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Milk and tea seem to be a topic that is popping up on this blog quite a bit lately. From exploring the correct way to add milk to A Tea Drinker’s Experiment with Milk to my own toe-dipping into the whole issue of whether milk should be put in the cup first or not, the issue seems to be getting a thorough treatment. Or is it? Most seem to be missing an important question: Is milk added in to your tea in essence a flavoring of that tea?
Is the milk here a flavoring or not? You decide.
Considering my latest exposition on the whole topic of losing my taste for flavored teas, I, too, missed this important point. Officially, a flavored tea is one where “stuff” is added to the dry tea, thus steeping up with the tea leaves and creating a liquid that combines the flavors of each ingredient. This is sort of like stew, soup, casserole, and so on. The flavors cook together.
Adding milk into tea, whether you put it in the cup first and then pour in the tea or vice versa, is a different matter. The tea flavor does not steep together with the milk. In fact, as Elise Nuding showed in her recent article, if you add milk while the tea is steeping, you get a bit of a mess. Making a stovetop version of masala chai is another matter, but still means adding the milk after the tea has had a chance to steep a bit.
Here is a version hubby and I make on a fairly regular basis:
Ingredients
- 2 tsps Assam
- 1/8 tsp tea masala mix (contains black pepper, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg), adjust the amount as needed
- 2 cups of cold water
- 2/3 cups of whole milk (you could use reduced fat milk or soy “milk”, but skim/fat free milk is not recommended)
Preparation
- Put the tea, masala, and water in a saucepan.
- Heat to boiling, then reduce heat and simmer for 3 minutes. (This imparts tea flavor into the water along with the spices.)
- Add milk and bring back to boiling, then reduce heat and simmer for another 3 minutes. (This combines the milk flavors with the tea/spice flavor.)
- Strain into mugs and enjoy. (Hubby recommends you let it sit about 1 minute to let all the flavors blend and the tea to cool slightly.)
According to the above recipe, I would call milk definitely a flavoring. In that case, milk is a very acceptable tea flavoring. On the other hand, once the tea is fully steeped and added into the cup, technically whatever you add to it could not be classified officially as a flavoring, even though it alters the tea’s flavor.
These are just my own musings here and by no means anything definitive. If you have contrary thoughts, by all means share them here.
See more of A.C. Cargill’s articles here.
© 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.
Chefs Choice Cordless Electric 680 Glass Kettle
The basics of a samovar are simple, so you will be asking yourself why you would need one. And indeed you do not need one. You can enjoy a samovar-style tea time without having a samovar.
A samovar, developed in the 17th century, is actually two items: a large urn that holds hot water and a smaller teapot filled with a strong tea brew that sits on top of it through the day. Some even have two teapots (one for tea type A, the other for tea type B). Modern samovars have electric water heating compartments. The stronger the tea in the teapot, the more hospitable the host is perceived to be. The family and any guests gather around the samovar, pour tea from the teapot into their glasses set in holders (podstakanniks), add hot water from the bottom portion of the samovar, and then sweeten it. Or sometimes they hold a sugar cube between their teeth and sip the strong tea through it.
So, how do you have that same type of tea experience without a samovar? First, you need a way to have hot water readily at hand. There are some options here: an electric kettle, a microwave, or (my hubby had one of these when we met) an automatic coffeemaker that was used strictly for keeping water hot. Next, you need a small teapot (2 to 4 cups capacity) for your strong tea. The trick is keeping that tea reasonably warm, but not necessarily hot. A cozy is one option. A single-burner hotplate set on “Warm” is another. You can, of course, simply let the tea go cool in the teapot and heat it with hot water. I give no guarantees that this will result in any tea that you would actually want to drink.
This brings us to the key item: the tea. Give careful consideration to the need for the tea to stand up to a heavy steeping, to sitting for awhile being kept warm, to then being diluted. Not just any tea will do here. In Russia, black tea is commonly used, with green tea gaining popularity, thinking it is more healthy, more “Oriental.” They also love to mix black teas and herbal tisanes.
Keemun is a good choice here, as are Russian Caravan, Lapsang Souchong, and other strong Chinese black teas. On the green side, gunpowder is a good option, one that I know personally can take the treatment it will receive here without turning into something akin to witches’ brew.
There you go — a way to have that samovar-style tea without the samovar. Enjoy!
See more of A.C. Cargill’s articles here.
© 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.
