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Stuffed animals are not the exclusive province of the very young. Even those of us who have been around a few decades can still have a penchant for these cuddly and collectible critters. Nevertheless, what do they in general and one named “Bob the Bunny” in particular have to do with tea? Read this tea tale to find out.
Bob the Bunny relaxes with a nice hot cuppa tea!
“Bob the Bunny” is a little snow white stuffed bunny that hubby and I bought awhile back. He keeps company with all the various little teddy bears and bunnies that seem to increase in number every time our backs are turned. There is even a little black velvety mouse who is seen whispering with “Bob” whenever the opportunity arises.
One day, unbeknownst to us, “Bob” decided to host his own tea party. We’re not quite sure where he got this idea nor, as a diminutive and rather delicate bit of plush, how he was going to manage such tea party tasks as filling the full size kettle with water and pouring the boiling water into the teapot when it was ready.
Sometimes big hearts and big ideas can move even tiny critters to great deeds. It has worked with such characters as The Little Red Hen and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit. Now, it was “Bob’s” turn to ascend to the heights of monumental achievement. He wanted to top the tea party put on last Spring by Little Yellow Bunny.
I don’t think we’ll ever really know how “Bob” managed it, but we did find various tea tins stacked near the stove to form stair steps and some kind of weird pulley device erected over the teapot. What we do know, because hubby and I caught them in the act, is that “Bob” and Little Yellow Bunny and that velvety mouse and the teddy bears were sipping tea and hooting it up in the dining room. They also had some jazz music blaring on the stereo. And I noticed a little trail of tea leaves leading from the tea pantry to the kitchen counter. It was some of Keemun Panda, a fave of ours but also one that seems to appeal to “Bob” and his plush pals.
There was also a bit of scone mix powder sprinkled on the counter and on the floor, a used baking sheet on the counter, and the tasty aroma of fresh scones filling the air (but not even a crumb of them left in sight). My secret stash of clotted cream, something that is a bit hard to come by in my neck of the woods, was missing, and “Bob” and his pals were all licking their lips and paws suspiciously, as if to get the last possible delicious bit of scones and clotted cream they could.
In a way, this tale of a bunny and his tea time has inspired us. If a little stuffed critter can overcome the obstacles of a tea kettle that is two or three times larger than himself and an oven door that probably took him and all the rest of that plush menagerie to open and close, then surely hubby and I can handle the trials and tribulations of everyday life.
Here’s hoping you have been inspired as well and will think of “Bob the Bunny” and his Herculean efforts in putting on a tea party for his friends next time you’re faced with what may seem like an insurmountable task. Cheers!
© 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.
Jury duty is serious business, and this Tea Princess certainly understands that. Even so, when that jury duty summons arrived, my biggest concern wasn’t could I really sit in judgment on a fellow human being, weighing in a rational and objective manner the evidence presented to come up with a fair and just verdict. Uh uh. I had a much more important concern: could I have my trusty tea mug, filled with the appropriately steeped tea with the right amount of milk and sweetener, in that jury box with me? Then, a couple of other questions came to mind: “How am I going to last through however long needed without tea?” and “Can I have some kind of snack with that tea, such as scones, McVitie’s Digestives, cookies, or even a piece of fruit?”
Jury duty tea kit: A carafe of hot tea, an apple, and some yummy Scottish Shortbread!
The image filled my brain of me munching and chomping and gulping and slurping while the attorneys on both sides — prosecution and defense — did their best to present evidence to all twelve of us in that jury box and be heard over the noise. Of course, the court stenographer would also be straining to catch every word accurately. “…and here, ladies and gentleman of the fu… uh, jury,… you can see that this docu… somethingorother…” Let’s just say that the transcript would be a garbled mess.
Wisely, judges generally don’t allow eating and drinking in the courtroom.
So, what can a Tea Princess to do in such a situation? I had several weeks to think about it. These summonses get sent out well in advance of the date when the potential jurors would need to appear for duty. In fact, I wouldn’t find out if I needed to be at the courthouse until the day before I was supposed to be there. It gave me plenty of time to worry and fret and plot and plan.
