2026, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Tea Time

30 Comments

I don’t know if it is the increased humidity and cold and storms here, but Husband and I have been drinking much more tea than we did in ND. Husband is a great tea maker and we have nice teapots and infusers.

If all goes well, we will have an order of a variety of teas delivered today. I particularly like fruit teas like Rote Grutze, a North German tea with hibiscus and dried fruit. I also like East Friesien tea you must have with cream and rock sugar. The cream is poured in a specific way to make it look like eruptions. Husband prefers strong black teas like those from Scotland and Ireland.

I never had much tea before I went to England as a college junior, and had tea in a tea shop. I tried to sweeten my tea with what looked like sugar, but turned out to be coarse salt. My, did I get odd looks from the servers! I like lemon in my black tea, but the salt was really awful! They gave me a new pot of tea.

What is your favorite tea? Sweetened or lemon? Tea cakes?

30 thoughts on “Tea Time”

  1. On a daily basis, I drink TraderJoe’s Irish Breakfast. It’s inexpensive, in bags so it’s not fussy- no fruit, no flowers, no milk or sugar, no ceremony. Years ago, I queried online what tea UK expats found to be most like the tea back home and they favored TJ’s Irish Breakfast.

    We also have Japanese green teas- hojicha and genmaicha, both in bags and loose, that we make on occasion. And Robin keeps several herbal teas she likes.

    Robin has teapots from Japan. Early in our marriage she collected teapots and we still have many of them, both whimsical and utilitarian, also a substantial accumulation of Japanese teacups.

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  2. I’m not a tea connoisseur, but I had to stop drinking coffee to save my voice. If I could drink coffee again I would – without delay.

    My favorite tea is YogiTea Green Blueberry Slim Life. I like to imagine that I will have a slimmer life. It hasn’t worked. I also like Republic of Tea Vanilla Almond (black tea). My favorite herbal tea has long been YogiTea Detox. I brew a cup of that with an ounce of apple cider vinegar and a heaping teaspoon of local honey.

    I wonder if I will be able to “like” anything today.

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  3. I now drink my tea straight up… For black tea, I’ll have to agree with Bill about TJ’s Irish Breakfast, which I buy whenever I can get to Trader Joe’s. I like PG Tips when I can get it (LaCrosse co-op), but apparently they’ve made some changes lately that are garnering customer complaints. I’ve found at our co-op Yorkshire Gold by Taylor’s of Harrogate, another British tea that is quite good.

    TJ’s also has a really nice green tea, Moroccan Mint, and for herbals there are several blends by Celestial Seasonings. I know I’m forgetting something, back later.

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  4. Not a big tea drinker, but my favorite is Assam. First tasted it at Harrod’s in London for their “normal” afternoon tea. Fabulous. I wonder what the fancy tea party was like. I’m not too choosy about teas. Sometimes if I feel like a cup, I’ll randomly pull one from the tea cupboard. For two people who don’t drink much tea, we have enough supply to last for years!

    If I have anything with my tea, a flaky, sweet, light, flavorful scone works as well as anything. I used to have cupcakes with my occasional tea at Perfect Day Cakes in Owatonna when it was open.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  5. RIse and Shine, Baboons,

    I am not a tea drinker. I do make iced tea in the summer time with the cheapest tea bags available. I guess coffee won my heart years ago. That is all.

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    1. I resided in Taiwan for nearly 40 years, and drank a LOT of iced tea from street vendors, but rarely anything at home. At work there was a machine that dispensed boiling water for office workers to brew their own tea. One day, I went through the kitchen cabinets at home and brought a LOT of tea to my office. It took more than a year of drinking copious amounts of the brew to work through it all, by which time I was hooked, but didn’t want to pay for the good stuff. I found my self “computing bags to price” at the grocery store, and all too often opted for the cheapest stuff, which wasn’t worth the hot water that it took to brew a cup. Now, when I’m back in Taiwan to visit or to vote, I buy good stuff, but don’t brew it “properly” in a little Taiwan teapot when back home again.

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      1. i have a silicone tube i put teaspoons of the good stuff in and throw it in the pot of hot water. english size pot not japanese. i vary between leaving it in the water forever snd getting a bite to my tea and taking it out after 5 or 6 minutes
        at starbucks they give you two bags with a large tea. one is the correct number. ask forcthecsecond on the side and put it in your pocket to take home

