T’was the day before Christmas Eve,
And all was quite spiffy.
I stayed in my PJs all day –
In neither a hurry nor jiffy.
I babysat two cats,
Made sure they were fed.
Never overstayed my welcome,
For they both wished me dead.
Tag: Earl Grey
I think I mentioned a certain British girl I used to work with on this blog before. Okay, make that twice. Alright . . . technically, it was three times, if you count a guest blog for Lochan Tea. Point being, she was one of my favorite highlights of 2014. A person to pal around tea places with. Alas, in December of that year, she moved back to England. We agreed to keep in touch, but – as with most long-distance friendships – I assumed contact would grow scarce.
I was wrong.
While long-winded missives were a scarcity between the both of us, there was just enough contact to keep things current. It started off with messages back and forth, regaling the remains of the week. But then the penpal-ing took an interesting turn.
One morning – while arriving to work in my usual blurry-eyed, pre-caffeinated state – one of the supervisors said to me, “There’s a present for you on the desk.”
Odd, I thought. I didn’t do anything to deserve a gift.
Then my eyes met the gift itself.
Almost three years ago, I wrote a rant about steampunk – a sci-fi sub-genre focusing on a fanciful Victorian aesthetic. It wasn’t very kind to the various gear-laden facets of the retro offshoot. I argued that the sub-genre lacked a key component that was the beating heart of any alt-history endeavor – a sense of whimsy. To be fair, I did point out its positive aspects, but I largely dismissed the sub-genre as a whole. Like some sort of tea snob hipster douchebag.
Well . . . then I went to a steampunk-themed concert featuring these guys/gals:
And I was forced to rethink my stance. I always enjoyed [most of] Abney Park’s work, but I was curious what sort of show they would put on live. That and what sort of people would attend such a thing. The answer was simple: Geeks. Lots of them. In every shape and size. Sure, there were some posturing goths amidst the rabble, but for the most part – retro-cosplaying geeks. The whole shebang was downright . . . whimsical.
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 . . . just generally follow instructions of any kind falters.
What does one expect from a guy who screwed up Easy Mac? Twice. In one session.
I highlight all of this to illustrate that I am the most unqualified candidate for food-related events, such as the one I attended on Saturday.
Smith Teamaker had booked a cook book author for a demonstration at their HQ. The author in question was Annelies Zijderveld, and her new book was Steeped: Recipes Infused with Tea. As the title suggests, the focus was on how to use tea in a culinary capacity. (Y’know, besides just sprinkling kitchen-grade matcha on everything and calling it a tea recipe.)
Tea MC Tiff, Smith’s social media guru-ess, sent me an invitation to the demo a couple of months back. Initially, I had to decline because of my dodgy weekend work schedule. However, by some stroke of foodie fate, I ended up with the day off. I planned my day around the event accordingly, “hired” the lovely M. Tepper to photograph the proceedings, and the mission was a “go”.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect, having never attended a cooking demonstration before. A part of my mind was picturing Julia Child caked in green tea powder. That non sequitur image was dispelled upon entering Smith’s boardroom. Tiff expertly corralled us press folk, and took us to the back kitchen.
Annelies and her assistant-du-jour were aproned and bustling.
There were tea and foodstuffs everywhere. My tummy growled in both frustration and delight. I hadn’t eaten lunch, yet. Said stomach reminded me quite loudly. But back to the book . . .
Annelies’s inspiration for writing Steeped came during her time working for a tea company. Yes, she actually had tea industry experience. One day, while working on something menial, she grabbed a gyokuro leaf and started chewing on it. She liked the taste so much, she figured, why not a cook book?! Stranger inspirations have happened. I once plotted an epic space battle in the shower – sound effects and all.
Participants were first asked to indulge in a tea tasting.
Bowls of Long Jing, Roobios, Lord Bergamot, Keemun Hao Ya, Masala Chai, and ceremonial grade matcha lay in front of us. I was surprised at the last one. Usually, in regards to cooking, culinary grade matcha was utilized for recipes – mainly for bulk amount and cost effectiveness. I was a bit elated by this high-brow change.
