A Simple Thursday

Today was an all right day.  It was made awesome by being able to bring Toothless to work again and putting him on my chair when I had to leave the office and having him sit on the edge of my desk watching for staff that needed to ask questions.  Most people have gotten used to my eccentricities at this point, so no one is terribly surprised that I bring stuffed animals to work, wear strange outfits, cut off all my hair, dress up for Halloween, etc.
I brought some teas with me to work, being very excited to drink some of my personal blends.  I had my blend, Blood Moon, early in the morning (ok not early normally but it is still "early" for me - 9:30am).  The Blood Moon blend has blood orange, hibiscus, apple pieces, and Ceylon sonata (a citrusy black tea).  It was very tasty but I definitely wanted more punch, going to play with the blend a bit.
So I had the Adagio Formosa Oolong in the afternoon.  Formosa  means 'beautiful island'.  Formosa is what the Dutch traders called Taiwan. According to the research I have done on Formosa teas, this naming distinction is based on teas grown mainly north of Taipei.  Taiwan has a long and complex history with tea and one that is still celebrated today.  When I made my cup of Formosa Oolong today, I found that it was exactly what one would want and should expect a Taiwanese tea to taste like. Just the right amount of sweet and smooth, with a refreshing lingering taste. Definitely an every day tea, it might even make it up there with Earl Grey for a pleasant and spot on tea for any occasion.  Some people might find that they do not prefer the earthy taste of some Oolongs, I am not one of those people however.

Anyway, it was a busy evening for the first bit but the rest of the night was relaxed.  I have several more teas to review, and maybe I will pick up some samples from other companies this weekend.

Tea Delivery - Personal Blend Samples

So I put in a quick order for samples of my personal blends on Sunday. Yay!!

The LARP potion/teas:
"I command you to sleep"
"I command you to awaken"

Constantine themed:
"All Trenchcoat & Arrogance"

Full Moon themed:
"Blood Moon"

And finally a blend for my love of apples, "Apple Harvest Festival"

They arrived today!! All of them smell tasty. I got home at 8pm after a two hour gym night for Mat Pilates and Pilates Reformer, so no time for sampling. But very excited nonetheless!!

I took Toothless (the stuffed animal that David bought be as a Valentine's present last night) to work today and had a nice few cups of Spiced Apple Chai to relax between running around doing Supervisory stuff. It was very nice to have him to hug between tea sips.

Laughter, Happiness, and Masala Chai

So the day was absolute crap, it seemed that every little thing was poking me the wrong way, people were really grating my nerves, and not a thing I could see in the news was helping.  So I spent time between reports and doing standard supervisor work with nice Fruit & Spice tea from the local spice shop.  I took my breaks to read the Cha Tao, the Way of Tea.  I was doing my best to find my center during the preparation of my tea, pouring the tea into my Teavana cup, and stirring in sugar.  So I noticed while I was finding my calm and feeling connection with the Tao as I stirred my tea that I stir my tea anti-clockwise.

An amazingly wonderful friend, Mitzie, pointed out that this possibly has meaning as widdershins is the direction of banishment; so by subconsciously stirring in that direction I am trying to rid myself of the negative.  I personally very much like this idea.

David was wonderful and we had an impromptu date night.  Our friend, Jen, has mentioned that it was possible to make a Toothless stuffed animal at Build-A-Bear.  Being a giant HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON fan, I told David.  Now, told might be putting it gently...I giggled and danced when I told him.  I didn't even think that mean anything for tonight, but David was so sweet and made our first stop going to Build-A-Bear and buying/building a 17" stuffed Toothless!!  I was so excited and got to make a wish on the heart and seal it with a kiss and then put the heart inside Toothless!  David was wonderful and patient and put up with my need to relax and be happy at having a new baby to snuggle.  The lady that helped us was very sweet and was adorable with asking me to play along because that is part of the whole Build-A-Bear experience.

So after getting Toothless we decided to go to get delicious Indian food.  David had chicken tikka masala.  I got lamb roganjosh (which I love and is my favorite).  We had puri and tandoor naan.  David had iced tea and I (of course) ordered masala chai.  The tea was perfect and amazing, I had two cups.  When our food was brought to the table we started joking and laughing and just enjoying being on a cute date with some of our favorite food and I had a delicious cup of tea.

So over a delicious meal, a perfect cuppa, and with the most wonderful dinner partner ever ever ever, I finally calmed down from the day and enjoyed every minute of our date night.

Random Tea Memes

Blood Orange and the Mondays

Today was a Gevalia Earl Grey, Gevalia Ceylon Spiced Orange, and Adagio Blood Orange kind of day. Several cups of tea later, I managed to get through the Mondays mostly unscathed. It was a windy and rainy day and I wore my Cassandra Believer Hoodie with black and maroon dress. According to Geoffrey I looked like I was going into battle.

Sorry all, not a long blog day...just a brief day of rain and tea and the Mondays.

(Blood Orange, unicorn approved)

OH! Yes, I Drank Some Tea Today!

Thank you once again to my Dad and Nancy for the Mr. Coffee French Press.  I made myself a cup of ITO EN West Java Green Tea.  This Green Tea is out of Indonesia, a tea plantation specific to ITO EN.  So I prepared this tea in the French Press with the water at 175 degrees for 3 minutes.  I added some sugar and had a delicious 1 litre of green tea.  It was just the right taste and was very pleasing to the palate.  Below is a picture of the french press:

In addition to the ITO EN green tea, I also had some of the Zen Garden tea from Virtuous Teas and sadly I was very much underwhelmed.  I dislike the taste of anise, because I just cannot get over the taste of medicine and this tea has all the makings of delicious because it has chamomile in it, but then anise is overpowering even if it is minimal.  So I struck out with that tea.

At the end of the night I decided to look at some fun tea shirts that had cute tea sayings that I would wear.  Most of them had something to do with books and cats and BOTH of those are my cup of tea. I only included the books and tea ones because the cat ones are less applicable because my husband is who I talk to or cuddle the most, not my cats. So here are some of the tea-shirts (see what I did there?) below:

Loose Leaf and the Tale of The Infusers

OK, so the essential parts of the tea drinking process is hot water and the tea leaves.  Well, you can probably guess that it gets a bit awkward drinking tea when you have loose leaves floating free in your cup, so an infuser or strainer is required for proper delivery of the leaves to the water to make tea.  Yes, there are tea bags but with loose leaf, you need to filter or house the leaves but have a porous mechanism to allow water to flow in and out.  So there are the standard mesh tea balls, spoon shaped infusers or perforated metal options too.  Sometimes a tea drinker just needs a bit of whimsy in their life and what better way than to use an infuser to show some of their specific style and pizzazz.  Below are just a few of the wonderful and whimsical options for the modern tea drinker.  If you plan on hosting a serious afternoon tea, I would not recommend the infusers here displayed, but the strainer might suit fine.

If you have examples of awesome, geeky, fun, whimsical tea infusers - post pictures in the comments!

(You can find these on my Amazon Wishlist called Emily's Tea Wishlist)

Tea Strainer - Empress Tea Strainer, very stylish

Skull & Crossbones Tea Infuser, whimsical

Tea-Rex Infuser, cute and funny

Water Lily Infuser, peaceful and pretty

Rubber Ducky Infuser, cute and sweet

Yellow Submarine Infuser, cheeky ;)

Flower Infuser, beautiful and thoughtful