Tiramisu Mascarpone Rooibos from Tin Roof Teas

Okay, smart people, do you notice an unusual ingredient in the new rooibos tea I got from Tin Roof Teas in Raleigh, N.C. over the weekend?

If you said "coffee beans," you are correct! That's one of the surprise ingredients in this delicious tea I bought "by scent" after sniffing several jars of tea at this lovely tea shop. As it says on the package, this tea contains rooibos tea, chocolate chips, brittle pieces, cream caramel pieces, freeze-dried yogurt granules, roasted coffee beans (!), Roman chamomile, and natural flavor.

I enjoy most rooibos teas anyway, but this one was divine! It had such a rich, dessert-like quality about it, and I'm so happy to find it can be ordered online here when I run out! (You folks in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia even get to enjoy $5 shipping, so I recommend you check out the site!)

Road Trip Tea Reviews

A seven- to eight-hour road trip like the one I enjoyed over the weekend results in quite a few stops along the way for refueling of both cars and humans. I love to look for new bottled teas to try when I'm visiting convenience stores. I'm a pay-at-the-pump girl when I'm at home (no temptation to buy junk food and candy that way), but on the road, I'm game to try new foods and beverages.

The first new tea I tried this trip was this Fuze brand "iced tea" (no ice was in the bottle!). This one was a green tea blend with honey and gingseng, and it was a bargain at 79 cents. It had a lightly sweet taste with subtle honey and ginseng flavors. Although it was sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which I know some people avoid, it was just 120 calories for the whole bottle, which I didn't think was bad, especially since I didn't drink it in one sitting.

And I actually got a fountain tea drink at the QT store to go along with a slice of pizza (delicious!) for supper one night. That store must have had 10 different tea selections at their fountain, with both sweet and unsweet versions in every combination you could imagine. They had plain sweet tea, unsweet green tea, sweet green tea with pineapple, berry flavored black tea, and more. I got the sweet black tea with mango at the fountain, and I took a sip and liked it so well, I bought the $1.29 bottled version, too, mainly because I admire the clever name: QTea. This tea contains water, sugar, natural flavor, citric acid and black tea, and it's higher in calories, at 200 calories for the whole bottle, but again, I enjoyed it over several meals.

Do you try new things when you are on the road? And do you try new bottled teas when you're on the road?

Visiting Tin Roof Teas in Raleigh, North Carolina!

On Friday, Alex and I headed to the Raleigh, North Carolina area so I could attend the annual party of the small press where I work as a fiction editor. Although I'd talked to the owner on the phone and via Skype numerous times since joining the team last fall, we'd never met face to face. To my delight, the company has an annual party for the authors and staff, and Alex and I were invited to attend this year. I so enjoyed meeting lots of fine folks who work for this company, including a couple of my fellow editors (yes, we talked punctuation and grammar) and quite a few of the authors. We had a little bit of free time on Saturday, and one of the authors pointed us to this wonderful shopping venue called Cameron Village, where I was thrilled to come across a new (to me) tea shop, Tin Roof Teas!

 Now I must tell you that this shop was exactly my kind of tea store: great selection, helpful but not overbearing staff, and lots of cool things I've not seen before, along with a great selection of teas.

 They had a lot of colorful teapots and tea mugs and the best collection of ForLife teapots I've ever seen in a store. (I've used that brand and really enjoy them!)

They had lots of great teas, tea-flavored candies, flavored sugars, bone china as well as pottery teacups and mugs, flavored honey, tea accessories, and so much more that I'm pretty sure I walked the entire store four or five times before making my selections—and I'd like to have taken about half the store home with me!

 I bought some tea, of course, but haven't had time to sample it yet.

And another item I was happy to find was this Thistledown Cozies tea wallet, because I have some prints on my office wall that have this exact same design!

I love this pretty blue fabric, and since I'm a tea lover and word lover, this seemed like the perfect tea wallet for me! Have any of you ever been to Tin Roof Teas?

