Sunday, January 3, 2021

Category 3: Loose Leaf Tea

A good cup of tea is always welcome at my house and over the years I've acquired a healthy small stash of tea bags and loose leaf tea that come and go. I still get a strange little thrill out of buying an entire box of Bigelow's Raspberry Royale -- which was the favorite from a box of assorted teas as a child -- to be both coveted and hoarded for best but also drunk immediately because otherwise someone else might drink it first.  The small delights of adulthood are sometimes truly the best. 

For my lovely loose leaf teas, I have a couple of silicone tea infusers -- a seahorse and a hedgehog and tea pots. But over time it's taken back seat to coffee as my morning drink when I'm racing out the door. And then, in November, I went to an online tea festival and went off the rails buying tea. I ordered what I thought was a small reasonable amount of samples from a few different tea merchants, only to learn that I really had no idea how much tea was in 1 oz packages.  It started arriving, and arriving, and arriving. 


Tub holding a LOT of packages of loose leaf tea


I've done a tea share with a coworker; I've received a new kettle; I'm making tea almost everyday. And I have quite a lot of tea. It's been fun to try the variants that I ordered and while it seems impossible, I have actually used up a few ounces so far. It's going to be a few months though before I make a significant dent. And at least one of these is going to go to my partner -- it's a lemon ginger and while it's tasty, I think it'd be better iced and he likes a good iced ginger tea. 




It is fun to order from small tea companies though -- Glenburn, tealeaf, The Great Mississippi Tea Company, and Plum Deluxe were all among the orders that arrived on the doorstep.  And I managed to order quite a large variety -- with white, green, and black teas, some floral flavored, others just tea, others will be a very rich Earl Grey. 

In terms of using it up; I don't want these to sit. I'm not the most particular tea connoisseur but I know the tea will go stale or rancid if left too long and there's no need for that. So I'm trying the teas, seeing what I'll actually want to order again after I've finished this giant box, and making notes.  

And if this pandemic ever ends, I can invite a few people over for a cup of tea... 

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