New mesh-style tea infuser

When I come across new tea infusers it's hard for me to resist trying them just once, but this one was intriguing because I've never seen a "plunger" style tea infuser with a mesh style basket, and this basket is roomy enough to actually give tea leaves room to swim around.

Norpro (whose Tea-Stix I recently tried) is the maker of this infuser, which I found at HomeGoods, and it is the best one I've tried all year. After all the iced tea of the summer, I'm starting to drink more hot tea again, and to avoid having to buy paper filters all the time I'm taking a new look at my infuser collection.

Mesh is not the prettiest thing (I've never seen a kitchen strainer that was just "to die for"), but it does seem to me the fine screen of the mesh does the best job of filtering the tea leaves. The large ball of this infuser makes it a real winner, and it doesn't have that "spring" style handle, which I don't really like. If you're a fan of infusers, I can heartily recommend this one. (It cleans up easily too, since it's easy to hold open while you rinse it.)