Teatime Tale #24 - The Pleasure of a Letter

The Pleasure of a Letter

Andrea was standing at the kitchen  window and sorting through the day’s mail when she saw an envelope with a familiar address label. The sunny yellow teapot on the label told her the letter was from Cindy, her pen pal in New Jersey.
Alabama had been Andrea’s home for all of her fifty-eight years, and she and Cindy had been pen pals for twenty of them. Many years ago, they had both been readers of Romantic Living magazine when it ran a feature on the joys of pen pals. Romantic Living readers wrote in asking for pen pals of their own, so the magazine decided to play matchmaker and assigned pen pals to hundreds of women across the country who were seeking kindred spirits.
At first, the two wondered what they could possibly have in common. Andrea was a newly divorced mother with a young daughter she was raising on her own. Cindy was a happily married mother of four boys whose life seemed to revolve around ballgames and scouts.
But as fans of Romantic Living magazine, they weren’t surprised to find they did have quite a few things in common. They both loved the color yellow, roses, and teatime. They both enjoyed the ocean more than the mountains, and they both loved their cats.
For Andrea, who worked in sales for a large cable provider, it was nice to have a friend whose focus was more on family than business. For Cindy, who’d been a homemaker all her life, it was fun to hear about office life from a woman who was focusing on her career even more since her daughter, Shannon, had become an adult.
Looking at the pretty cursive handwriting on the new letter, Andrea wondered what tidbits she would find inside. As always, she made a cup of tea before she sat down to read the latest news. Andrea even had a special teacup she used on those days when a new letter arrived. The Wedgwood teacup bore images of the handwriting of Wedgwood company forebear Josiah Wedgwood, a switch from the vintage bone china teacups she usually favored. Sipping tea from that teacup always put her in a nostalgic mood as she read an old-fashioned handwritten letter.
Though Andrea occasionally flew to New Jersey on business, she and Cindy had never met face to face. They had almost met once, during one of Andrea’s longer business trips, but one of Cindy’s boys had ended up in the hospital with a ruptured appendix, so naturally that emergency took top priority.

After measuring two teaspoons of Darjeeling tea leaves into her single-serve teapot, Andrea added boiling water from  the electric tea kettle and set her timer for four minutes. Her tabby, Lincoln, came through and brushed against her leg. As Andrea waited for her tea to steep, she wondered what was new with Cindy. Her letters were usually full of chatty news about the boys, her husband, Bill, or perhaps what was going on over at the Catholic church they attended, which Andrea knew was located next to Cindy’s home.
Pouring her cup of tea, Andrea thought about all she and Cindy had shared in their letters over the years. In those pages, they had discussed the horror of 9/11, the volatile economy, and the changing political landscape in America. They had discussed marriage, for Cindy, and dating after fifty, for Andrea, and they loved to discuss favorite books and TV programs, especially “Downton Abbey.”
  Andrea knew more about Cindy’s boys than some of their own family did. Cindy, likewise, had been surprised to learn that Andrea found some of the women she worked with too competitive and had a hard time trusting some of them enough to become close friends.
Andrea sat down at the kitchen table, sipped her tea, and used her letter opener—one she ordered from Romantic Living years ago—to unseal the letter. She read:
“Dear Andrea, What does October 3 look like for you? Bill’s company has their annual convention in Birmingham that weekend, and if you can fit me in, I’m going to go, too, and skip the convention to spend time with you!”
Cindy was traveling to Birmingham? Andrea couldn’t believe it. She could hardly wait for her pen pal to visit, and what was even better, that was the weekend the Friends of the Library held their annual fall tea, so she and Cindy could attend together.
Or maybe Cindy would like to visit one of the area’s tea rooms instead. Or would she prefer a visit to the botanical garden? The gardens were still pretty at that time of year, and Cindy did love to garden …