Oolong Tea and others – should kids drink them or not? (stock image)
In the Age of Communication, publishing and distributing their thoughts and ideas is always at people’s fingertips. Actually, this is really great, and the world of tea has benefited hugely from this: there are myriads of tea bloggers, creators of websites or books or e-books related to tea, content writers and “niche journalists” out there now, boosting the general knowledge about tea and very probably the popularity of tea with their publications. However, as all things in the universe, the ease of creating huge volumes of information at no or low costs and the overall accessibility of this information has its downside: things are being discussed over and over again that actually wouldn’t need any discussion at all, but only some common sense instead.
So, in tea forums and blogs, I keep coming across the much discussed question, whether tea is good for children or not, and whether it is reasonable to let them drink some or not. And I keep thinking, ‘What a question’!
It all starts with most of these discussions never even defining what they mean when saying “tea” in the first place. This inevitably becoming apparent in the course of the discussion, the same usually ends with reaching a consent that herbal tisanes might be harmless for children, while “real” tea (Camellia sinensis: green tea, Oolong tea, black tea, white tea, yellow tea, Pu Er tea) is known to contain caffeine, or theine (same thing) and is therefore not good for children, at least not to a certain age.
While a little more differentiation would definitely do good here in the first place, if the topic needs to be discussed at all, as a father of two boys (one 16, the other 8 years old now) I just cannot remember that this question has ever been seriously arising.
Tisanes are harmless? Oh, my god! Won’t this depend on what tisane we are talking about? I don’t want to be too specific about this, since I don’t know much about tisanes, but common sense tells me there are probably harmless ones, such as chamomile or peppermint “tea”, and there are others that have partially powerful medicinal properties and effects, so I would think twice before considering them as ‘harmless’ for children.
Then tea, real tea… if you are drinking tea the way it should be done, i.e. without the highly questionable habit of adding sugar or milk to it, you will never ever have to think about this, because your kids are hardly ever going to drink more than a sip of it, and this more out of curiosity but for actually liking the taste. But even if they would drink a whole cup, how much caffeine will they really take in? And in terms of being unhealthy, how will a cup of tea compare to the sweets, fast food chain meals, sugary lemonades and chemically ‘enhanced’ trend beverages they take in on a daily basis as the average kid of today (without the question how healthy or unhealthy these are being much discussed)?
I am using aroma cups to try first steeps myself, and whenever one of the kids came on and asked to try some of my tea out of curiosity, I would fill one aroma cup for them and pass it on to them with my mind being at complete peace: even bragging about how much they like it, I can’t remember any of them ever asked for a second cup. So, following common sense instead of trying to become all scientific about this seems to make a lot of sense to me, or did you ever hear of a kid dying, or even becoming sick, from an overdose of tea?
See more of Thomas Kasper’s articles here.
© 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.
Oh the horror of lip marks on your teacups. But let’s face it, folks, life is messy. When your teacup gets those nasty lip marks on it that never seem to wash off and just keep building up, your life can seem even messier, bordering on total disaster. Lipstick is, of course, a culprit here, as are lip balms. But even when your lips are bare, they can leave residue behind. Bits of skin and oils combined with tea (trying to be delicate, but the truth is a necessity). Improperly cleaning the teacup after imbibing a tasty tea can really exacerbate the problem.
Not a lip mark in sight!
Here’s a way to get rid of even the worst lip marks:
Wash thoroughly after every use to avoid buildup.
Ha! Just kidding, although that’s not a bad idea. When you wash your cup, it can be easy to do a quick job of it. Tea is, after all, just a liquid. You might even be tempted simply to rinse out your teacup. But you must resist. Grab that sponge or dishcloth, get it wet with hot water, and add some dishwashing liquid. Then, commence thoroughly scrubbing that teacup, with careful attention being paid to the rim. Do this after every use of the teacup. It will assure a nice clean taste experience for the next use.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Geez, why do you feel it necessary to tell us this?” The reason is simple: I am guilty of the horror of lip marks on my teacups and until recently would merely rinse my special teacup (the one I use on a daily basis for that wake-up cuppa and later for that lunch time cuppa, afternoon cuppa, evening cuppa, etc.) after use. Don’t worry, it’s a cup that only I use. The rest of our dishes get the full wash up treatment.
You folks used to having guests in for tea will understand the importance of serving that tea in very clean teacups, free of any lip marks, especially where lipstick is involved. Just be sure to scrub thoroughly after each use (some dishwashing machines don’t quite do the job, so you may have to scrub a bit before putting the cups in the machine). Then your nice clean teacups will be free of that horror and be ready for the next use.
