Tea, Colorful Tea

April 27 - May 3
The White, Green, Black, and Herb of Tea

Tell about your favorite tea. How do you prepare it and serve it? Milk and sugar? Plain? What are some of your best memories of serving or sipping on this tea? Share a picture if you can. Tell the health benefits of the tea(s) you prefer. Where do you purchase your tea? Is there someplace you enjoying purchasing tea from? Who from and where?

This week’s assignment for the Tea Blog-along is tough, because I like ‘em all (save red teas).  Every tea has a time and a reason.  So, as it happens around here rather regularly, grab a cuppa’ and a treat and away we go!

Here’s a day in my life with tea, or what one might look like, anyway…

Morning:  It takes a pot of black tea to knock the cobwebs out some mornings.  One of my favorites is Harney’s Irish Breakfast Tea.  It likes a healthy shot of cream (or milk) and about a half-packet of Splenda in a very large mug.  An alternative would be chai with a good dose of milk, but I’ve yet to find that perfect chai to share.

Next up, for through the day sipping is a nice green tea.  There are plenty of sites promoting the health benefits of green tea, but all I can tell you is I’m almost never sick, and if a cold finds me, it moves on quickly.  I like a variety of green teas, but one of my favorites for all day sipping in an iced form is Republic of Tea’s Sip for the Cure Pink Grapefruit Tea.  I drop four bags in the Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Pot and have a pitcher of tea ready in no time.  No sugar, no nothing. 

 

When I want a treat in a mug, I reach for Harney’s Chocolate Mint, which has a black tea base.  Again, add the dairy, please?

As the sun sets, I often switch to a white tea or an herbal for the last pot of the night.  My white tea favorite is Adagio’s Silver Needle.  Devon gave me some White Pomegranate from Trader Joe’s that makes me long for said store here. 

Herbals are special-use teas for me.  Upset tummy?  Celestial Seasoning’s Tummy Mint.   Can’t sleep?  Yogi Tea’s Bedtime.  Both of those can be found in most grocery stores or health food stores. 

My favorite tea memories still come from my early childhood.  They’re hazy memories, but I treasure those first cups and pots of tea with our neighbor in the afternoons.  I think it was a basic black tea with plenty of cream and sugar.  I still feel elegant and “all grown up” when I use sugar cubes and tongs, although now, I find cane sugar too sweet!  That inspired me to have tea parties in my bedroom and in my sandbox with that great, nearly “adult-sized” plastic set.  (Know where I can find one, new and shiny?  Not china, but PLASTIC.)