Sitting through a trial is not the thrill ride that it can seem to be from movies. According to friends who’ve been there, it’s mostly sitting in an uncomfortable chair, trying not to be too cold or hot since keeping a consistent temperature in a courtroom is tricky business, doing your best to stay awake while the attorneys drone on about a bank statement that proves such-and-such or an affidavit from a key person showing malicious intent or some such thing. It’s all so important but so darn boring. And to endure it without tea was unthinkable!
A strategy was taking shape in my mind, just in case I was part of the group of potential jurors that would have to show up. My normal daily routine is to steep a pot in the morning for hubby and me to enjoy at breakfast, with a cup or two extra for sipping while I blog or tweet or whatever. Then, there is a mid-morning break where I steep a small pot of something such as Snow Dragon White Tea or Chun Mee Green Tea. They are soothing but also give me a great flavor boost. Then, there’s the luncheon pot of tea, usually something like Keemun or a Tawainese Oolong. In mid-afternoon, a brisk pot of Assam or even a Darjeeling blend gets me perked up from my drowsy slump. An evening potful is usually a lighter green tea such as Japanese Sencha. How do I cram all this in or streamline it for a schedule that would be quite different?
Here’s what I came up with:
- Get up extra early and steep a pot of Breakfast Blend, drink at least two cupfuls.
- Fill a travel mug and drink it on the half hour ride to the courthouse. Also bring along some — gasp! — teabags for lunchtime.
- At the lunch break use one of those teabags to make a cuppa tea or two.
- After court, make more tea to refill the travel mug for the trip home.
- Once home, collapse in relief and steep a fresh pot of loose leaf tea and hog it all to myself.
A great plan! Fortunately, I did not have to put it into action, since when I called the night before I was supposed to show up at the courthouse, the recorded message said that I was not in the group that needed to appear. Phew! Uh, I mean, darn! (I’m well prepared for next time, though!)
[Recently, Curtiss Ann Matlock, who has written for this blog in the past, served on a jury and says she fortified herself well with tea beforehand.]
© 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.
A tin of tea from the ill-fated 2nd expedition by Scott and team to Antarctica
Tea had a landmark anniversary in January of this year: it was the beverage of choice on the expedition to the South Pole led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, which his team reached in January 1912. An unopened tin of this tea, retrieved from the expedition’s campsite years later by Ernest Shackleton and taken to New Zealand, is on display at the Powerhouse Museum. A label on one side of the tin says “TOWER TEA THE CHOICE BLEND FINE INDIAN & CEYLON TEA 11b Nett Weight.” It was produced sometime between 1895 and 1905, meaning that Sri Lanka (called “Ceylon” then) had been growing tea for only a few years, having switched from coffee growing due to a blight.
Jules Verne wrote about a fantastical journey to the center of the earth, a fictional account of exploring unknown reaches of our planet. But there are real explorers — people like Scott and his team who traveled to the far off place (at least from their part of the planet in the UK) of Antarctica (reaching the South Pole in January 1912 — 100 years ago) — and tea was part of the journey!
Okay, so the expedition wasn’t, if you’ll pardon the expression, a walk in the park, and Scott himself, once they reached Antarctica, was heard to proclaim “Great God! this is an awful place…” and they suffered frost bite, injury, malnutrition, and exhaustion, but they had tea with them! Sorry, was I being sarcastic there?
Cameras were another important part of Captain Scott's Antarctic exploration
Actually, I admire people who can leave the comforts of hearth and home to pit themselves against this big ball we all live on, and to do so in an age where the technology (things like thermal underwear, for example) is not there to help out is even more admirable. Scott was seeking to lead a team of explorers to the South Pole and to carry out some scientific observations along the way. He arrived at the South Pole only to discover that Norwegian Roald Amundsen was already there. Sigh! So much for being first.
But wait, it was still quite an achievement and certainly makes many of our accomplishments seem humble in comparison. Some blame him for the deaths of his team on their return trip (an 800-mile trek on foot in temperatures that got up to -30° on a balmy day), but each one was there of his own accord, not through any coercion.
In June 2010, it was reported that Typhoo raised £20,000 to go toward preserving the 50’x20’ rough wooden hut built by Scott’s team on Ross Island in the Antarctic. They have also teamed up with Tesco, a British supermarket chain, to market a special blend (a replicate of the original blend that traveled with the Scott 1910-1913 expedition) they produced of strong tea, appropriately named “Captain Scott’s Strong Blend.” (The Typhoo company, originally called Ridgways, produced the tea that traveled with Scott 100 years ago.) A small amount of the purchase price of every box of this tea sold went to the preservation fund.
