Tea and Me

I feel like summer has suddenly returned — it's Strawberry Lemonade tea. Ingredients: Hibiscus, rosehip, apple, lemon, orange, strawberry, elderberry, sunflower petals They describe it thus: Amazing iced or hot, any time of year, all ages, girl, boy, dog . . . This versatile little number is a big hit all-round. With real strawberry bits and zesty lemon peel, it's easy to see why. Get a pitcher on the go will you, love? So, you might remember that I bought some of this tea back in the summer but lost it so I never got to try it. I still haven’t managed to find it so I’ve no idea where it went — I’m guessing the fairies stole it — so I was rather pleased to see this tea bag as one of the advent calendar gifts. The tea bag itself had a strong smell of strawberry so I was expecting that to be  the dominant flavour, but I can be a bit funny about strawberry-flavoured products so I wasn’t sure it would be to my taste. Once again, I left it way l...

Like the previous review, today's tea is one of the limited-edition teas from Bluebird Tea Co. which is in their poll to decide which ones will become a permanent blend (as will be the next few reviews, no doubt). It is called Bramble Ramble and is one of a trio of teas inspired by cocktails. This one is, apparently, based on a gin cocktail called The Bramble , of which I've never heard, but then I'm not really a cocktail aficionado (not since the dark days of the 1980s, anyway, and gin was never really my tipple of choice). Ingredients: Chinese Chunmee green tea, juniper berries, elderberries, apple pieces, hibiscus, angelica root, coriander seeds, freeze-dried blackberry, liquorice, lime leaves, cardamom, lemon peel, blackberry leaves, blackberries, raspberry pieces, strawberry pieces, flavouring.  They describe it thus: " The Bramble cocktail is a delicious, blackberry based, sweet yet sour gin cocktail, garnished with a slice of l...

Tea hasn't really been on my mind much this week as I've been suffering from a bad headache which made drinking anything but water or something mild like Milk Oolong pretty much unbearable. However, I'm now fully recovered and back to my old tea-swigging ways and I really need to get on and do some reviews. I have a lot of tea to get through as I seem to have collected rather a lot over the last few months (I was quite shocked when I returned from holiday to see how many packets of tea I actually have waiting to test — I guess they have been steadily building up so I hadn't noticed but suddenly seeing them all together was quite an eye-opener).  Having so many different teas can make my tea tasting quite tricky as I have so many new flavours to try that I can't decide which one I should go for first. This often means that I get overwhelmed, particularly if I don't have a lot of time, and so I give up and revert to old favourites (Milk Oolong (of course)...

It’s a lovely summer's afternoon with blue skies, the odd fluffy white cloud and a gentle breeze rustling through the trees and I am drinking Strawberries and Cream Tea by T2 , the company with the funky orange boxes, (okay, so really it’s 30 odd degrees out there and absolutely bloody baking so I’m hiding indoors, but I can see the blue sky and clouds out of the window). Ingredients: Apple, hibiscus, rosehip, strawberry granules (glucose syrup, strawberries, fructose, modified starch: E1414, thickener: E401), sweet blackberry leaves, yoghurt crispies (skimmed milk* yoghurt, sugar, maltodextrin, modified starch E1412, acidifier: E330), flavouring *contains milk. They describe it thus: “Strawberry fields are forever with this beautiful red brew and sweet aroma.” You may remember a while back when I went to afternoon tea at the Horseguards Hotel that I tried someone else’s Strawberries and Cream Tea and I quite liked it. Therefore, when I saw...