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  6. i am a black tea guy. i used to laugh about all my high falooting tastes that cost more but with tea i like liptons just fine. i prefer earl gray but earl gray ranges from a to z in flavor and intensity. i like bigelow and twinings but i landed on amazon cheap loose tea. $15 a pound. davisons is the name of the tea company. in an ideal world i mix 2 teaspoons of earl gray with 2 teaspoons of earl gray with lavendar. but all black teas are welcome. my daughters father in law made a gift of ceylon they sell in kosovo. i have it in 4 different cuts from big leaves to course cut to fine cut and powder. i try them all and have full leaves in my thermos today. i also like english and irish breakfast (trader joes is wonderful and cheap) assam darjeeling and on occasion the green tea from the westlake area of china is welcome. i got introduced to tea by my 1st girlfriend who taught me about chammomole with honey and constant comment orange pequot tea.i was bummed when costco discontinued liptons 3/100 bag packages for 9.99 it was a great deal. well they brought it back at 11.99 and i bought it just to show support. then the price went to 9.99 and i was elated and figured lipton and costco must have had a talk sbout getting sales back up to a better level then i saw it went to 4.99 and looked like it was discontimued. i bought a bunch more then it was definitely discontinued and sale price was lowered to 2.49 then 1.49 to get it gone. at 1.49 i went to a secont store and ended up with a pallet of it. cost me about 50-75 dollars for a 3 year supply if that was my only tea but mixing it up with my other favorites it will last much longer, the stack ysed to be chin high and now it is shirt pocket high. a while back i wondered how many bags there wereand did the math. a little over 9000 bags. 3 to a thermos, 6 to a pot of iced tea concentrate. i burn through about a box a month and have about 50 boxes left so im good for a while. liptons tea bags never go bad. i have found tea bags i know to be more than 5 years old and the is no change in taste. if anything it improves.
    no fruit teas for me. i had a chealsea mechanic who introduced me to irish whiskey cream and sugar. its good but i prefer irish coffer to that. 1 st pattys party a year.
    i bought buddahist health teas in a china monestary but i cant remember what they do. i have a 4’ cupboard with three shelves of teas and accessories (plus the pallet in the garage) i will be reloading on my earl gray from amazon this week ( im out of the lavender and only have a little regular left.
    its been pointed out that i should plug water back into my life. i only do tea. water should be added to my regimented intake program. it really should

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  7. Kelly started drinking tea a few years ago and I joined her. A green tea; cinnamon flavored something… Kelly is very precise with the temperature and timing. I’m not. I start with tea at home, then make a coffee at the college. “coffee” with milk and caramel flavoring.

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  8. I’ve become more of a tea drinker as I try to cut my coffee consumption downand I currently have some Earl Grey and Lady Grey that was given to me by a friend who got it at Fortnum & Mason. I still have some from Tea Source when that was still on Cleveland. I can get some types still at the co-op. They are my source for Lapsang Soochong, which I ration out as it’s a bit dear.

    My mother liked Constant Comment and I try like to have a bit of that around for nostalgia. Always a big box of Lipton bags too, although I confess to preferring loose tea in one of the little thimbles my grandma had.

    I like tea pots, but don’t like how fast they cool off. Need a cozy, I guess.

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  9. I can drink tea or coffee. I like both, but I cannot switch back and forth I have been a coffee drinker for a decade. I guess I will stay here. When I was drinking tea, it was tea, no additives. Irish breakfast, Yorkshire, Darjeeling, 500 mile to name a few.
    Clyde

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    1. Sandy was a big tea drinker, had to be decaf. Constant Comment, Red Rose, Lipton. We had two small matching teapots, nothing out of the ordinary, so we could each brew our own together. But decaf tea, and decaf coffee, still contain quite a bit of caffeine. She eventually had to stop all tea, which was sad. That’s why I switched to coffee. As mig I like smoked tea and earl Grey. Towards the end of the time Sandy was living with me, we would take her to high teas along with our two Minnesota grandchildren. She and they would take only small sips. The Arb was our favorite place for these. When I made tea, I used loose tea in the bags you can buy to put loose tea in.

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  11. I am a dedicated tea drinker and now avoid putting sugar or milk in it. I steep for 3-5″, trying to avoid too much caffeine or bitterness. I drink mostly herbal and organic teas (hard to find) but also have Earl Grey. I love Tea Source Gold, Earl Grey Lavender and Lapsang Souchon (great in cold weather) but dislike teas with lots of hibiscus. PM tea is usually chamomile lavender. I never drank much coffee but now I don’t drink any. Love coffee ice cream however!

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  13. At Christmas, I finally discovered that Republic of Tea still had my favorite Comfort and Joy spiced black tea, in loose leaf form anyway. And it reminded me of their other flavored black teas – Ginger Peach, Blackberry Sage, Earl Greyer, and Krista mentioned Vanilla Almond… They come in these lovely tall canisters, though are quite pricey at this point.

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  15. I’ve been tea-only since college. Never got used to coffee, possibly because (according to Husband) my mom made terrible coffee (like someone dipped a brown crayon in hot water, was his description).

    Although he’s a coffee drinker, Husband makes wonderful chai masala for me that I drink every morning. During the rest of the day, my go-to is Earl Grey or English Breakfast, which I get from a company called Ahmed Tea. Bengal Spice from Celestial Seasonings is a no-caffeine favorite. My tea cupboard is full of many others, including green tea, Lady Grey and others we bought in London, many fruit and spice teas, and Lipton, which we use for iced tea.

    I don’t often use milk or sugar, except when we go to London. No lemon, ever. I have two teapots, one from Rosenthal, and one with a Beatrix Potter Peter Rabbit design.

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  16. How does one become an aficionado of tea?
    I can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi.
    I suppose it’s practice. But how much practice is accomplished with one tasting?
    Two or three?
    “I don’t like this.”

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