Update on Amazon (US & UK)

So, here's the happy ending: I had the Garth book before three o'clock the day after I ordered it. I've given it a quick skim; I'm sure I'll post about various odds and end that come up as I read it.

And to give them due credit, the UK amazon processed the cancellation right away, so that's all taken care of as well.

And if that weren't good news enough, the long-awaited packet of my current favorite Yunnan and Keemun finally reached me as well.

And now it's back to reading a slim volume of George Sterling (as a precursor to Clark Ashton Smith) and continuing on WATERSHIP DOWN. In token of which it felt entirely appropriate that on yesterday's walk from here to the local wetlands and back I saw seven rabbits on the way out and twelve on the way back, aa new record.

--John R.

The Greenwood Tea Room

So, since I had several days in Shreveport this week, I decided that if I found myself with any spare time at all I shd try to find a little more about the city, where I stay for a night or two once or twice a year but never get a chance to poke around in outside the hotel, since I only come here on family visits. This time, I decided to try to find at least one good restaurant and one interesting walk.

Between various touristy booklets in the hotel lobby and some online searches, I found several places that looked potentially interested. Some turned out no longer to exist when I went there, or at least not at their listed locations. Some were too far away (i.e., not actually in Shreveport but in the outlying area). Some I simply didn't have time for, since most of my stay is devoted to a family crisis. But one I did try out was the Greenwood Tea Room on Line Avenue.

http://www.glenwoodvillagetearoom.com/

I admit I had reservations about the place, since it's inside a gift shop, and Janice and my's experience with a similar set up in Portland (or, actually, in the Portland area) last year had been a little disappointing. Also, looking at their web site, I discovered that the owner-operator is a big fan of Glen Beck,* so I knew her views and mine on many issues wd be worlds apart.

In the event, I'm glad I went: it turns out to be a really neat shop. I was particularly taken with some contemporary angel art that reminded me of the art in Gaiman's THE DAY I TRADED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH (wish I knew the name of the artist). I was at the wrong time of day for High Tea (given the chance, I'd have chosen what they call their Scone Tea), so I had an early lunch followed by late breakfast. That is, I had two cups of soup: one of their Victorian Soup (which was new to me) and one of their tomato basil (wh. also had a lot of other things in it, like carrots). This I followed with a freshly baked blueberry scone with lemon curd and whipped cream, all accompanied by a small pot of strong black tea kept nice and hot by a tea light.

Yesterday being my last full day in Shreveport, I stopped by one last time, and yet again found them going above and beyond. I'd thought they served until four, but it turns out this is when the shop closes; the tea room part usually shuts down at three. However, finding out that all I wanted was a pot of tea and a scone, they insisted I come in and sit down while they got together tea and scone for me. It was a comforting touch to be so welcomed by strangers: a reminder that Southern hospitality really does exist.

So, many thanks to the tea room folks for a quiet, calming moment in an uncertain week.

And now, on to Magnolia!

--John R.

*cf. for example her post re. her trip to the holy land to attend his rally last October ( http://host.pappapak12.com/~glenwood/article_21/Ancient-Israel-October-2011.htm ). I was particularly puzzled by the statement that of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, only "one to two percent" were fanatics who hated America, which totals "91 million" radicals. It's been a long time since I took a math class (12th grade!), but I'd thought 1% of 1.2 billion was 12 million, making 2% twenty-four million. Don't know where the 91 million figure comes from (that's about seven and a half percent, by my reckoning). In any case, more projection on our part than any correlation to reality.

Four Teas in Four Days

So, last night I finally finished my current project* (only one month late), an essay for the French Tolkien journal TOLKIENDIL. Read it out loud to Janice tonight, who didn't find any passages that needed to be toned down, so it's good to go. Sent it off before midnight, and will compile the Bibliography to accompany it tomorrow. Even better, this is really two deadlines in one: this same piece will form the core of my paper at the Medievalist Congress in Kalamazoo next May, so I'm well ahead of schedule there -- although I'll have to work out how to shorten the delivery time by half and still have a coherent presentation. But that's a good problem to have.

