Mister Earl

Why are you so popular? classic? and smooth?  You know just how to woo the ladies…and gentlemen.  Oozing with bergamot flavour.  Floral with a citrus kick.  A dash of milk, a spoon of honey.  Don’t forget to let him cool down before you decide to kiss his lips!

I was never a huge fan of earl grey tea.  As a young girl I grew up drinking orange pekoe out of small floral painted tea cups.  In University I drank Love Tea #7, a dark chocolate strawberry flavoured black tea.  Those are only a few of my (almost possibly earl grey) black tea experiences.  Earl grey was something I ordered from Starbucks as a latte, otherwise known as a London Fog.  Earl was too typical, too regular.  I was working at Davidstea where I could drink any flavour I wanted.  I was cool without Earl.

Can you guess what I love to drink every morning now?  With a dash of milk and a spoon of honey?

You got it.  2014 was the year Mister Earl Grey and I started a love affair.

Here are my two favourite earl grey blends to drink on the regular.

1. Earl Green Cream from Tealish.  A green tea blend with bergamot and vanilla.  I am definitely a vanilla girl.  Not too sweet, a bit on the creamy side with a warm but light flavour. Yum.

2. Earl Grey Rooibos from Davidstea.  This one is awesome because it is caffeine free!  I tend to go on caffeine free detoxes every now and then when I feel as though I’ve been buzzing around a bit too much.  Earl Grey Rooibos lets me have that floral earl grey taste without the caffeine and that makes a girl real happy when she just wants a cup of sweet tea in the morning minus the buzz.  Yes you can have this one at night too, but I tend to wake up with earl grey syndrome rather than night cap it.

How do you like your Earl Grey?

 

Let’s be friends:

Fresh Vanilla Mint Iced Tea

Why hello there tea friends. I have an iced tea recipe for you today.

First, I want to stress how easy it is to make iced tea at home and what a great alternative it is to Slurpies, soda pops and Arizonas.  Any of your teas at home can be made into an iced tea.  Whatever flavour you’re in the mood for, simply double steep the tea you want to drink and pour it over ice and voila! Iced tea!

However, there are many other ways to infuse iced tea at home. I like to get a little creative every time and try something different.  Recently I have been brewing chaga mushroom tea and chilling it in the refrigerator.  After some chill time, a couple of hours or so, the chaga will be cool enough to pour over a glass of ice and enjoyed as a refreshingly earthy beverage on a hot summer day.  The chilled chaga can also be added to any of your iced tea blends, adding an earthy, full-bodied, almost vanilla-y taste to your tea.

I am still discovering places in Toronto to purchase chaga, but I found a small little shop where I can get chaga finely ground or in chunks by the pound.  House of Energy is located in Kensington Market and has everything from loose tea, crystals, handmade jewellery to mushrooms.  If you’re curious to know more about this magical mushroom, stop by House of Energy and the ladies there will let you in on the secrets of chaga.

And finally, here is an iced tea recipe I created on the fly one afternoon while cooling down from a mid-day cooking extravaganza.

1 cup of steeped Vanilla Orchid and Spearmint tea (use about a teaspoon of tea to steep each)

a few fresh mint leaves from the garden

1 cup of chilled steeped chaga mushroom

1/2 teaspoon of agave (optional for those sweet teeth out there)

So I steeped the Vanilla Orchid with Spearmint, poured it over iced and added the mint and chilled chaga altogether in a glass.  Cool down with this fresh vanilla chaga mint iced tea (that was a mouthful), it will be the healthiest thing you do that day!

Let’s be friends:

Minty Fresh

Recently, my roommate and I have been blending our own teas in the evening to create the best soothing teas before bed.  Relaxing, yet lively, this particular blend stood out to me the most.

Spearmint

Peppermint

Chamomile

Ginger

Lemon Myrtle

Delicious. 