See more of A.C. Cargill’s articles here.
© 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.
Going “by the book” can be a bit iffy sometimes. (stock image)
The water is heating. The scones are baking (and smelling so good!). The teapot is prepped and waiting. Time for my mind to go wondering. The whole concept of going “by the book” was what popped into my tea-deprived brain. It was a phrase that could either instill confidence or fear of over-rigidity.
The phrase “by the book” means simply that the person is following established procedure or the product manual. This can be very good when a refrigerator repairman is working on your deluxe built-in chef’s model. It can also be very bad when a refrigerator repairman is working on your deluxe built-in chef’s model. That is, there is a time to go “by the book” and a time to think “outside the box.” There is so much suing going on these days that going “by the book” is becoming more and more of a standard operating procedure. It can alleviate legal responsibility. Unfortunately, it can also cause some rather negative unintended consequences. An example was when Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) followed the book and forced my mother to lie down on the gurney. It was a very bad idea.
On a less serious note, going “by the book” with your tea can be good or bad (but fortunately no more affecting than providing either a superb or a horrendous tea experience). Lots of tea vendors provide instructions on how to steep up the various teas they offer. Some folks feel they have to steep the tea this way. Others feel some flexibility, at least after some experience with the tea, where they can alter the water temperature, steeping time, type of vessel used, amount of tea leaves used, etc.
There are plenty of books about tea, too. So going “by the book” can also mean following one of these books when you approach tea. Books are great, and I would be the last person to advise you to ignore any of the great tea books out there (many of them highlighted on this blog by intrepid tea guy Bill Lengeman). However, don’t let them be a substitute for your own ideas and approach. Have fun with your tea!
Speaking of fun, the tea is steeped, the scones have cooled enough to handle, and I will definitely enjoy a tea time that is not “by the book.”
See more of A.C. Cargill’s articles here.
© 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.
Hubby has been known to conduct on occasion some … uh, well, for lack of a better term I’ll call them “experiments” with tea. Tea experiment #29 was a doozy, so I had to share it here.
A secret blend. (Photo source: A.C. Cargill, all rights reserved)
It all started so innocently. The teapot was empty. (Side note: empty teapots are the source of the world’s ills, so keep yours filled.) Hubby being the kind of guy he is, that is, someone who doesn’t hesitate to dive in and solve a crisis such as this, stepped up to the plate and got ready to steep tea. He filled the tea kettle with water and set it on the stove (and yes he remembered to turn on the burner!). Then came the inevitable question, one that can cause some moments of contemplation on my part: “What tea should I steep?”
Dead silence.
Well, silent except for the head-scratching. Or was that the gears in my brain creaking? Whichever it was created enough of a pause for hubby to fill the void with his own suggestion, which was: “Hey, I know, I’ll try that blend I’ve been thinking about.”
Sounds of brakes screeching to a halt.
“Uh…okay…” What else could I reply? He had that excited kid look. I was banned from the kitchen (a pretty hard thing to do, since I use the family room as my writing space and it opens up to the kitchen — I just did my best to focus on writing and ignore the various sounds he was making). Then came the call, “Tea’s ready!” I was over there in an instant, eager to see what he’d cooked up. He had cleverly hid away any sign of what he’d done.
“Here you go,” he said, handing me a steaming cupful. I took a sip while he watched with eager anticipation. Would his efforts evoke a “Yum!” or a “Yuck!”? Mmmmm…rich, full flavor smoothed with milk and just a touch of sweetener.
“Assam!” I cried triumphantly, confident in what my tastebuds were telling me. “Yes,” he said, “and…” Huh? Okay, what else had he sneaked in that potful? I took another sip. Then I asked for a sipper cup of the tea straight (no milk or sweetener). Very revealing. “PG Tips!” I exclaimed. “Yes, and…” he said again. “Uh… hm…” sip, swish. “Typhoo! And Barry’s!” Hubby beamed. “Correct. And correct!”
Wow, hubby combined these brandname teas with our regular CTC Assam. He said he ground down the CTC Assam to the consistency of the tea dust in those brandname teas. They contain some Assam but also other teas, including tea from Kenya and other African growers, who generally use the leaves of the Camellia Sinensis assamica. So, I guess this experiment wasn’t too crazy, tea-wise, but flavor-wise, it was a real doozy. Yum!
See more of A.C. Cargill’s articles here.
© 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.