And so today I would be celebrating The Dance of Doneness, except that we just got back from our week's vacation to Trout Lake (near the foot of Mt. Adams), where we stayed with friends Bijee and Don (a.k.a. Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns and her husband, Don Willner), followed by two days in Portland (and some serious poking about in Powell's--two sessions totaling somewhere between four and five hours worth, I'd say). So in a sense we've pre-celebrated. And one way in which we did so -- going out to tea together -- formed something of a running theme over the last few days.

Having arrived in Portland Wednesday night, Thursday we visited the Lan Su Chinese Gardens in Portland, a favorite of ours (this is I think our third visit there). And, as is our tradition, we ended up by visiting the teahouse after an hour or so of first the tour and then wandering about. This being a Feast Day,** I had an order of their fava beans (wh. they call 'horsebeans') and Janice their mooncake, each accompanied by fine tea in tiny pots and minuscule cups and, as an added bonus, live music on a kind of Chinese zither made of oak and redwood. Janice had an interesting thought that we were able to confirm: the Chinese music notation the perormer was using on her sheet music is nothing like the standard staves and notes we use in Western music. Interesting. And I got to see both a Magnolia and a Mimosa ('silk tree') in the garden -- though no actual tea trees. I always enjoy visiting Chinese gardens, and I'm already looking forward to the next one, whenever that eventually comes.

Friday it was the Portland Japanese Garden's turn, which we'd seen once in the company of my sister-in-law maybe a dozen years back. Unlike the Chinese gardens I've seen (e.g., the Lan Su in Portland and Sun Yat Sen garden in Vancouver), which are inclosed in a wall and include a number of buildings within the garden itself, Japanese gardens have much more open space, far fewer structures, and tend to have a steep green cliff forming a backdrop on one side (though whether this is happenstance or a deliberate feature I do not know). Now I'm curious to visit a formal English walled garden when we're over there sometime next year and compare it as well.

Afterwards we had been planning to see the Portland Zoo, but having gotten a late start we went right to the next item on our itinerary: high tea at Tea Thyme & Lavender in Beaverton, on the west side of Portland. This turned out not to be a tea room as such but an antique store; the reason they ask for reservations is that it gives them time to clear off a table and make a place to sit. The high tea that followed was unusual in having a distinct French touch (e.g., gateau rather than cake, &c). It was okay, but I find I'm of the mind that lavender is better as a scent than as a flavor ingredient in a scone.

Friday night having seen us arrive back in Kent to a welcoming array of kitties, we drove into Seattle Saturday afternoon for this year's Northwest Tea Festival, where we roamed around the room sampling many, many teas from the tiny free cups they give you when you come in. They also gave each attendee a free canvas tote bag, and I managed to fill mine with purchases of four ounces of Yunnan here, a small packet of Dian Hong there. Last year (or was it the year before?) when visiting the Tea Festival with friends Anne & Sig, we'd all seen much taken w. a 'tea wheel', a sort of color chart listing adjectives suitable for describing tea flavors and undertones. This year they had a smaller, portable version available for purchase, so naturally I got one.

And finally, today (Sunday the 2nd) we decided to make up for the rather disappointing high tea of two days ago by revisiting a tea room we'd really liked on our two previous visits (once for Janice's birthday, once w. our friends Gwen and Stan): the Secret Gardens down in Sumner. It did not disappoint: good strong tea, a pleasant setting, and most excellent tea-treats. We ate till we cd eat no more, then made our way home to reflect on an interesting vacation and prepare ourselves to plunge back into the new workweek tomorrow morning. It promises to be a busy one . . .

--John R.

current reading: BEFORE ADAM by Jack London [1907]

just finished: THE BRICK MOON [1869; 1899]

.....................

*"A Fragment, Detached: THE HOBBIT and THE SILMARILIION"

**i.e., we were off the diet.

The Tea Tree Blooms

So, Thursday I discovered that the tea plant (a gift a year or two ago from Anne & Sig) had two little flowers on it. I know Anne and Sig's tea plant had bloomed earlier this year, and had assumed ours didn't because it was still struggling.

No longer the case, I think. There were two tiny blossoms, more like an apple blossom than a camellia: white petals with a yellow center, and what looked like a third blossom on the way. I took some photos and will try to figure out how to upload them, in which case I'll add them as an update at the end of this post. Just in case I don't succeed, as seems likely, here as the next best thing is a painting of a tea tree blossom:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/dosankodebbie/art/5808718-tea-blossom-camellia-sinensis

--John R.

current audiobook: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

current reading: PICTURING TOLKIEN (last essay!), RENDER UNTO ROME, GILGAMESH.

Nineteen Years (And Counting)

So, it was great to have guests, and to see family again, and to head out in a group to see the sights. But today's being our anniversary reminds us that it's also nice to have quiet time together, just the two of us. Yesterday we went out to High Tea at a teahouse we'd never been to before, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Miyagi's people, Ginger & Doug, from the last time we cat-sat him, expressed in the form of a gift certificate to the Village Eatery and Tea Company.

Now, both Janice and I love a good English High Tea, and have been to them at a variety of places over the years -- Bits of Britain in Milwaukee (long since gone, alas*), the Empress in Victoria (now there's some folks who really know how to throw a High Tea), Queen Mary's Tearoom in the U-district (which we had liked, but which changed recently, and not for the better), Secret Garden in Sumner (a fairly recent discovery, a year or two back, and our current favorite), and probably one or two others we tried in passing when we were visiting various cities.** So trying one of our favorite things in a new place seemed like a good 'something old/something new' thing to do for the anniversary.

The teahouse itself is way up in Bothell, on the far (north) side of Seattle from here, but easily accessible from 405 (once local construction let us get on 405, that is). It turned out to be part of a little faux-rustic pedestrian mall called Country Village -- a bit like Delevan's Miss Millie's Pancake House, but on a larger scale. The Tea itself was v. nice: mulligatawny soup (good, but surprised to see it as part of a Tea), tea sandwiches (which I naturally skipped) and fruit (which I v. much enjoyed), and a fine array of tea-cookies and pastries; the scone was particularly memorable, as was the pecan bar I picked up on the way out (which turned out to have some dried fruit in it; v. nice!). We didn't technically have their 'high tea', because (oddly enough) it turns out they don't serve high tea on Sundays. Still, what we had was the next step down (everything their High Tea wd have offered, except for a salad, and honestly who ever went to a High Tea for a salad?). The only thing lacking, actually, was the tea itself, which was generic to begin with and got increasingly bitter as it continued to brew in the pot throughout the meal. I bought a few small packets of loose tea to bring home afterwards (rather startled to find Bloody Mary pictured on one of them!), but they turned out to all be generic black tea under a variety of names.

Still, we had good fun, between the tea for two, exploring the neat toys-for-brainy-tots shop, admiring their v. calm ducks and wading crows, and seeing the weird chicken: a wandering rooster who seemed to have the run of the place, inside and out; with his mop-top of feathers he looked a bit like a secretary bird wearing a wig.

Then, as if this had not done our diet enough mischief, the next night we went down to Federal Way to have gnocchi (and bruschetta. and lasagna. AND dessert.). Another quiet meal together, reminiscing about how we wound up together. And since the story of my proposing to Janice is more fun when she tells it, I'll stop there.

--John R.

*I have a great picture of Janice and Taum on my desk, taken there many years gone by.

**I know there's a great one in Oxford I discovered on my last visit there which I'm really looking forward to introducing Janice to next time we're over there together

Global Warming in Your Cup

or, A Tempest in Your Teacup

So, the last day of the year Janice shared with me an interesting, though ominous, sign of Things To Come. People often talk about Climate Change in the abstract (e.g., projected rates of icemelt), which is easy to discount or deny, rather than looking at specific examples (e.g., wintering ranges of birds), which remove all doubt. Now here comes another manifestation that really hits home for some of us: climate change is now affecting the tea crop in India. Specifically, the amount of tea being grown and harvested is dropping precipitously, by 100 million tons in three years in one area (Assam) -- and that's a LOT of tea. What's worse, the remaining tea is turning out to be second-rate, producing a weaker brew.

What does all this have to do with the price of tea in China, you may ask? Well, Assam produces more than half of India's tea. And India produces about a third of the whole world's tea. So a dramatic change, in both quality and quantity, in Assam tea has a direct impact on about one-sixth of all the tea out there. Image if you drank a modest three cups a day: now every other day one of those would be bland. If that happened with coffee at yr local coffee shop -- one in six cups was seriously off -- you'd probably switch to a new coffeeshop. The fact that the change happened in such a short time is particularly worrying for remaining tea plantations in, say, Ceylon.

For that matter, I've been having trouble buying good Keemun and Yunnan lately. My favorite tea shop has been out of both for months, forcing us to make do with trying other suppliers who so far have come through with some pretty good Yunnan substitutes but only the mildest of Keemuns, alas. I'd heard this was because after centuries of making black tea for the export market, the Chinese had recently begun drinking it themselves, so that less of the really good stuff is available outside China these days.

Given that tea is a fairly delicate crop, I hope the troubles in Assam don't spread. I'm not that big a fan of India teas -- Assam tastes flat to me, as does Ceylon (though they can be pretty good when doctored with cream and honey), while Darjeeling is too weak for my taste (always excepting the excellent Darjeeling we used to get in the old days from The Coffee Trader in Milwaukee, alas long gone). Most of America's tea, in teabags, comes from Argentina of all places, or so I understand from James Norwood Pratt's account -- but if the home of one of the world's two main strands of tea-plant, Assam, is in sudden decline, what must be in store for those places it's been transplanted to where it's less well adapted?

Do I think this news will serve as a wake-up call? Having read Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE, I'd say: Not really. As the saying goes, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Now if the same sort of thing were to befall coffee or wine drinkers, then maybe folks wd get serious about trying to mitigate the damage (the idea that there's still time to "stop" climate change is like suggesting drawing up blueprints for an avalanche-prevention sytem after the snow and rocks are already heading down the hill).

Here's the original post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/31/climate-change-effects-tea-leaves_n_803049.html

Happy 2011, all!

--John R.

current reading: TROY & HOMER

just finished: THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR by Conan Doyle

The Tea Tree

So, for several years now I've thought it wd be nice to have a tea tree -- since I drink so much tea, and get so much enjoyment out of it, taking care of one just felt like nice payback. And now, thanks to a gift from Anne & Siegfried (many thanks!), I have one.*

To be specific, my new Camellia sinensis ('Chinese camellia') turns out to have been "grown from seed harvested in Sochi, Russia". I knew the Russians loved tea** but hadn't thought it grew so far north --though Sochi turns out to be about as far south as Russia gets (the Georgian coast of the Black Sea), and I only recently got some Turkish tea that said it'd been grown on the Black Sea, so I guess that all fits.***

In any case, it's currently a healthy-looking little shrub about two feet high, which I just repotted this morning into what was, last year, a tomato planter. I'll be curious to see if it eventually flowers once it gets established. Luckily, according to the label, and I quote, it's "plenty hardy". I don't know how big it'll get -- the two camellias (or 'winter roses', as I liked to call them) at Williamson Street, alas destroyed when the house was knocked down, had grown over the course of a half-century to be about eight feet tall, and there's a pair on an abandoned lot on Meeker Street in downtown Kent I sometimes walk past that must be thirty feet: by far the biggest camellias I've ever seen and larger than I thought they cd get. Our new friend's label says it cd grow to eight to ten feet, but I suspect that in a pot it won't reach anything near that height.

At any rate, it's nice to have a Tea Tree of our own at last. I think I'll name him 'Camel'.

And, coincidently enough, I also learned this weekend that someone has finally rebuffed the old canard that drinking tea dehydrates you:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5281046.stm

Given that they mention people over forty whose tea drinking makes up 70% of their fluid intake, I wonder what they'd make of someone who hits 100% on an average day?

--JDR

*my several attempts to grow one from seed having failed utterly.

**a fact I learned from the climax of a bad spy novel in Readers Digest years and years ago, where a clever Soviet spy gave himself away by accepting a cup of tea rather than asking for coffee, like a true-blue American wd have done. gah. But then, I learned about the Iron Crown of Lombardy from a Richie Rich comic; you just never know where you'll pick up something interesting from.

***And a quick check at wikipedia confirms that the NE coast of Turkey -- i.e., the part of Turkey closes to Georgia -- has been home to a Turkish tea industry since the 40s & 50s, including a "Tea Research Insitute" that's about the same age I am.

Bainbridge Island

So, yesterday our planned meeting of the book group fell apart on us due to a lot of complications on a lot of people's part. We had been intending to meet at the Teahouse Kuan Yin in Ballard (west of the university district) to discuss the Percy Jackson novel THE LIGHTNING THIEF, but with the afternoon unexpectedly free, we decided this wd be a good time to visit Bainbridge Island, adding it to our successful 'visit-an-island-in-the-Sound' trips, starting with last year's trips to Whidbey Island and then, a few months later, San Juan.

Bainbridge Island is much closer and much easier to reach: we just drove down to the Tukwila park-and-ride, took the light rail up to Pioneer Square, walked from there down to Pier 52, and took the ferry across to Eagle Harbor. Arriving at the August Moon Teahouse, we found it is no more, calling for a change in plan. So we strolled about a bit, stopping in a nice local bookstore (Eagle Harbor Books: "independent since 1969") which apparently does a lot of book signings and promotions of local authors. Another place had some really nice antiques and art pieces, including a Naga door and some 4,000 year old Mongolian pots, but our search for a place to sit down and enjoy a nice pot of tea continued to elude us.

One place, a candle store called Paraffine, sold tea, but it turned out to be tea leaves (in many different varieties, packaged in Finland), not tea you could drink then and there. I hadn't realized the Finns were big tea drinkers -- though it does make a kind of sense; I knew the Russians loved tea, and the Russia had ruled over Finland for a good bit of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, but it hadn't occurred to me that any acculturation had taken place. I departed, three packets of tea (Sir Robert's Blend, Manor Blend, and Assam TGFOP) and three candles (a sm. yellow, a black pyramid, and a red spiced beeswax votive) the richer.

Not far away was Churchmouse Yarns & Teas, but here again there turned out to be no tea-drinking, only dry tea; we departed from there with 3 oz of their Canadian Breakfast and a free sampler of their Churchmouse Winter blend ("Created especially for Churchmouse Yarns & Teas by Steven Smith Teamaker").

And then, finally, we came across the Blackbird Bakery (and not where our map said we wd), where in addition to pastries and the like you cd buy a large pot of tea and take it outside to relax and enjoy a nice hot cup. So we sat outside, enjoyed our tea, talked about the RIck Riordan book (we both liked the whole series), and watched an industrious little sparrow take care of any crumb anyone might drop.

After that we wandered back down to the ferry, took it back across (turns out you can see Seattle quite distinctly from the Bainbridge harbor, well enough that even someone with my eyesight cd make out the Space Needle to the north and stadium to the south. Reversing our earlier sequence got us home long before dark, where the cats all insisted it must be suppertime. A pleasant trip, if less memorable than the Whidbey and San Juan ones.

Next time, we'll give Vashon a try.

--JDR

current reading: the CATH MAIGE TUIRED [11th century], tr. Eliz. Gray [1983]

Hobbit Tea from Mennonites

So, thanks to friend Steve (hi Stan!), I recently learned that someone had started selling HOBBIT TEAS OF THE SHIRE. And, naturally, I immediately decided to order some -- as someone else pointed out (hi Ed), it's almost as if there were a market made up just of people like me.* I had trouble making the online ordering work** and so eventually just called them up and ordered over the phone. The goods arrived yesterday, and today I've been sampling. Not bad.

There are three favors, each in its own nicely decorated box (which can serve as nice little keepers long after the teabags within are returned to the dust):

(1) Gandalf the Gray Tea

(2) Hobbiton Meadow Mint, &

(3) Bilbo Baggins Breakfast Blend.

The first isn't really tea at all but a chamomile/rooibis blend. I like the idea of chamomile tea but have never really been a fan of the taste, which reminds me of warm grassy water, but it turns out adding the rooibis makes it a little more flavorful. The accompanying text on its box reads Chamomile has for many years grown beside the road leading to Hobbiton from Brandywine Bridge. The flowers are harvested for a soothing tea. While most of the South Farthing has been taken up with the growing of pipeweed, meadows of the red bush still remain, and are much prized as a tea throughout the Shire. Chamomile & red bush tea has been enjoyed by Wood Elves, Hobbits, and even the old wandering wizard dressed in gray.

The second is minty indeed, being a mix of spearmint and peppermint. I prefer black teas with mint in them to straight herbal blends, but think this wd be a gd brew mixed about one-to-two with some black teabags. Have to try that tomorrow and see. The boxtext reads The low places surrounding Bywater supply patches of mint, which are harvested by nearly every Hobbit in the Shire. Some, like the Gamgees, have taken to cultivating the herb in their garden plots, and have come up with a long list of medical benefits for the tea it produces. Hobbiton Meadow Mint is a popular drink in the Shire at weddings and parties.

The third, which I liked best of the three, contains actual tea (definitely a point in its favor in my book), along w. some orange peel, red clover, and cinnamon. The back of the box reads Bilbo Baggins Breakfast Blend did not originate in the Shire. The mixture of tea, orange, and cinnamon was first blended by Bandobras Took during one of his adventures far from home. Young Belladonna Took brought the recipe with her Under the Hill. Her son Bilbo shared the brew with Thorin & Company in the morning as they started off for the Lonely Mountain, and from that morning on, as far and wide as the members of the Company traveled, the brew was known as Bilbo Baggins Breakfast Blend.

Tolkien trivia question #1: can you spot the slip in the name of one of these three teas?

Tolkien trivia question #2: can you spot the slip in the fictional backstory provided for one of these teas?

Tolkien trivia question #3: can you find any surprising feature on the Shire map (see below) appearing on the boxes?

--all of which just goes to show that they're tea-merchants, a small family business, and not Tolkien scholars.

For more on their story, wh. is quite interesting (and where the Mennonite/Amish angle comes in), see the following, wh. I first found reported on The One Ring.net:

http://www.cleveland.com/taste/index.ssf/2010/02/mennonite_farmer_gets_ok_to_ma.html

One nice little touch is that the article names the three student artists from the Cleveland Institute of Art responsible for the project's art, which I rather like: Yusef Abonamah (who did the Gandalf box), Albert McClelland, & Daniel Farruggia (who I assume were each responsible for one of the other boxes, but I don't know who did which one). Although it doesn't leap out at first, each box also has an attractive folksy map of the Shire that I haven't seen before, although not everything appearing on the map is actually there on Tolkien's original (at least not in the same place!).

For more about the tea, or to order, see their website: http://hobbittea.com/ (click on the image of Bilbo's round green door to enter the site)

For more on the history of the company involved, and how a family dairy farmer decided to go grow organic mint instead, see http://mintbrookmeadows.com/

All in all, given that this is an officially licensed product from Tolkien Enterprises (The Saul Zaentz Company), I think that as movie merchandising tie-ins it rivals the Lord of the Nazgul piggybank from the Bakshi horror as Most Unexpected.

--JDR

................

*Ed's actual words were "It's like they decided upon a demographic by drawing a circle around John".

**My wife's comment: "Mennonites cdn't make a website work? Go figure!"

The Tea Cupboard

So, caught up in the spirit of spring cleaning, today I cleaned out, organized, and cataloged my tea cupboard. I don't think it's much of a secret to anyone who knows me that I like tea, and that I drink a lot of it. I used to drink mainly iced tea, but over time I've slowly made the switch to where it's now almost always hot tea instead. When I was in graduate school I used to make up huge pans of very sweet (iced) tea (Lipton, which at that point I considered "the good stuff"), boiled on the stove till it was good and strong and, after the addition of a cup of sugar, when cooled down stored in the refrigerator in old Ragu jars (one batch filled about three and a half jars, as I remember). I remember that when Taum dropped by to talk Tolkien, we'd sometimes go through an entire batch. Nowadays I make up two thermosfuls each morning, almost always from loose tea rather than teabags, and anywhere from three to five pots total over the course of the day, most of it sweetened with Tupelo honey, since I gave up sugar six years ago. As I said, a lot of tea.

And, since I make a lot of tea, I have a lot of different kinds of tea to make. Mostly I've come to favor strong China black teas like Keemun and Yunnan rather than the weaker India teas like Darjeeling and Assam (those we used to buy at the Coffee Trader in Milwaukee were great, but the ones out here are anemic by comparison). Some flavored teas are v. nice (vanilla, licorice, mint), but most seem a bit beside the point (who'd want a tea that tastes like cornflowers, or grapefruit?). Green teas are another kind of drink entirely, and while I love the concept so far as taste is concerned for me they're all just lightly colored warm water. The same applies to "teas" that don't actually contain any tea, like a lot of the herbal teas offered in health food stores -- with the notable exception of sassafras tea, always a delight though v. hard to get in these parts (and usually of poor quality when you do).

Anyway, between having lots of different kinds on hand, from different tea shops and online tea merchants, plus samples and bits I tried and didn't take to but hated to just throw away, the shelves have become rather cluttered over the years. There are actually a few teas in there that I don't remember what they are, nor where they've come from. The past few days I've made a concerted effort to make up and drink some of the little odds and ends (sometimes just enough left for a pot, sometimes for a single cup). Now that I've finally gotten them all listed, it'll be easier when I find a trial tea I like to remember it and where it came from, while those that failed to make an impression won't get replaced; eventually my tea shelves will probably settle down at about half as many teas as it has right now.

In any case, thinking it might amuse folks, here's the Tea List as it stood as of Sunday March 29th. I might mention that I'd already used up a few teas in the last few days: Cameronian [TeaCup; definitely a keeper], Connoisseur's Blend [TeaCup], and Irish Breakfast [MarketSpice]; "Gong Full Black Tea" and something marked "Very Old" [both from the Great Wall Mall], and several single teabags. I've marked my favorites in bold: these are teas I try to always keep a good supply of; a few duplicates among the teabags are marked with asterisks.



