Tea and Me

Hi everyone, I know it’s been a little while since I last posted but with the unbearably hot weather we’ve been having in good old Blighty (which does not suit me at all), and with getting home from work too late to do anything much but slump in a chair and moan about the temperature in my (33 degrees) sitting room, I haven’t really been drinking much tea, and where I have it’s tended to be an Oolong (usually Milk Caramel as I’m jealously hoarding my minuscule remaining stock of the China Milky for a day when I really need it). Yes, I know ice tea is a big trend at the moment, but to be honest, it’s not one I’ve ever really got into as I remember the pre-made stuff like Liptons Ice Tea and Snapple, which I tried and hated in the 1980s, and it was enough to put me off trying it again. Having said that, with all my favourite tea sellers now pushing their ice tea selections, and with warm weather no doubt set to continue for the foreseeable future, it is probably time for me to r...

Today’s tea is one of the  Bluebird Tea Co. 's newest permanent offerings, Blue Raspberry . It started life as a limited edition but was recently voted back by a landslide and so now everyone can enjoy it forever. Ingredients: Chinese sencha green tea, blue pea flowers, freeze-dried raspberry pieces, natural flavouring They describe it thus: The magical butterfly blue pea flower turns your cuppa a bright blue colour, naturally! This pretty plant is full of antioxidants and our addition of raspberries + green tea makes this a health boosting brew indeed! Mixologist tip off - try adding a squeeze of lemon and see the colour change!  The first thing to say about this tea is that it really is very pretty. It is worth making it in a clear teapot because it is a beautiful vibrant blue (that I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to capture in a picture because I’m not a very good photographer). It also has a good quantity of raspberries, an...

Because of the current absurdly hot weather, I’m finding my usual go-to teas a little heavy and spicy and because I’m almost out of the China Milky Oolong  I’m having to ration myself because I can’t bear the idea of running out. I was intending to try the Strawberry Lemonade  fruit infusion from Bluebird Teas , as that sounds exactly what I need and should hopefully taste pretty good cold. Unfortunately, because it knows I want to try it the tea has completely disappeared – and believe me I have looked everywhere – well, obviously not everywhere as it is around somewhere, but I have looked in all the obvious (and some not so obvious) places and I can’t find it anywhere. Instead, I’ve finished off my stock of Rhubarb and Custard  tea (also by Bluebird and just as lovely cold as hot) and gone shopping for some more Summer-sounding teas.  Fortunately, the Bank Holiday has encouraged some tea companies to give discounts or giveaways and I’m all for it ...

In the dim and distant 1980s and 90s, anything that wasn’t ‘normal’ Indian tea was considered ‘herbal’ and was, therefore, generally only available from health food shops (or in Chinese restaurants in the case of Jasmine tea) – unlike today, when every style and flavour of tea fills up both the supermarket shelves and specialist online tea sites – oh, how far we’ve come. I used to regularly frequent Holland and Barrett as one of the only health food stores I had access to, to buy such exciting fare as those provided by the brands Heath and Heather and Yogi. One of my favourite blends was lemon and ginger (which I seem to recall was also one of Twinings first attempts at branching out into more interesting flavours) which was perfect for keeping me going in that post-lunch slump and was good for when I was bunged up with a cold or hayfever, had a sore throat or just generally felt a bit rough. Obviously, this was the start of my love of ginger-flavoured teas although I never realis...

So, tea that smells like weeds – I honestly can’t stand the stuff. When I was a teenager and still living at home my mum used to ‘enjoy’ and I use the word loosely drinking things like chamomile tea, a beverage which made me feel ill. It was the smell, mainly. I couldn’t even get as far as tasting it because the horrible smell was so off-putting. Fortunately, years have passed and chamomile is no longer quite as popular as it once was and so I’ve managed to keep away from its terrible ditch water smell, until today.  Today, I decided to try the Bluebird Tea Company’s Honey Bee Beautiful as I was having quite a stressful day at work (and that was before I found out about the General Election) and wanted something soothing. Ingredients: Rooibos, honeybush, chamomile, nettle leaves, cornflowers, calendula petals, flavour They describe it thus: ‘Have you ever considered the work it must take to make a queen bee? Their beauty regime is extensive and their mu...

Let me talk for a minute about rooibos tea. These days, it seems to have always been around and is everyone’s favourite hydrating, non-caffeinated beverage, but I remember when it was first introduced. Eager to find a tea I could drink without milk because of the diet I was on at the time, I latched onto it and forced myself to drink it, even though I honestly couldn’t stand the taste of it. Shortly afterwards a vanilla flavoured version came out, which was marginally better but still only drinkable when I was really desperate. I did find some caramel flavour and some orange flavour tea bags in one of the cheap supermarkets but they weren’t a regular visitor, and while the caramel one was just about bearable, the orange was as bad as all the others. Once I finally decided to own up to the fact that I didn’t like Rooibos my life was much improved and I never once felt the urge to go back to trying it. Until now. The Bluebird Tea Company use a lot of rooibos in their te...