Iced Tea by Shangri La – Traditional Black Brew Bags
When it comes to tea, certain seasons are known for certain things. I’m drawing a blank when it comes to autumn and winter, though it’s safe to say those are times when the warming qualities of a nice hot cup of tea are much appreciated.
We are currently passing through spring, perhaps best known for being a time when the first tea harvests of the year take place. This gives us shincha, a Japanese term meaning “new tea,” and some of the finer of these varieties are among the most coveted of all teas.
Right now, the afternoon temperature in my part of the world stands at 92 degrees (with 5 percent humidity – truly a dry heat). So it seems very summery, even though summer officially does not commence for almost two months.
All of which means iced tea season is approaching. Never mind that for some of us, it’s always iced tea season. I’ve already written a few articles about my curious tea drinking habits and though my Esteemed Editor will surely cringe, I’ll direct you to one of them.
Rather than reinventing the wheel and writing yet another article about bold new ways to prepare iced tea and whatnot, I thought I’d direct you to a few of the fine articles already in the archives here as well as touching on some miscellaneous iced tea-related bits.
Such as iced tea consumption in the United States. I don’t doubt that Americans drink a lot of iced tea and that the majority of what we drink is of the iced variety. What I wonder about is that in the seven years I’ve been writing about tea the only number I’ve seen given for the percentage of tea we drink is 85%. Maybe this number hasn’t changed even one percent in seven years or maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place.
Then I got to thinking about the term iced tea itself and wondering when it first came to be. I found a travel book from 1845 that commented on the iced tea, coffee and chocolate in Naples. Three years earlier, a writer in the London Quarterly Review noted that the Russians cooled all of their warm weather drinks with ice, including tea. But the oldest reference I was found (in my not completely thorough search) was a passing mention of iced tea in the 1827 volume, Domestic Economy, and Cookery, for Rich and Poor.
If you’d like to brush up on various facets of iced tea knowledge you can check out the articles at this site by going here. Among some highlights, an article that takes a look at a few brewing methods, one that looks at iced tea tidbits and trivia, and an examination of the critical sweetened vs. unsweetened issue.
See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.
© 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.
Tea in the movies is a real requirement when any of the characters are British. At least, that’s how it seems. So, tea being portrayed as an essential ingredient in a civilized life comes as no surprise in a movie adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic novel Around the World in 80 Days.
Around the World in 80 Days (Photo source: screen capture from site)
My favorite version of the movie was the one from 1956 (except for Shirley MacLaine as an Indian princess – totally unbelievable, but I guess no real Indian actresses were available at that time). The cameo roles are done by a Who’s Who list of Hollywood luminaries of that day. But of course David Niven is the standout as Phileas Fogg, a very proper English gent. I have it on DVD but ended up watching it on satellite when it came up on the schedule. It’s just easier to switch channels than switch the TV to DVD view, turn on the player, take out the disc and put it in the player. Phew! I’m worn out just writing that!
Since this is about a very proper English gent (and his very not-so-proper valet Passepartout), two activities are of utmost importance, even in his race against the clock while traveling around the world. One is the card game whist. The other is — can you guess? — tea time!
As Fogg puts it, “Crisis or no, nothing should interfere with tea!” So, be it sailing along in a big basket hanging beneath a hot air balloon that suddenly starts sinking or riding an elephant through thick jungle in India or bumping along in a train through the western U.S., nothing interfered with tea.
I mention all this not just because I like the movie, especially when enjoyed with a large pot of tea, but because there are many people out there claiming that they have no time for tea. Considering the advances in travel technology since Verne penned this book, you can now get around the world in about 2 days (per this source). So, that leaves 78 days for tea. Except that Fogg had tea even while traveling. Plus you have a lot of timesaving devices that should be giving you more time for tea. From electric tea kettles that boil water seconds faster to clothes washers to lawnmowers, the mundane tasks are now done faster and better. But wait — along with the timesavers came the time fillers: TVs, radios, computers, video games, movies… uh, wait, that last one is very worthwhile, especially when part of your tea time.
Maybe it’s time to make better use of the timesavers, less use of the time fillers, and have more time to enjoy a leisurely tea time! (Say that three times fast!)
See more of A.C. Cargill’s articles here.
© 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.
