Photo Phriday - 2015 04 17

I am heading to New York in the near future, which means a visit to my favorite tea shop: McNulty's! Don't worry, even if you aren't into these herbal teas, there is plenty for you to choose from.  Their apple-flavored black tea is my favorite.  Bonus: it pairs well with bourbon or whiskey.

Tea Time - Northern Delights Inuit Tea!

When traveling I like to try a local tea or something that is generally related to the area.  For example, in Utah I found Prickly Pear Cactus Ceylon Tea.  In Key West I found both Key Lime Black Tea and a fruit blend key lime tea.  And in Alaska... well, I got tea imported from AK's former owner, Russia. :) Anyway, tea is awesome, and when I was in Ottawa recently I came across some tea that I found intriguing...

Inuit Tea!
Keeping with my fascination of far-off lands, the Canadian Arctic completely fascinates me.  Until I can afford one of those awesome looking arctic exploration cruises, I'll have to settle for quasi-traveling via Wikipedia and Flickr.  And drinking tea!

I came across a variety of Inuit tea while looking around an awesome tea shop in Ottawa, ON.  Yay!  I opted for the variety box, which contains each of the five flavors.  What are the flavors, you ask?  They are:

• Arctic Blend (Ukiurtatuq)
• Cloudberry (Arpiqutik)
• Ground juniper (Qisiqtutauyak)
• Crowberry (Paurngaqutik)
• Labrador (Mamaittuqutik)

The website goes into great detail about the teas, noting the ingredients as well as a bit about each tea.  Other pages on the site provide information about each plant and details about the harvest.  Their dedication to keeping the tea traditional, from the use of traditional plants to hand-picked ingredients ("No mechanical equipment is employed at any phase of production.") is quite impressive!

As for how the teas actually taste, they're great!  Very earthy, and an interesting blends of flavors.

Ground Juniper Tea

Now for the sad part: the website only offers help for finding this tea in Canada. :(  You can always email them suggestions!

Other Awesome Teas
For the heck of it, here are photos of some of the other location-related teas I've found.

Prickly Pear Cactus Tea

Virgin, UT

Fruitblend Key Lime Tea

Key West, FL

Maps
You didn't expect me to blog about something like this without creating a related Google Map, did you?!

View Location-Related Tea in a larger map

Tea Time: Aloe Vera with Cactus

On a recent trip to a corner grocery store in CA I purchased some generic anise tea (mmmmmmm) as well as Tadin's Aloe Vera with Cactus Tea. Cacti are cool, and I had prickly pear tea once, so I was excited about this purchase!

dun-dun-DUN!!!


It tasted like chemicals! I had made it in a styrofoam cup [silly hotels], so I assumed that was the problem. Wrong-o. I made the tea in a real mug upon my return home, and it was just as bad.

If only I had seen this review before purchasing the stuff! Tea Amigos gave it an F and an F+. Yikes!

Steer clear of this one!

If you want to try it for yourself, let me know! I'll share!

Tea Time: Blueberry Lemon Black Tea

I drink way too much tea to not have a recurring category about it in this blog. I have creatively decided to name it "Tea Time".
[Why don't I get paid to blog, again??]

The tea aisle in The Weg is quite a magnificent place. They have a great selection of prepackaged and loose tea, and if you get there early enough, they even have some samples!

One day, while lost in said aisle, I came across their selection of Eastern Shore Teas. After much deliberation, I opted for black tea with blueberry and lemon. It is AMAZING. Usually blueberry teas are too blueberry-ful for me, but the lemon in here balances it out nicely.


I've tried various other Eastern Shore Teas, and they've all been good, but this one ranks among my favorite teas ever. Though sometimes hard to find, it's definitely worth the wait. And if there isn't a Wegmans near you, then maybe you should just buy it online?

Twiggy Tea?

Back in May I went to Vermont to visit some friends. Kate & Chris were awesome hosts, providing an excellent weekend of fun which included a picnic on North Beach / Lake Champlain, a stop at Cabot Creamery to sample cheese, an epic drive up Burke Mountain and hiking around the peak, tasting the brews at several Vermont breweries, a few stops at yummy places to eat in Burlington, and other awesome things. One such stop was at a place called Radio Bean.

Radio Bean seemed like a great place, mostly because they had [free] live music on a Sunday night! Then we ordered beverages and things got disastrous. Chris ended up with some kind of burnt/smoked/gross coffee* and I opted to try Kukicha Twig Tea.

According to Wikipedia, Kukicha is pretty amazing. They throw around phrases like "uniquely flavorful", "mildly nutty, and slightly creamy sweet flavor", and "rich in natural tannins". I find this intriguing because the tea I had that evening tasted like tree bark. Nutty? No. Creamy and sweet? No, and no. Imagine a log that has been in a campfire for an hour or so, steep that in some mouth-meltingly-hot water for a few minutes, and VOILA! You have tea!

I understand that steeping tea for too long, or even at too high temperatures, can turn the tea bitter, but this was a bit ridiculous. Perhaps at some point in my life I'll get up the nerve to try this again... Otherwise, Radio Bean seemed like a cool place.

*According to some, this type of coffee is quite common in Vermont.

New blog?! And... tea!

I think I'll use this new blog for random information that I want to share. I haven't really decided yet. I like that I can log in so easily from Google. :)

If I decide to use this blog I want to create a layout for it. You don't care.

Anyway, here is a post that will not be found ANYWHERE ELSE*! Consider yourself very lucky to have come across this blog!

Today I had hyun mi nok cha for the first time in a long time. This is because I used to drink it every day and I got kind of tired of it. But it was good to have it again today, because it is really quite tasty. For those of you who don't speak Korean, [not that I know anything more than some foods and tourist phrases] hyun mi nok cha is green tea with rice.

So, to break things down for you:

• 차 = cha = tea
  
• 녹 = nok = green
  
• 현미 = hyun mi = brown rice
• One thing I've noticed in my [very minimal] studies of Korean is that there isn't much of a standard for transliteration. I've seen "hyun mi" more frequently than "hyeonmi", but I'm not sure which is correct. If you know, tell me!
  

Now, Wikipedia has an article on brown rice tea, but the tea I have is actually a combination of green tea and rice tea. I read that this began, back in the day, as a way for the lower class to make what little tea they could afford last longer. Diluting green tea with rice eventually became quite popular, even with the ruling class! I wish I could find that article so you would not think I am making this up, but no.

So now I should go accomplish something other than writing a new blog. Yay!


*This is untrue. You should still consider yourself lucky to have found this blog.