Andrea caught herself before she started daydreaming any further, and she read the rest of Cindy’s letter. It went on to report that Mark was about to graduate from college with his degree in business, Jason had gotten a job in digital marketing with a home improvement chain based in New Jersey, and the twins, Luke and Liam, had both broken an arm while playing baseball, although the injuries were three days apart.
The last of the Darjeeling gone from her teacup, Andrea sat and smiled at the letter with the pretty handwriting. Would she finally get to meet the woman she’d swapped countless letters with? She would have to do much planning to make it the most wonderful trip imaginable.
“Dear Cindy, October 3 now has a big red smiley face on it on my kitchen calendar! Yes to October 3, and please tell me you’ll stay here at the house. I’ve been wanting to show off the new guest room for months, but so far the only ones who’ve visited have been some of Shannon’s roommates. How often would you like to go to tea while you’re here, because …”
Andrea put down her pen and had to smile. It had all started, innocently enough, with a simple letter.

Bamboo Spa Tea Tree Face Wipes

It's been a while since I've come across any new cosmetic products associated with tea. I happened to be in the checkout line at T. J. Maxx one afternoon when I spotted these Bamboo Spa Tea Tree Face Wipes. I'd heard of similar face wipes that purport to remove all traces of makeup, but I was skeptical.

I peeled back the package and found what looked like, well, ordinary baby wipes. Very small baby wipes. Ha! I thought. No way will these work! But I decided I needed to try them before trashing them, and I must tell you, I was impressed. One little face wipe removed all my makeup and mascara, and it was covered in both when I was finished. (Not that I try to look like a lady of the evening or anything. You know what I'm sayin'!) Just to be sure, I got a clean wipe and went over my face again to see how much I'd missed, and the second wipe was clean!

Since these wipes have "tea tree" in the name, I don't want to confuse anyone, because the tea tree and Camellia Sinensis, the tea plant, are two different things. The tea tree, as I understand it, is a small Australian plant that is sometimes used to make tea but mainly valued for its antiseptic properties. What I liked about the wipes is that they do indeed contain Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract, and I am happy to have found them. In fact, I've got a road trip coming up, and I'm going to pack a few of these in a plastic baggie to avoid having to take a bottle of facial wash. These 30 wipes for $2.99 were a nice little bargain and a fun discovery!

Teatime candle finds

While shopping in Marshalls last weekend, I was quite surprised to come across not one but six new tea-scented candles! This one actually caught my eye not because it's a footed teacup and not because it's a tea-scented candle but because of the pretty aqua design, as I'm planning to use it in my new coastal-themed bedroom to hold seashells. (For once, I'm hoping the candle does *not* last! The slightly spicy scent is quite lovely, but I don't need a candle; I need aqua decor!)

Still, I was intrigued to see so many tea-scented candles in one place. Three were from Ava & Emma, teacups which remind me of Emma Bridgewater teawares. The other three tea-scented candles were in beribboned china teacups with matching saucers. So if you're in the market for such a candle, you might want to keep an eye out at Marshalls and its sister stores, T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods!

An unusual tea menu in the new Tea Time

It's always a happy day when a new copy of Tea Time lands in the mailbox, and I'm always eager to see what they have in store in the new issue. This time, however, there was a feature that gave me pause.

It's called "Doggie Days of Summer," and it suggests that you "bring your human friends and their favorite pooches together for an afternoon of tea and backyard fun." There's even a recipe for dog treats included. Now the cute little fellow in the background of the photo above looks a bit like a friend of mine's beloved Boston Terrier that I got to play with one week when I house-sat for her some years back, and indeed, tennis balls like those on display were some of his favorite toys. But … at a tea party? I think their heart's in the right place, but I don't think I would be comfortable with this idea unless it involved some neighbors whose dogs were already familiar with each other. What do you all think about the idea?

On a more traditional note, there's a lovely feature by Jane Pettigrew on tea places in Yorkshire that has me longing to book a trip. So, have you read the new Tea Time yet? If so, what caught your eye?