These are the ingredients I chose one evening after enjoying a nice day off in the sun.  A great evening tea packed with many immune system boosters and contrasting yet complimenting flavors.  I hope you’re focusing on the mint here and how refreshing it tastes when you make yourself a cup of this splendid combination.  It hits my palate on the best spots!  It creates more excitement in the tea when you have that splash of mint in there.   I definitely get into some flavors more than others, especially because of where they hit my palate.

The flavors of spearmint versus peppermint are very different.  I find most people are used to the peppermint smell and taste, which is why working at DavidsTea I always try to bring both tins down for customers to smell because they each have a distinctive minty-ness to them.  Peppermint is sweeter and very soothing, blending well with other ingredients smoothly.  On the other hand, spearmint has a sharper taste that excites other teas when blended together.  It has a mint gum taste going on that pops in your mouth giving it a livelier feel.  I have been adding spearmint to a lot of my iced teas for the summer because it adds a refreshing taste that invigorates my senses!

Mint can simply be added to any of your teas.  I love adding it to greens, herbals and am currently experimenting with the black teas.  There is also a white tea from DavidsTea called ‘Coco-lemon Thai‘ that is even better with a scoop of spearmint leaves added.  Tastes like a Mojito…minus the rum.

Lastly, everyone wants to know what each specific tea is “good for”.  Generally people know that peppermint soothes the stomach and is relaxing, can relieve headaches and has cooling properties when applied topically.  However, I wanted to contribute to a new fun fact about spearmint, so I hopped on Google and typed in “what is spearmint good for?” and this is what the Googlers came up with…

This made me laugh.  Do people actually believe this? So I googled further… “Spearmint hair” and found this…

In conclusion, I’ve learned that if I drink two cups of spearmint tea a day I can combat all that extra body hair, which is EXACTLY what I was hoping spearmint would do.

Thanks Google! 🙂

Let’s be friends:

Rainbow Raspberries

Remember Tealish?

Last week on a rainy Monday I walked into Tealish for the second time to check out some of their fruitier blends. Oh man this place is great, I love again the cozy atmosphere that wraps you up in a blanket.  It is also cool to be a customer in a tea store as most often I am usually behind the counter making tea for people at Davids.  Smelling all the teas does not get old. I love it.

I picked out a delicious coconut oolong to drink and bough two packets of tea as follows;

1. Razmintazz: a herbal tea with peppermint, giant raspberries, chamomile, apple and hibiscus.  The Tealish girl sold it to me by saying it tastes like pop rocks. Yum! Even though I don’t get that pop rocks taste when I drink it, it still satisfies my palate completely.  It’s so refreshingly fruity with a pop! of mint.

2. Rainbow Rooibos: what a great fruity rooibos with pomegranates, strawberries, raspberries, pineapple and rosebuds.  Not overly fruity as you would expect with so many flavours and that’s what I love about it.

I need to have a tea party soon so I can share all these great teas with my friends. Look at these dinosaurs just enjoying their tea.  The little guy being the hostess:)

Let’s be friends:

Top 5 Caffeine Facts

1. Determining the levels of caffeine in a tea can be very difficult because there are so many variables that need to be considered.  Such variables include, soil, vegetation, water temperature, steeping time etc.
2. The steeping time can change the amount of caffeine that is released into your cup of tea.  A black tea doesn’t necessarily have more caffeine than a green tea, but it tends to have that stereotype because you generally steep it longer than a green or white tea.
3. Adding herbs and spices changes the level of caffeine because there is less of the actual Camillia Sinensis plant in the brew.
4. Studies of caffeine levels in tea are all different; the scientific conditions in which the study takes places are also different then how each and every one of us brews tea at home.
5. The caffeine in coffee is not the same in tea, it enters your blood system a lot slower and gives you a nice gradual increase of energy rather than that jolt you get from coffee.

If the tea you’re drinking makes you feel good as much as it tastes good than don’t worry about the caffeine levels and just drink it!:)

Let’s be friends: