Tea

I LIKE TEA!

I really like tea, I find tea relaxing and pleasant. If ever you are in NYC you should stop by the Wild Lily Tea room. It is a great place to relax and have a very nice cup of tea that you would otherwise never come in contact with. Its a bit pricey but worth the experience, and on a day when you take the subway, try their Saki taster. Very pleasant.

I just did a google search for TEA, and maybe the caps had something to do with it (one sec while I check, nope, made no dif.) but the first web page hit that comes up is for the Texas Education Agency

odd, but logical all the same.

'Course it also returns on the front page a number of large Tea companies such as:

Stash
Republic of Tea
The UK Tea Council
Tea.co.uk
Pete's Coffee and Tea
Twinings
Celestial Seasonings

I also love Coffee but we will leave that for another time.

Alton brown, one of my favorite cooking channel stars, did a wonderful episode all about tea. Not much to say from it except that he made me notice that my tea does indeed taste better when I:
1) use fresh water. He attributes this to the oxygen content.
2) pre-heat my steeping pot. This makes certain that the water that will be used for steeping does not cool down simply by touching the tea pot. Preheating is easy, just fill the dry empty tea pot with boiling water (well, not fill, but put some in it and slosh around so the pot gets warm) and then spill it out.
3) rinse my tea. the first very small amount of water to hit the tea should be discarded, it carries with it the bitter dust that is tea leaves crushed too fine.
4) store my tea properly, in airtight light proof containers placed in a cool (but not cold) dry location. The cupboard above the stove is not the right place. For the record the same applies to spices, coffee, sugar, flour, baking soda and just about every other dried cooking ingredient I can think of.

I would cover the history of tea, but its not really worth it. Mostly it boils down (no pun intended) to an anachronistic event in china some 5000 years ago in which an emperor who did not actually live at that time or place accidentally boiled the leaves of his shade tree and discovered it tasted good and was mildly addictive. Every single tea website has some version of that story, and then a timeline of how tea moved around the world.

I prefer unflavored or mildly flavored teas, though I know plenty of people with refined taste who prefer the flavored and herbal to the straight up and black/green/white varieties.

Tea is relaxing to me, the whole deal. Boil some water, take out a nice tea pot and some nice mugs, arrange on a tray. Put a small selection of teas and sweeteners on a separate tray along with some cream and lemon slices. Warm and then fill the tea pot, take both trays to the table. Enjoy with friends.

I don't think I have EVER had the opportunity to enjoy tea in that manner but maybe one day.

I own three tea pots of note. One is the bodem glass tea press. A very nice twist on the French Coffee Press. I also own a Japanese formal tea set that i got from Pearl River back when it was a fun neat place instead of a modern sell-out department store. I don't use it often. Lastly I own a beautiful little ceramic chinese tea pot with a dragon and a phoenix on it that I bought on the lower east side one day while furniture shopping. I cannot use this one as the lead content would likely leave me a drooling idiot inside of three uses. But its pretty. I think I will begin to collect unusual tea pots.

An odd side note, ever notice that teapot in the old windows pipes screen saver? well it has a back story which can be read here and is worth reading especially for computer geeks.

I found a short little page that attempts to explain the role of tea in the daily life of feudal and modern Japan as well as the tea ceremony and a few other things.

I thought Tea would be a subject that i could write about for a considerable length of time, but i am finding that a quote on the Wild Lily Tea Room web page pretty much sums it up.....

Tea is nought but this;
First you heat the water,
Then you make the tea.
Then you drink it properly.
That is all you need to know.

- Senno Rikyu (1522 - 1591)