"And the greatest of these is LOVE"

Let me begin with a confession. Some years ago now, I was teacup shopping in Goodwill one day when I came across a vintage bone china teacup and saucer for just $2. I couldn't believe such a pretty set was so cheap, and I was very proud of myself for having spotted it. In fact, I saw another woman admiring the teacup just about the time I picked it up, and I remember thinking something along the lines of "Ha! I spotted it first." Good for me, right? Well, I got home that night and was washing the teacup in the sink when I let it slip and the cup smashed all to pieces. Now isn't that interesting? Could it be that my sorry attitude had needed an adjustment? I've always remembered that little episode, so I very humbly tell you that I found this pretty model at a Goodwill on Saturday, and to my knowledge, no one there was envying my purchase, and I didn't knock any customers out of the way to get it!

I looked at the design and thought hmm, where have I seen this design before. Could it be?

And yes, as I suspected, it was a teacup and saucer from artist Sandy Clough, whose work I absolutely love. I think it's safe to say I'm good on teacups at the moment, but I do consider myself a lifelong collector of Sandy Clough's beautiful artwork, and this set goes into the "art" category. It's the best $3.03 artwork I've purchased all year!

The winner of the teatime pin and earrings set is …

Robin Wilson! I've written you at the e-mail address provided and look forward to hearing from you soon. Congratulations!

Dark Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I have been on a real banana kick lately. I've eaten bananas as snacks, I've had quite a few banana sandwiches for lunch, and this weekend, I tweaked a favorite banana bread recipe to include some of the Nestle Toll House Dark Chocolate Morsels I recently found on sale at the grocery store.

And oh my, was this good! I substituted plain Greek yogurt for the sour cream I've typically used to keep this banana bread nice and moist, and it worked out beautifully. Here's the recipe as I made it. Enjoy with a brisk cup of tea for a great afternoon snack!

Dark Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 large ripe banana, mashed
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine ingredients in order listed, mixing well after each addition. Pour batter into 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pan prepared with cooking spray and/or lined with parchment paper. Bake for 45-50 minutes. Yields 1 loaf. Delicious served warm. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Teatime Tale #23 — The Mostly True Story of Shen Nung

The Mostly True Story of Shen Nung

            “They think I’m an idiot.”

            “No, they do not, my lord. It simply isn’t possible.”

            “Don’t tell me that! I know when I’m being ridiculed!”

            “It’s a simple misunderstanding, my lord. I’ll see that it’s cleared up at once.”

            “See that you do! If I hear that ridiculous tale one more time, somebody is going to be sleeping with the fishes tonight. Do I make myself clear?”

            “Yes, my lord.”

            After bowing to his enraged master, the terrified servant backed up and dashed away.

            Despite having sipped his fifth cup of tea that morning, Shen Nung was feeling irritable. It had been ten years since he had discovered the amazing tea plant. A lifelong student of botany, the emperor had sampled hundreds of herbs before the day he came across a tea plant, examined its leaves, observed the plants growing around it, and realized it was probably safe to infuse some leaves in boiling water. He had sipped the resulting brew and taken note of how his body responded, how calm and yet alert he felt upon sipping the beverage.

            But to his dismay, after ten fine years of sharing the glories of tea with others, his careful discovery of tea was most assuredly not the story that was getting around.

            Shen Nung seemed destined to be remembered as that foolhardy emperor who was idling away the hours in the woods one day when some tea leaves landed in a nearby pot of boiling water and magically steeped themselves. How, he wondered, could anyone think a pot of boiling water just happened to appear out in the woods?

            He had brought agriculture to China, and he was so well versed in herbs that he ultimately tasted some three hundred and sixty-five of them. Did his subjects think it was purely by accident that he had sampled an herb for every day of the year? For that matter, did they even know about the extent of his work with herbs?

            No. Instead, the story spreading faster than wildfire was that Shen Nung, like a simpleton, was sitting outdoors one day near a cauldron of boiling water—such an unlikely scenario in and of itself—when some tea leaves just happened to drift by, just happened to land in the pot, and he just happened to observe them and decided to taste the resulting brew. It was enough to drive an emperor mad.

            “What if that had been a poisonous plant?” he had asked his poor servant the first time he heard the so-called legend being repeated about him.

            “Then, my lord, I don’t suppose you would be here having this conversation,” the servant had cautiously replied.

            “Indeed not!” the emperor said.

            His library was full of notations about the plants he had studied. He had nearly lost his eyesight because of his exacting studies of the tea plant and the minute details he had captured in both word and art.

            One of the emperor’s favorite servants had tried to assure him that history would recall him with fondness.

            “My lord, even if the tale gets told for thousands of years, they will always remember that you were the one who discovered tea. Imagine the pleasure this beverage will give to men down through the ages, and how fitting it will be that such an astute man as yourself will be remembered always for this fine gift.”

            The emperor had considered his servant’s wise words. The man was right, of course. Tea drinking was already a popular pastime in his kingdom, and Shen Nung wondered if perhaps one day it would spread to other areas of the country as well.

            The emperor grew accustomed to hearing the “legend” of how he had discovered tea, and he had devised the perfect plan for correcting the record, although he realized that his plan unfortunately would not reach fruition until his death.

            Many years later, as he lay dying, Shen Nung wrote the true account of how he studied the tea plant and introduced it to the world. In his careful handwriting, he outlined precisely how he had discovered the tea plant and how it was by no means a purely accidental discovery. Because that record would be so crucial in establishing the truth, he took time to make sure each word he inked could be read clearly and completely.

            One night, however, he woke with a fever, one his family believed was the result of a toxic plant he had chewed on earlier that week, a choice that would prove fatal.

            While Shen Nung had recorded for posterity that he had deliberately tried those tea leaves, his attempt at altering his own history was waylaid when an ache in his side made him pounce from the bed and search for a place to empty the contents of his lurching stomach. He leaped from his bed so quickly that he spilled the cup of tea on his bedside table, and the liquid quickly soaked the papers he had been writing, smearing and destroying his tea testimonial for the ages.

            Hearing the hubbub in the room, a young servant new to the emperor’s service came running and asked, “My lord, what is wrong? How may I help?”

            “Tea …” Shen Nung said. “Tell them about the tea …” Gasping, Shen Nung pointed at the soggy pile of papers and breathed his last.

            His servant, who knew not the true story of tea’s discovery, was greatly grieved over his master’s death.

            “His last words,” claimed the dutiful servant, “were for me to make sure the world knows about tea, and I’ve heard that our great emperor accidentally discovered tea when he was out meditating in the woods one day. I shall devote the rest of my life to making sure the entire world forever associates tea with the name of Shen Nung.”

            And he did just that.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Daphne's Diary!

I'd like to just give a shout-out to my local Barnes and Noble, because the newsstand there has so far carried all the new issues of Daphne's Diary this year, and I couldn't be happier! This new one celebrates DD's third anniversary, and I must say I found more tea-themed designs in this issue than in any so far. You may have noted the teapot and teacup on the cover.

Inside, there are also some floral paper coasters to cut out, but the back of them is actually my favorite. If you're a papercrafter, this issue is a must-have!

There are also some perforated postcards you can punch out and mail to a friend, both of them featuring pretty teaware designs.

There are even a dozen adhesive stickers featuring teawares, and I especially liked that last one, at lower right, because it depicts a teacup I have. If you need a little more loveliness in your life — and who doesn't, really? — I highly recommend you look for this issue of the magazine!

Teacup collecting

As you can see, I'm still working on getting the perfect shot of teacups, and I still don't have it, but I think I'm closer than I was a few weeks ago!

I don't quite have enough to fill up my small dining room table. The 56 I assembled here are almost all of the bone china teacups I have, with a few that are earthenware but look like china.

I decided I didn't want any repetition, so if a teacup is part of a set, I used only one teacup for my photo.

My husband looked a little nervous when he came downstairs and saw the dining table looking like this.

I told him not to worry, there's no tea party planned this week, that I was just playing around with photos again.

He said he knew I'd tell him what he needed to know when he needed to know it. Ha!

What I really need, I've decided, is a professional stylist who can arrange these things for me and a professional photographer who can tell me what lighting and camera settings to use. (Or I could read my camera manual, and we all know that's not going to happen anytime soon.)

Until then, my dining room table is out of service!

The winner of the Tea Sparrow tea sample is …

Nancy in northeast Iowa! If you'll send me your snail mail address via the e-mail button at right, I'll get this tea headed your way. Congrats!

A resource for those who love tea and history

Since many of you love tea history as much as I do, I thought you might like to know that some great free resources are available from the Library of Congress. I've downloaded some vintage tea photos there in the past, and this week, I discovered this 1899 publication from the Government Printing Office, "Tea Culture: The Experiment in South Carolina" by Dr. Charles Shepard, Special Agent in Charge Tea Culture Investigations. Shepard, as many of you know, cultivated tea at the Pinehurst Tea Plantation in Summerville, S.C., and his plants were later transplanted to the Charleston Tea Plantation on Wadmalaw Island. I love to read anything associated with Dr. Shepard, and I'm sure some of you will want to check out this resource as well. Here's a link.

The book has a few photos, including this one of "A Tea Nursery in July."

Also, there's a photo of the young tea pickers. Years ago, I learned that Shepard established a school for black children, and after their lessons, they went into the fields to pick tea leaves, for which they were paid by the pound. Some of the children who picked tea leaves at Pinehurst sang for President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, according to other information I found on the Library of Congress website. This work by Dr. Shepard is in the public domain, which is great for writers, researchers, program presenters, and others. Be sure to check out www.loc.gov if there are areas of history you like to explore, because you might be surprised what turns up!

Some terrific new teas from Tea Sparrow

Recently, I received a shipment of new teas from Tea Sparrow in the mail, and I must say, these samples were some of the best I have tried in a while!

Usually, if a company sends more than one tea, I have a clear favorite among the batch, but these were all unique tastes, and each one gets a high score. First, I tried this Blood Orange Smoothie rooibos tea. This is a blend of South African red rooibos, orange, and vanilla, and as soon as I opened the packet, I knew I would like it because it smells like those Orange Creamsicles I used to eat as a child. Steeped, the tea definitely hit the citrusy notes I was hoping for. A lovely blend!

Next, I tried an organic green tea known as "yunwu." The company describes its taste as "reminiscent of sweet, roasted artichokes … well-rounded, with a slight note of toasted pecans." I didn't detect the toasted pecans, but I can certainly agree with the roasted artichokes flavor, and I would add that this green tea also has a buttery taste and a rich, thick mouth feel. I love a good green tea like this that has such a nice, bold character!

The final tea I tried was the Organic Cheery Fruit Tea. This fruit tea contains rose hips, orange peels, rooibos, pears, quince fruit, fennel bitter dark (which is what gives it the merest hint of a licorice taste, which I like), and organic vanilla bourbon flavor. I had assumed this rooibos would taste a lot like the other one, but instead this blend is a much more complex herbal tea, owing, I suppose, to the fennel and pears, flavors I don't often find in herbal teas. If you'd like to try a box of teas from Tea Sparrow for yourself, just click here to learn more about their unique subscription service!

And since I received two samples of the Blood Orange Smoothie flavor, I'd love to share the extra with one of you, so how about a quickie giveaway? If you'd like to win it, just say "Enter me" before 7 a.m. EST tomorrow and you'll be entered to win!

June giveaway: Seagull Pewter teapot pin and teacup earrings

I've been going through some of the tea-themed jewelry I've collected over the years, and for this month's giveaway, I'm offering a cute set I've never even worn, this pin and earrings set from Seagull Pewter in Canada!

The set includes teacup earrings for pierced ears and a teapot pin.

Since this gift is small and unbreakable, I'm happy to mail it anywhere in the world, so feel free to enter this giveaway no matter where you live! Just leave your "Enter me" between now and 7 a.m. EST next Monday, June 8, and you'll be entered to win. Good luck!