Tea List

Keemun [TeaCup]
Yunnan [TeaCup]
Richmond Park Blend [Upton]
Keemun Hao Ya A [TeaCup]
Golden Dianhong [TeaCup]

unidentified tea [gift]
?spiced herbal blend from Wotc [thyme bottle]
Sassafras Tea [gingerpeach teajam jar]
lemon mint tea [small apothocary jar]
sampler: Lapsang Souchong Black Dragon [Upton]
sampler: Yellow Tea jun shan yin zhen [Upton]
sampler: Queen Anne cinnamon spice [TeaCup]
sampler: Ed's energy tea [old TeaCup]
sampler: superSencha Kamakura [Upton]
cinnamon twist Rooibos [Pacific Mist, Kent]
Silk Road [TeaCup]
Melange Noel Christmas Tea [Upton tin]
New England Harvest Blend [Upton red]

East Frisian Blend Sunday Tea (vanilla) [Upton apoth. jar]
vanilla tea, single bag [last remaining remnant from Suburbia]
Organic Ethiopian Spiced Tea [Seattle Centre]
Licorice Spice [Perennial Tea Room, Post Alley]
Bag of Billings Teas [Boston Harbor, bulk teas & accessories]
Namaste x2
Keemun x2.1/4
Irish Breakfast
Lapsang Souchang
Vanilla Cream
Yunnan Supreme

Monk's Temple Tea [old TeaCup]
Classic Oolong [old TeaCup]
Poet's Tea [old TeaCup]

Baker Street Blend [old Upton]

China Tarry: Lapsang Souchong [Victoria Tea Shop]
China Keemun Mao Fang [Victoria Tea Shop]
Assam, decaffeinated [Victoria Tea Shop]
Ceylon, decaffeinated [Victoria Tea Shop]

Williamsburg Fine Tea Darjeeling [really good Darjeeling; gift from Sue Cook]
first row: thirty-seven teas


Hong Tao [Upton]
China Flowery Black (organic) [Upton]
Vietnam Black pekoe [Upton]
Lapsang Souchong [new Upton]

Supreme Woodbridge Puer, pestle-ground [Vital Teas]
Yellow Sweet [Vital Teas]
[Note: far better than either of these was their Canton Red, which I only got a little of, all now gone]

NorthWest Breakfast blend [Market Spice]
Darjeeling [Herbal Tea, Portland]
Prince of Wales Tea [Twinings mini-tin]
Black Dragon Pearl [Teavana]
Cloud of Black Tea [Great Wall Mall]
Keemun Black Tea [Great Wall Mall]
xx [xx]
Southern Style Mint [Market Spice]
Darjeeling [Market Spice]
*sassafras [tin of leftover sassafras clips-- a bit stale now]

Ahmad Tea Set
English Tea Noi (No.1) x1 [Ahmad]
English Breakfast x1 [Amhad]
English Afternoon x1 [Amhad]
Ceylon Tea x2 [Ahmad]
Darjeeling Tea x1 [Ahmad]
Earl Grey Tea x8 [Ahmad]

Constant Comment x5 [Bigelow]

teabags: English Breakfast Tea x6 [Trader Joe's], Lipton x2, Plantation Mint [Bigelow], Earl Grey [Bigelow], Lapsang Souchong Tea [Twinings], Organic Darjeeling [TeaCup mini-sampler], Kenya Mountain [TeaCup mini-sampler], Wallingford Decaffeinated Tea x2

second row: sixteen teas plus fifteen different teabags


teabags: Organic Chai [Tazo], Egyptian Camomile [Fairmont], Orange Jasmine [Mighty Leaf], *English Breakfast Tea [Trader Joe's], pekoe [Royal Cup Tea], *Lapsang Souchong x2 [Twinings], Jardin Bleu [TeaCup mini-sampler], *Lipton x2, Lady Grey x2 [Twinings], Earl Grey x4 [Twinings], Golden Monkey [Upton mini-sampler], *Melange Noel Xmas Tea [Upton mini-sampler], *Awake x2 [Tazo], Simply Mint moroccan herbal teasan [Numi]

box of teabags: Awake x8 [Tazo]
third row: lots of (fifteen different) teabags


Decaf English Breakfast [Market Spice]
Decaffeinated Ceylon English Breakfast [Upton]


total: fifty-two teas plus thirty-two different tea bags