Huntley and Palmers Digestives
Among the things found in Scott’s hut when it was dug out from under ice and snow by an expedition in 1956 was a package of Huntley & Palmers Digestives, well preserved (that is, not moldy and fairly intact) although probably not as tasty as they were in 1910 when they were packed aboard the ship for the long voyage across oceans to the hut in McMurdo sound. I think I’d rather have some fresh McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives!
Next time you’re enjoying a good strong cuppa Typhoo tea, remember those intrepid, albeit ill-fated, explorers, traveling to the far reaches of our planet. Cheers!
My thanks to May King Tsang, another writer for this blog and a knowledgeable tea consultant, for passing along to me an item she saw in Twitter about tea being on Scott’s expedition to Antarctica.
See also:
Typhoo Tea — The Doctor Is In
Tea Pioneers of Great Britain
© 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.
Dutch Gold Pure Clover Honey
From the Boston Tea Party to modern day tea shops and tea rooms, we enjoy our tea moments. Often, we enjoy those moments at home in front of the TV, so much so that you could say tea and TV are part of US culture.
In my early years, I watched shows where the wife did her “at home” stuff and hubby rode the commuter train to work. He would return home in the evening and walk in the front door, calling out cheerfully, “Honey, I’m home!” It used to seem so corny — after all, women were striving to be seen as more than housewives and to be taken seriously in the workplace. I was striving for this, too, and vigorously eschewed such cliché happenstances, pursuing instead a career. But then I got married.
Now, in case you’re thinking that I suddenly turned into a Stepford Wife, you would be badly mistaken. Quite the contrary, my career went better than ever, and hubby takes care of things around the house with a glad heart. He even feels somewhat miffed if I say, “Don’t bother with washing those pots and pans. I’ll take care of them.” You would think I had told him to go sleep in the dog house (which we don’t have, so that would be doubly uncomfortable for him).
Our circumstances have changed a bit with the economic times. I keep as busy as I can, working from home, while hubby is away at his part-time job. Keeping focused on my writing helps me not miss him too much, and when he’s home we spend as much time together as possible. I only go into what might seem “mushy affairs” to help in part explain why I no longer find the phrase “Honey, I’m home!” to be corny.
Here’s where the tea comes in:
I’m usually able to time the preparation of a fresh pot of tea so it’s ready at the right moment when hubby arrives home from his travails out there in the cold cruel world. That way he can have a nice cuppa as soon as possible and not have to wait. It’s a special tea moment for us both. We sip and I listen while he tells me of the events he’s been dealing with for the past eight hours. Then, I fill him in on my day’s excitement. By the time we’ve finished off the pot of tea, we’re all caught up and it’s feels as if we were never apart!
And that’s why “Honey, I’m home!” no longer seems corny to me!
© 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.
Starting with the basics can be a great approach in many things. You crawl before you can walk. You ride your bicycle with training wheels and eventually those wheels come off. You learn the simpler dance steps before you go for the fancy ones. And so on.
This approach is the one I’ve taken when both doing and teaching drawing. A pencil, a sheet of paper, and of course a BIG eraser! Oh, and a sharpener. Time to draw. Hm… uh… gee… well, it sorta looks like a tree. Time to take a step back to the basics.
Tea inspires the artist within!
Years ago when I taught Beginning Drawing adult education classes for a couple of years my approach was simple: look for the basic shape in the object you want to draw and start there. A candle is basically a cylinder. An orange is a sphere/ball. A book is a rectangular box. And so on. Draw that basic shape very lightly with your pencil (don’t worry about being too exact since you’ll be modifying it) and then add the details that make that cylinder a candle or that ball an orange, etc. Invariably, the students in my drawing classes would tell me when the class had completed that they saw objects around them in a new way. The next step was to tackle things like flowers and trees that had these basic shapes but in a more complex and yet subtle way.
The same approach can work with teas. Start with the basics: green, black, white, and oolong all from the tea bush (Camellia Sinensis) and its varietals. Take it to the next level: Chinese green teas, Japanese green teas, Indian or Ceylon or Kenyan or Chinese black teas, etc. Then, you can add in flushes and gardens and blends. It’s like adding in those drawing details and shading, getting more precise, detailed, and nuanced as you progress. If you have the desire and the will, you can keep going, working further into the details and nuances of tea, trying not only different ones but different methods and implements for preparing them.
This approach can also work for tasting tea. Start by learning what flavors are usual for which teas. Grassiness, maltiness, fruitiness, haylike, smoky, and so on — each flavor type is generally associated with a type of tea.
Tea preparation is another area to start with the basics. Teapots, gaiwans, kyusus, steeping mugs, or even your teacup are used to steep. But be sure you know how hot to heat the water, how long to let the leaves steep, whether you can get a decent second infusion or not, and how to store the dry tea. It can seem daunting, but do what hubby and I do when learning something new or when faced with a big task: baby steps! Learn to crawl before you walk. Learn to draw a decent circle before you try to draw that orange or other ball-shaped object. And learn what tea is and how to fix a cup of basic black or green before diving into the details of tea.
Happy steeping!
© 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.
Looking for something fun to do on a grey winter’s day? Why not share the joys of tea by inviting friends and family to a tea tasting!
Keep the group cozy, maybe ten people max. Ask one of your guests – one who knows how to make tea – to assist you.
Choose the teas you want to share: a cross-section of different types, or a theme such as India teas. About eight teas provide enough variety without being overwhelming.
You’ll also need …
- At least two teapots. The more you have, the less washing you’ll do during the tasting. Two-cup (12- to 16-ounce) size should be large enough, as you’ll serve each guest only about an ounce of each tea.
- Provide every guest with a separate tasting cup for each tea you serve. Shot glasses from the dollar store work really well if you don’t mine washing and storing them afterwards. Disposable plastic communion cups are just the right size, and cost about $15 for a thousand cups at church supply shops. Three-ounce plastic disposable “bathroom” cups run about a dollar for a package of 50 at discount stores.
- Offering palate-cleansers between teas is a nice touch. Plain crackers, baguette slices, or small spears of celery or cucumber – anything that doesn’t interfere with the taste of the teas.
- Pens, and our Taster’s Form, downloadable in *.pdf format – filled in with basic information about each tea – for taking notes.
Have all supplies and the first two potsful of tea (under cozies) on the table when your guests arrive. Talk a little about each tea as you serve it. If guests are new to tea, explain briefly that all teas come from the same plant, and a little about the different processing techniques. And anything else you feel comfortable with.
Start with the lightest tea and progress to darker or flavoured teas. Serve in this order:
- White tea.
- Green or pouchong tea.
- Oolong tea.
- Darjeeling or Nilgiri tea.
- Other black teas.
- Smoky tea or pu-erh tea.
- Flavoured tea.
With each tea tasted, place a teaspoonful of dry leaf, and another of the spent leaf, on a small dish. Pass these around and invite everyone to touch and sniff.
Pour the first tea, then you or your helper take the pot back to the kitchen to wash it, start the kettle, and prepare the next potful. Once you get into the rhythm, you’ll have eight or nine minutes between teas. During this time, encourage your guests to compare tasting notes, partake of munchies, ask questions, and socialize. If you feel that you don’t know enough about tea to answer questions, have a few tea books available so guests can browse them and look up answers.
At the end of the tasting, ask which were your guests’ favourite teas, then steep up larger pots of two or three of them to serve with more substantial munchies. And lots more socializing.
© 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.
Scotland and tea — tea and Scotland. A natural combination. Just ask one of our blog writers Jess Hodges, a native of that land. The climate in Scotland is not exactly tropical, actually far from it. So hot tea is in great supply.
Scottish Games Opening Ceremony
The Scots make the most of their warm weather, though, and one way has been traditionally to gather the clans together and engage in tests of strength and skill, otherwise known as the Scottish Games. This tradition continues here in the U.S., and those of us with Scottish ancestry or even a penchant for tartans and other Scottish items flock to them for food and fun and games.
I’d attended Scottish Games several times before meeting the wonderful man who is now my hubby. It turned out that he, too, had gone to these events a number of times and had even helped out at one of the clan tents (where they have information about the clan, complete with merchandise bearing the clan tartan). Of course, therefore, we wanted to share the experience and so went together to one such event several years ago.
