Steep Stories

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Cheating at Tea-Totaling

    Cheating at Tea-Totaling – The Tea-Totaler Trilogy, Part 1 In December of last year, I gave up drinking. The reason? A missing hubcap. I hit a curb while driving a wee bit sauced. No idea where said hubcap went. My theory’s Narnia. My poor car was the impetus for what (originally) began as a year-long…

  • Pocket Oolongs and After-Parties

    Pocket Oolongs and After-Parties – World Tea Expo, Day 3 I tried to sleep in. Really, I did. But the anticipation of the last day of World Tea Expo activities loomed at the forefront of my brain. By 8AM, I gave up and rousted from my cousin’s couch (where I’d been sleeping for two days…

  • Bitter Gourds and No-Pants Awards

    Bitter Gourds and No-Pants Awards – World Tea Expo, Day 2 The day wasn’t off to the best of starts. I had to be up at 5:30 for a site tour . . . or so I thought. The day prior, I had agreed to a tour of the QTrade Teas and Herbs facility. Alas,…

  • A Business Trip with Benefits

    A Business Trip with Benefits – World Tea Expo 2015, Day 1 Arriving at the Long Beach Convention Center, and seeing that sign, was like coming home again. This was to be my third World Tea Expo in a row. The first year was a three-day whirlwind of awesomeness. The second was like a quickie,…

  • State of the Minion Address: “World Tea Expo and Beyond!”

    I’ll make this brief, I swear. Some of you fine tea folks are either (a) on your way to World Tea Expo, (b) already there, or (c) grumbling about not being able to go. To those in the former two categories, I just wanted to let you know . . . Hey! I’m there, too! (Soon,…

  • A Tale of a Nepalese Tea Estate

    I’m well aware of the awkward timing of this blog, given recent events. Originally, I’d intended to have this up the week prior. Circumstances of the lazy kind prevented me from finishing it by then. So, here it is, now. And, yes, I will be addressing the really shaky subject matter toward the end. But…

  • Steeped Recipes at Smith’s

    I can’t cook . . . worth a damn. The only interest I’ve ever taken in food preparation is, well, how to eat it. That is where my exploration of the culinary arts begins and often ends. Beyond the making of an epic sammich (yes, sammich, not sandwich), my ability to cook, bake, and .…

  • Regarding Tea Sachets

    In more informed tea circles, it is common knowledge that teabags are crap. Those little bags of ass-flavored tea usually contain the dust left over after the good, loose leaf tea was packaged. The taste of an average black tea from a bag is rough and bitter, like licking a chalkboard. (Yes, I’ve tried that.)…

  • A Dork Drunk on Doke

    Let’s talk a little about terroir. It’s a word usually bandied about by wine folks in order to sound “edumacated”. Blame the French. The word “terroir” derives from the French word “terre”, which literally means “land”. Terroir, as a concept, is applied to plants that are influenced by the “land” where they grow. Geology, geography,…

  • A Saturday Evening with Friday Afternoon

    It was a Saturday, as the title suggests. Saturday, March 21, to be precise. It was a really shitty Saturday, in other words. The work shift was going frustratingly poorly. My student loan sharks announced they were tripling my monthly payment. And finally . . . a panic attack was looming. Not sure how that…

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