throw another bear in the canoe

Oooh, I love genmaicha! I bought some at the "international grocery" on a whim, pulled it off the shelf even though all I knew was it was some kind of tea. Liked it a lot.

O YES, one of my favorites! I like it for breakfast. (Not "with" breakfast, mark you.) It's also good as an afternoon snack.

Your definition of "Breakfast" and "snack" reveals to me a source of the differences in our physical structure. ;-)

Another source is that you exercise daily, and I don't. Muscles!!

Rar! *bench presses tea*

At last, an exercise program I can really get into!

Upton Tea (A local company, very close to here in Hopkinton Massachusetts) is my preferred tea purveyor

I will have to try them. I have been ordering from Stash since I got a lovely tea travel mug with an infuser basket from my niece for Christmas. It came with tea from Tevana which smells interesting but I find has a bit too many flavors jumbled together for my taste. I've tried a couple new flavors and discovered "smokey" is not something that I care for in tea. My experience with green tea is limited - is there any you especially recommend?

Upton's Yamato Sencha is wooooonnerful. One of the lovely things about Upton is that your tea is packed for you an comes with a label telling you how long to brew it for, and at what temperature. That specific tea, not "tea of this type."

Teavana is all marketing and very little decent tea, alas. Stash stuff is surprisingly good for a national brand, and Adiago is very nice, but also very pricy. *g*

I will try a sampler of that one then. I suspect I will keep going back to Irish breakfast but would like to explore different types. Upton has more teas than I ever knew existed!

Yes, samplers are the way to start with Upton. It took a friend serving me tea in Minneapolis to learn about Upton Tea, even though I already lived in Massachusetts at the time. I ordered several samplers of unfamiliar things that sounded good, then proceeded to order two tins of Irish breakfast because they offered two different blends and I already knew Irish breakfast was my favorite.

Only to discover I don't like Upton's Irish breakfast (which I'm sure is superior to the various brands I've bought in grocery stores). Duh. My hopes are now pinned on Barry's, which I've heard is good.

Upton's has loads of marvelous teas. I drink less tea than most tea-drinkers. It would easily take far more than my lifetime to discover which ones best suit my tastes (and under what conditions), even if I'd started 50 years ago instead of 5.

The samplers also make for fabulous, personalized, super low-cost presents. In addition to the label telling how long to brew it for, and at what temperature, they also print the recipient's name on the label.

Genmaicha is the single favourite tea of one of my best friends. I like it as well as I like green teas in general, which is to say, I'm still more of a black tea girl, but it might be my pick if I had to stick with greens. Although sencha might fight it off.

(I've been stealth-buying her a box of the tea-bag form for Christmas for years running, but only because there wasn't until lately a place in town to buy loose leaf. Next year, she gets that.)

I used to be much more of black tea drinker--but my system won't take it anymore, alas, except in limited quantities.

So green has become my poison of choice.

Delicious, delicious poison.

At the next PiCon that happens, I am going to have to find a way to get some Upton into my life.

Unless they deliver!! *Googles*

They do! \*/

You're in luck. They are a mail/internet-order only business. *g*

Shipping quite reasonable, too.

Nom. There is a local purveyor of teas with interesting fruit blends who sell their tea through a local nursery (Spring Is The Horrific Time Of Temptation; they have Territorial Seeds and lovely, lovely potted plants). I'm known as the "Lapsang lady" because that's what I get there regularly.

Lovely Moss Rose cup, there, or is it a similar pattern?

We subscribe to cheap seats for the Oregon Ballet Theater, and over the past few years one of the rewards of early subscribing has been a custom-mixed tea from Steven Smith Tea, a Portland boutiqueish tea blender. Very nice blends, with unusual combinations--the one we got for this year has black teas, Rooibos, fragrant hyssop, linden flowers, mint, and natural essence of bergamot. They're promoting it as a "reduced caffeine" blend.

Edited at 2013-03-01 02:09 am (UTC)

That sounds lovely.

I don't know the pattern of the teacup; it's Royal Doulton, and was a gift. *g*

Yay toasted brown rice tea! My favorite. We even got some brown rice to toast separately and add to vodka infusions with the tea bags, for extra flavor.

genius.

I love genmaicha! I stumbled across it in a nearby store (i.e., about 20 miles away) while buying tea for my boyfriend. I haven't convinced him to try it yet, but that just means more for me.

Old Country Roses?

Upton is the best. We order from them about twice a year and spend stupid amounts of money each time we order. For one, they regularly carry Sikkim, which I can't find anywhere else in regular supply, and for another, their selection is huge and wonderful and I can spend hours just poking around the website.

Also, they have some kind of magic that allows them to deliver to Canada faster than anywhere else. I don't know how they manage to finesse customs and Canada Post, but damn, they're good.

That's a very nice jade (?) plant you have there.

It is indeed a Crassula ovata/jade plant, the cultivar called "Hobbit" or "Gollum."

I've had it for about seven years, I think. It started off as one stem. *g*

Jade plants are supposed to have good money-bringing feng shui.

Mine are all defective. Or possibly they are handicapped by being owned by writers.

Another Upton fan! I've been buying from Upton for a couple of years. Their selection is impressive. Sad that the teas I want the most are also the most expensive, and 'most expensive' often means 'crazy expensive'.

Although I'm pretty sure that people pay for ordinary Starbucks stuff the per-cup prices I'm saying are 'crazy', so. Values differ.

Right now I'm drinking Pi Lo Chun, Lung Ching/Dragonwell, Sencha No. 2, and Gu Zhang Mao Jian. Also gunpowder from Stash. I'm fond of Upton's pre-Chingming Pi Lo Chun, it's quite different than the standard Pi Lo Chun, it has a savory, almost bacon-and-eggs taste, but last year it was absurdly expensive. Let's see how it comes around this year.