The U.S. isn’t Scotland. “Duh!” you say. Yeah, I know that’s pretty obvious. But the point is the weather. I have been to Scottish Games in this country where the heat and humidity were stifling and to ones where I froze my *bleep* off. This time it was the latter. Cold and rainy. Hubby and I were hanging out at the clan tent; he was talking to people who came by with questions or just to chat, and I was huddled on one of the chairs in the back near the portable heater, trying to keep some feeling in my toes and fingers. In the chair next to me was a woman from Britain whose American husband was of this clan. She proved to have more foresight than I and had come equipped with a thermos filled with hot black tea already laced with milk and sugar. She also proved to be most hospitable and offered me a cuppa, pleasantly surprised that a “Yank” would like tea the “British way” (as she called it).
A nice tall mug and a plaid scarf get me in the mood for those Scottish Games!
Hot, tasty tea. Guys in kilts. Cold, rainy weather. Guys in kilts. Bagpipe music. More guys in kilts. Need I say that it was a most memorable day? Didn’t think so.
For a schedule of Scottish Games across the U.S., visit The Association of Scottish Games and Festivals. Be sure to check the weather report before attending to know if you should bring along hot tea in a thermos or some cold tea, iced or not. Then, get set to enjoy the caber tossing, drum and bagpipe band competitions, traditional dancers, and bands like the Wicked Tinkers!
© 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.
Empty teacups are terrible things!
When you are sipping that tea while doing other things (reading, writing, wiping runny noses, etc.), you can lose track of the level of the liquid in your teacup. You sip, set the cup down, then read/write/wipe, then sip again, and so on. If you’re not careful, you run the risk of coming down with empty teacup syndrome.
Empty teacup syndrome is the state of shock you fall into when your mind is sure there’s more tea in the cup and you raise that cup to your lips and see it’s empty. Sometimes it can take a moment or two for reality to kick in. You blink. You look again at the cup. The cup stares back at you, silent, sad, and, yep, empty.
What you’re in the middle of will determine your next steps — after you recover from the shock, of course. If you are at a point in the book where you can put it down without being left hanging too badly (will she kiss him or won’t she?) or have finished that meeting you were the lead of, etc., you’re in luck. The solution is as simple as refilling your teacup from the teapot or steeping up another quick cuppa. Having a loving spouse on hand to fetch that refill is also good.
Of course, you always have the option of getting a bigger cup. A much bigger cup! Just as those quickie mart places have their big gulp soda cups that hold a liter of soda, so you can find really large mugs and cups for your tea, assuring that you can make it through that book chapter or the lengthy slide presentation on that oh-so-important departmental project that you are not quite sure about. Yes siree, a really BIG tea mug or cup will assure that you never suffer from empty teacup syndrome again. I’ll be looking into what choices are out there for you in a future article.
Another option, of course, is a teapot kept full and close at hand. And then there are samovars where a small teapot full of strongly steeped tea sits atop a spigoted urn full of hot water that not only helps keep the teapot warm but also serves to thin down that strong tea to a drinkable level. If you have one of those little Yixing teapots, you can steep some tea, pour the liquid in your cup, leave the loose tea leaves in the teapot, and steep some more when that empty teacup syndrome kicks in. Lots of possibilities for you tea lovers who, like me, just can’t get enough tea during your day.
Happy sipping, slurping, and gulping!
© 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.
Round and round the Sun we go. And round and round the calendar we go at the same time. Valentine’s Day is once again looming, and the brows of anxious husbands and sweethearts are beading with the sweat of wondering what will please their true love. Ok, guys, listen up: We want CHOCOLATE! Oh, and roses and some romantic dinner with candles and tea and something you cooked yourself.
Valentine's Bad to the Bone Ghirardelli Gift Set
Simple.
Well, maybe not too simple. Let’s take it a step at a time, starting with the chocolates. (The most important things first, of course!) There are many to choose from, but go for the best. True love is rare and special. Cadbury’s (the kind still made in the U.K.) has a reputation for being rich and flavorful, reflecting the richness of your feelings. Of course, the “bad boy” image has appeal, so some Ghirardelli chocolates with a “Bad to the Bone” bear will get the message across.