Formosa Oolong
“Broken tea”… amazingly, while I never encountered this term before I became an active tea geek, I used to think of tea itself as “broken tea” then, small flakes of something that faintly seems to be of natural origin, but no idea whatsoever, whether this was actually leaves once, or pieces of some wood or grain or…
Once I understood that tea is actually originally coming in the form of leaves, I started wondering, why they would “break” these beautiful leaves I had come to love so much in their natural form, and fill them into what is called tea bags instead of leaving them wholly and fill them right into the teapot? There’s an easy first answer to this: the first because of the second: there’s no way to fit beautiful “non-broken” tea leaves into those unholy, highly constricted “tea bags, while the tea bag seemed to be such an imperative for the majority of consumers that the question why tea leaves are broken was actually ridiculing itself.
Now, I think/I believe/I hope/I sense there is a change to this overall perception of the tea bag being an imperative going on. Using tea without the bag seems to be a lot trendier today as it used to be. Still, I can see “broken tea” being sold from the shelves of discounter market chains and tea shops alike in large plastic packs, cans, boxes, etc. There must be more about breaking my beloved tea leaves than just the alleged necessity of putting them into the odd space-restricted tea bag.
There is… topic “tea blending”: just like whole tea leaves won’t nicely fit into tea bags, the also won’t nicely blend with other teas, due to different looks, haptic, and behavioral characteristics. Traded broken teas being blends is not the exceptional case, it is the regular one.
And then, what all broken teas seem to have in common: they are comparably cheap, this possibly pointing to a generally low quality of broken tea? While in general I won’t advocate the idea that cheap teas are bad teas and expensive tea is good tea, there is logically a certain tendency to lower quality when it comes to broken (or tea-bagged) teas. Why? Hmm… think of a tea producer producing good quality tea… why would somebody, anybody, nurture selected tea plants for years, assess their grade of maturity, the right point in time for harvest on a weekly, sometimes daily basis, then handpick them, always the 2 top leaves only, and even these only, if they have a young sprout with them, then carefully dry and flip the picked leaves over and over for different periods, in different places, and with different light and temperature conditions, process them to the right level of oxidation and into the desired form, only to then break them all into tiny little pieces, blend them with some other broken tea (leftovers/rejects/excesses/cheap mass qualities?) of different origins, only in order to finally have it sold for pocket money from food discounter market chain shelves? No, I don’t think anybody would do that.
So let’s summarize: tea leaves are broken, so they
- fit in tea bags;
- are easy to blend with others;
- will not disclose their low quality by their obviously poor leaf grade.
Reviewing this article, I thought I should write a bit more balanced, as I usually try to, and contrast the con’s with the pro’s, but c’mon, which are the pro’s of breaking beautiful tea leaves into little pieces, only to achieve the above-mentioned 3 dubious goals? I can’t think of any. Any input? Anybody?
See more of Thomas Kasper’s articles here.
© 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.
Teacup and Books (stock image)
Few things are as satisfying as sitting down with a good cup of tea and a good book. I sense many of you readers nodding along in agreement, but I wonder exactly why this is the case. Having recently (and unusually) had some time to get deeply stuck into a good book, I have been pondering this question. And, needless to say, if I am at home, I put the kettle on as I settle down to read. Here are a few musings on books and tea that have come out of this recent experience:
- For me, there is a sense of ritual in both tea drinking and book reading. I have my places that I like to sit and read and times of the day that I prefer to read at. Likewise, there are specific ways I like to make my tea, and the act of putting the kettle on, brewing the tea, and then settling down to sip it are all part of my daily routines. This sense of ritual I have for both reading and tea drinking complement and reinforce one another.
- Reading and drinking tea are both activities that are about having time to myself. Whilst it is true that I often drink tea in the company of others, and that sometimes tea is a rushed cuppa squeezed into my schedule, for the most part having a cup of tea means taking some time for myself. Likewise, serious reading only occurs when I have the time to really invest in it.
- Unless I am reading a fast paced page-turner, I like to take breaks during reading to contemplate and ponder the things I am reading about. What better moment to sip some tea? But more than that, I think that the act of sipping tea, or pouring another cup, means that I actually do contemplate things, rather than just staring off into space.
- My last thought (for now) on this subject is that drinking tea and reading are activities that complement each other year round. In the winter, there are few things more enjoyable than snuggling up with a book and a hot cup of tea on the couch. However, an equally appealing prospect is to stretch out in the summer sun with a good book and a glass of chilled iced tea within arm’s reach. In other words, they are something that can always go together.
I often drink tea without reading, and there are many occasions when I open my book for a bit without a cup of tea by my side. But when I am able to combine these two things, it seems to me that each complements the other and by doing so increases my enjoyment of both. So here’s to many more hours of reading whilst drinking tea!
See more of Elise Nuding’s articles here.
© 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.
