tea Estate remains. I have not found out another word as to history, family, and state of operations today. But I imagine it all, as I sip the liquor of the Darjeeling tea leaves, from plants that perhaps even served Mark Twain. How long to tea plants grow anyway? The writer’s inquiring mind sends me off on more armchair travels…
Be sure to pay a visit to CurtissAnn’s website, CurtissAnnMatlock.com.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
It all began innocently. One day I was making my usual favorite afternoon tea—Darjeeling, with toast and jam. Not exotic; I like things plain and simple. I smoothed the jam—in this case orange marmalade–thick on my toast, and then found myself looking thoughtfully down into the jam jar, while I remembered reading of the idea to stir jam right into the tea as a sweetener. The Russian way with tea, it is said, is a thick, stand-up brew served with jam that is either stirred into the cup, or, simply, eaten by the teaspoonful between sips of tea.
My spoon hovered over the jar of marmalade, while I looked at my cup of tea with one eye. I did hate to risk a perfectly good cup of tea, which I drink plain black, no bothering with sugar or cream. Then I did it, a big, thick teaspoonful of marmalade right into my beautiful, simple Darjeeling. Well, what do you know, the marmalade disappeared as I stirred.
It smelled divine of sweet oranges, and tasted even better! It was a subtle flavor, still Darjeeling, with its sort of muscatel taste, but now a whisper of sweet orange. For my next cup of tea, I boldly heaped the teaspoon with the jam and stirred it in. I was hooked.
I’ve gone on to experiment with other jams. I like orange marmalade with Darjeeling the best, in fact, find orange marmalade suitable to all black tea I’ve tried, brewed mild or strong. Black raspberry jam is another favorite. I find it and blackberry jams best suited to Ceylon, English Breakfast, Yorkshire Gold, and Devonshire Tea. Peach and apricot jams are lovely in stronger brews, as well, but I do not scoop the jam teaspoon quite so heavily with them. I have not tried the simplest, commonest of jams—strawberry, and frankly, the thought of those little strawberry seeds floating around in the tea hold me off.
It has become a sort of fascination for me now, mixing and matching teas and jams. The other day while grocery shopping, my husband’s eyes opened wide as he saw me putting quite a number of jams into the cart. I’m also now eyeing not-so-plain jams, such as loganberry. Would there be seeds?
It is, of course, as is everything, all a matter of one’s taste, but certainly nothing could be more plain and simple. Reach into the refrigerator and pull out a jar of your favorite jam, and soon you can have a comforting cup of flavored tea, without any thought of additives possibly found in flavorings, provided, of course, you use plain jams made of nothing but fruit, fruit juice and/or sugar.
Experiment! And if you try the strawberry jam, let me know how it turns out.
When she’s not dumping spoonfuls of jam into her tea, CurtissAnn passes the time penning novels. Visit CurtissAnnMatlock.com to learn more.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Fall has arrived. Yes, it comes a little later in the deep South, and we get so little of the glorious fall color, but there are now crisp mornings and soft evenings, with clear blue sky in between and a whisper of gold and red on the falling crepe myrtle leaves. The cooling temperatures bring a strong desire for good hot tea and hearty sweet breads. I fix my tea tray and take it to the large cushioned wicker chair on the porch, put my feet on the footstool, listen to the birds call and notice the lorepetalum bush turning purple again, while I sip tea and eat a sweet and hearty teff and date muffin.
Tea and a muffin
What on God’s green earth is teff, you ask?
Eragrostis tef, commonly known as teff, is a grain widely cultivated and used in Ethiopia, South Africa, India, and Australia. Is it a coincidence that tea is a major drink in all these countries? I think not.
Teff originates in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, where it has been grown for centuries and used to make a type of yeasty flatbread called injera. Teff does contain gluten protein, but not the sort to harm those people who are gluten-intolerant, thus in the past ten years the use of teff has flourished in the ever-expanding world of gluten-intolerance in the U.S., where it is also now being grown. Teff grain rates well in protein, containing all eight of the necessary amino acids; it is high in fiber, and is an excellent source of calcium. Those virtues are all well and good, but what I happen to enjoy is the nutty, rich texture teff flour imparts to muffins and other sweet breads.
This recipe is my modified version of the one found on Bob’s Red Mill Teff Flour. Using gluten-free flour mixture in place of the brown rice and arrowroot starch works equally well.
Teff-Date Muffins
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup teff flour
- 1 cup brown rice flour
- ½ cup arrowroot starch
- 1 ½ baking powder
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- Dash of nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2/3 cup apple juice
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- ½ cup chopped dates
- ½ cup sliced almonds
Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin tin—nine of a dozen holes. Combine all dry ingredients, stir with whisk. Combine apple juice and eggs, beat slightly. Add olive oil, then mix into the dry ingredients quickly by hand until well mixed but not smooth. Stir in dates and almonds. Fill muffin holes almost to the top. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool slightly before turning out of pan.
Enjoy with a pot of your favorite tea. Mine this moment is the old favorite, Yorkshire Gold.
Don’t forget to visit CurtissAnn’s site, CurtissAnnMatlock.com!
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
