The kids and I spent 3 days last week in the Southern Adirondacks. A family friend, who is quite an outdoorsman, and experienced birdwatcher, purchased about 40 acres a couple years ago near Hinckley Reservoir in upstate New York. He has been telling me that I need to come up for a visit, and we finally took him up on the offer. One thing that he mentioned in advance of the visit was that he wanted me to show him what was edible on his property. The next several posts will all be from that visit.
This is the first interview in a series of interviews called Tea Company Spotlight that I'd like to do with tea owners from all the tea companies around the world.
My first interview is with Mike Morton, the owner and founder of TeaFrog, founded in 2006 and based online out of Oakville, Ontario with distributors throughout Canada. I've spoken with Mike through reviewing many of his teas for the STeaP podcast since late 2007, and he was all too happy to answer a few questions about his company.
Chris Cason is Tavalon's tea sommelier, and in this clip, he explains out to create simple syrup infused with tea, which can then be turned into a tea soda that sounds really quite tasty! I'm looking forward to trying this out on my own at some point. Have any of you created a unique beverage with tea?
Are you a writer who also enjoys tea? There's a contest going on over at Felicitea that offers an opportunity to showcase your writing talents for free tea and other prizes. There's only about a week left, so don't waste any time if you read about the contest and want to participate!
Here's the overview, straight from Felicitea's site:
Write: We're looking for poetry, prose, whatever you like. Feel free to haiku or make up a limerick, or write out a concise little paragraph. Just write about tea and it's relationship to...
This recent post about Starbucks - as with most posts about Starbucks - caused the typical coffee cacophony over price and quality. Although I happen to like Starbucks just fine, I certainly appreciate a good homemade cup. Unfortunately, quality espresso machines are pricey and people rarely use them enough to meet their ROI ('Fess up: How many of you have a schmancy DeLonghi at home, but still go to Starbucks every day?). As a veteran barista (of both indie and corporate coffeehouses), I've come up with a stock of supplies to help make gourmet coffee at home.
Over the past few summers, cherry-based cocktails have become something of a signature for me, to the point whereupon being proposed to in mid-July a few years back, I immediately began pulping and freezing cherries for use in our wedding cocktails the following October. Fresh cherries have a cruelly short season, and I do my best to make the most of every phase from sour to Rainier to Bing. Each has a distinct level of sweetness and depth of flavor and is complemented by...
Rishi took home seven first place awards at the recent World Tea Expo. They are definitely doing something right, and I personally recommend their Jade Cloud tea.
It turns out that the flavinoids in tea may actually help ease symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases, and there seems to the possibility that flavinoids in tea may help repair the damage, not just stop it.
When I first began to dabble in green tea, I absolutely hated it. It was bitter, drying to the mouth, wretched taste, and I was left for a long time feeling that green tea just wasn't for me. Many people I knew who drank black tea felt the same way, so I concluded that green tea was for the few who had the palette for it.
Of course, this was during a time when the only other tea drinkers I knew were buying Bigelow or Lipton bags and, like myself, just throwing them in some boiling hot water and...
Kind little rituals seem to go a long way toward making marriage work, so almost every weekend, I make my husband some sweet tea. He's a Southern boy by birth (Brooklynian by marriage), and having a big ol' pitcher easily grabbable in the fridge seems to right any Mason Dixon imbalance he might be suffering at the time. I've got it down to a science, proportion-wise, but this past weekend, his itch for a sugar fix kicked in while I was at the grocery store....
In some sectors, it's practically de rigueur (and awfully hilarious) to rip on the rarefied findings of NY Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, but I've gotta say I tend to dig his indignation as expressed through the fewer-holds-barred medium of the website's Diner's Journal. I certainly jibe with his notions of the judiciously applied dress code and the diner's right to doggie bags, but I'm almost irrationally delighted by his use of the bully pulpit to call out the stealthy price jabbings of high-end restaurants.
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Kind little rituals seem to go a long way toward making marriage work, so almost every weekend, I make my husband some 
In some sectors, it's practically de rigueur (and 
