Tea Time

     It all started with this article on doing a tea meditation.  Taking 10 minutes out of your day to just focus on making a cup of tea.  Doing nothing else but watching water boil, smelling tea leaves seep and enjoying a cup of tea.  This is harder than it sounds. I haven't made it through a whole tea brewing without multi-tasking yet. Even as I write this blog, I am sipping on my first cup of Yerba Mate tea- which is fabulous by the way!

     I got a book on tea 19 Lessons on Tea by 27 Press to learn some basics. I learned that tea, like wine, is picked and processed to create distinct flavors. There are separate chapters covering White tea, Green tea, Yellow tea, Oolong tea, Pu-erh tea, Black tea, Iced tea and Herbal tea.  Loose leaf tea is high quality and can be used for multiple seepings. Tea bags contain "dust" and "fannings"- basically the left over pieces from the whole leaf harvest.  The chapter on tea accessories made me chuckle- kettle, strainer, Thermometer, timer, infuser, storage containers, and special glasses.  So many things to make a cup of tea?

     I was tempted to go out and buy all that stuff, but decided to start my journey slow and light.  My sister had bought me a Kati Cup for Christmas, which I have been using for my juicer juice.  It is actually made for tea and comes with a stainless steal infuser.  So that took care of the cup and infuser. For a timer, I just use my iPhone.  I did buy a digital thermometer to make sure the water is the perfect temperature.

     The next mission was to find loose leaf tea.  Lots of stores only sell tea bags. Whole Foods, not only had loose leaf tea,  but they also had bins that you could scoop your own tea from. This meant you could actually smell the blends.  Since I am not tea expert, I went with what smelled good.  I got three to start off- Mint Medley (black tea), Yerba Mate (herbal tea) and Cardamon Cinnamon (herbal tea).  Whole leaf tea really does have more flavor. In fact, it has an after flavor, it lingers and I can actually feel the caffeine.  Very different from tea bags.

     So it looks like tea is going to be my cold weather month interest.  There are so many varieties and brands to try!  Maybe I'll even be successful at doing nothing but tea for 10 minutes.