Even a more economical version of a chocolate-centered gifts will say “I love you!” loud and clear! The same goes for roses. You can go full out with the traditional dozen long stemmed red beauties, or keep it simple with a gift that includes a single silken rose.
Valentine's Gift Set - Tea and Chocolate
Of course, I fully recognize that we females like to give our special fellas tokens of our affections, too. Planning a special tea time for him can be a pleasure that could lead to “other” things. Heh heh! Be sure chocolate is on the menu, too, since it tends to make you feel a bit “glowing” inside.
A possible 3-course menu for your special “Valentine, Sweet Valentine!” Tea Time:
- First course: A cheese appetizer (brie or camembert) with crackers and Dragonwell tea
- Main course: Roasted chicken, new potatoes boiled and lightly buttered with a sprinkle of dill, braised green beans, and an assortment of raw vegetables (cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, etc.) served with a nice of Ceylon or Assam tea
- Third Course (Dessert): Strawberry shortcake served with some Darjeeling or even Tie Guan Yin.
Why do we go all through this every year? One story says that around 270 A.D. as the Roman Empire was crumbling, Emperor Claudius II banned marriage, thinking bachelorhood would make young men more willing to serve in his army, sorely needed since the empire was under siege from all sides. A cleric named Valentine at the local church, however, would secretly marry young couples who would come to him. For this disobedience, he was executed on February 14th. (Sorry, that’s not very romantic.) In the 14th century the date became associated with love. Greeting card companies took up the cause in the 1840s, issuing greeting cards that seem quite innocent and simple by today’s standards. You can still find some of these older designs on sites like Birdhouse Books.
One final thought here from Helen Keller:
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Here’s wishing you a fabulous Valentine tea time and beyond!
© 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.
Ok, so you know you’re a Tea Princess or a Tea Prince, or you are well on your way to being one. You want your tea just so and will no longer settle for that “stuff” they call tea when you dine out or eat in. But are you a serious lover of tea, too? Take this quiz to find out.
A great way to spend $5
- You have an extra $5 in your pocket, so you:
- Buy a box of tea bags at the local store
- Go to one of those coffee places and get a humongo-jumbo tea latté beverage
- Buy a box of donuts – hey, what’s tea time without donuts?
- Add that fiver to the special savings account you opened at the bank so you can afford to buy some of that special aged pu-erh later on
- Your birthday is coming up, so you:
- Hint to family and friends that you really like tea (actually, they will probably know this already, but it doesn’t hurt to remind them)
- Print out photos off of web sites of teawares and teas you’d like as gifts and leave them strategically placed where gift givers would find them
- Select the person you can count on to spread the word to others, then drag that person to the local tea shop and make sure he/she sees you mooning over certain teapots and/or teas, maybe even casually suggest that he/she take notes
- Make reservations at the best tea place in your area and plan to go there, by yourself if necessary (you’re your own person)
- An antique Yixing teapot pops up for sale on one of those auction web sites, so you:
- Yawn and click over to a news site
- Tweet the link to your Twitter buddies to see if one of them wants it
- Follow the bidding to see how high it goes (you’re just curious)
- Bid…bid…bid! until that beauty is all yours!
- A famous tea expert is in town giving a demonstration of a particularly tricky steeping technique, but it happens to be on the same day as your daughter’s wedding, so you:
- Say to yourself “I’m the mother/father of the bride, so I have to be at the wedding” and you do your part
- Attend the wedding, but ask a friend to go to the demo and report back to you
- Ask your friend to stand in for you at the wedding and to wear a face mask that looks like you for all the photos
- Reschedule the wedding — hey, you have your priorities!
- You signed up for a tour of the tea gardens of the Darjeeling area of India but just heard that monsoon rains were extra heavy, washing out some mountain roads, and the tour is cancelled, so you:
- Shrug, pocket the refund, and think that the trip to Disney World is now on
- Go buy a book about the tea gardens of Darjeeling and read it with a pot of Darjeeling tea
- Steep up some of your most special Darjeeling tea, put on some Indian music, and pretend you’re there
- Decide to go there on your own and hike from one garden to the next as best you can (you bring along your mountain climbing gear just in case)
Well, how did you do? If you answered anything but “d” to all of the above, then it’s time to get more serious about tea!
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