Palates primed, Annelies then guided us through several ways to use the teas in various recipes. Many called for using a simple coffee grinder to pulverize loose tea leaves into a course (but not matcha fine) powder. Roobios was utilized in a butter recipe that was simply divine – with a capital diva! Long Jing was, quite surprisingly, put to good use as part of a furikake seasoning for popcorn. Keemun was paired with salt for a white bean walnut spread. Masala Chai was used for nifty li’l cupcake thingies. And good ol’ matcha was paired with coconut to form . . . something. (I forgot the name of it. Wasn’t a fan.)
But my favorite . . . oh dear lord . . . my favorite . . .
F**king Earl Grey yogurt!!!
Holy bergamot balls this was good. And the best part, the recipe was easy. Put simply, it was dunking Earl Grey (in a filter bag or sachet) in yogurt, repeatedly, for three days, and stirring. Even I couldn’t screw that up. The results were astounding. In plain yogurt, the bergamot notes were subtle and sweet, but still there.
The demo ended with an opportunity to purchase the book and mingle a bit with the authoress. By the end of the two-hour event, I was full and quite caffeinated. Lost track of my appetite. As a parting gift from Smith’s, we were each given a tea “starter kit” to try some of the recipes at home.
Now . . . all I need is yogurt. Lots of yogurt.
It’s been a weird and busy month.
In the span of three weeks, I had driver’s license difficulties, car troubles, multiple projects, and some minor financial headaches. Yet all of these things didn’t affect my mood any. Reason being? My Mum had my back.
As if it wasn’t quite obvious, I’m a total momma’s boy. If I’m ever in a jam – and on months like this one, quite often – she’s the first person I turn to. The woman is there for me, and doesn’t bat a lash at some of the…uh…weirder requests I’ve made. Case in point…
For a couple of days, I was without a car. Mine was overdue for a visit to my mechanic due to a service engine light. And the only available chauffeur…was Mum. She even picked me up from a work party. One that got a little silly.
Yes, that is me trying to pretend I have large breasts. No, I will not say how much alcohol was involved.
After two weeks of her assistance, I felt it was high time to compensate her for her troubles. Luckily, we both had a similar addiction. That being tea, of course. Because of me, she had developed a love for Smith Teamaker’s brick-‘n-mortar shop. Lord Bergamot was her poison of choice, while I ventured for whatever was new.
This trip – I will confess – wasn’t entirely selfless. I had intended to jaunt to the shop to try Smith’s new Smoked Chai. The process used to create the thing was manliness personified.
Image mooched from Smith Teamaker’s Instagram
Sarsaparilla was cold-soaked in water, bourbon and vanilla. Then the concoction was blended with dry hickory chips, which were (naturally) lit on fire! The smoke was then channeled through a bamboo tray full of whole leaf, tippy Assam. And once all was said, done and burnt, the fusion was rolled in spices.
The resulting brew tasted like receiving a hug from a ginger beer-drunk bear that’d emerged from a chimney. Smoke touched off the flavor, followed by a warm ginger-y blanket of awesome, and trailed off like a smooth root beer. I remember draining my two-person pot in less than ten minutes.
After a two-hour stint, I cashed us out, and then treated Mum to lunch. She acquiesced to my last request, which was to follow me down to my mechanic – Dimitri’s Auto Service in Milwaukie, OR. It was a heckuva request.
That Monday, as we waited for my car’s eventual return to mobility, we grabbed breakfast at an eatery dubbed, “The Bomber Restaurant”. There was an actual B-17G bomber in front of it. My testosterone wept with glee.
The breakfast was pretty darn good, too.
Moral of this story?
Let your mother take care of you, even when you’re an adult, and always take care of her in return.
And most importantly…real men take their mothers to tea.
Photo by Tiffany Talbott.
According to the Almighty Wiki, yuzu is a citrus fruit native to East Asia, which may be a hybrid between sour mandarin oranges and Ichang papeda (whatever that is).
I first learned of its existence when “researching” Korean jarred teas. Sometimes, yuzu was used as an ingredient – along with honey – to create a jelly-like tisane. Since the odd li’l citrus fruit was frightfully aromatic, the flavor came through rather well.
A couple of years later, I ran into a tamaryokucha (read: curly sencha) that was blended with yuzu rind. Alas, I never had the money to buy it. But the idea of a yuzu-blended anything occupied a bit of synaptic real estate in my brain. I figured, if it was anything like an Earl Grey, I’d like it.
Fast-forward another year or so, the owners of one of my favorite tea haunts – The Jasmine Pearl Tea Merchants – paid a visit to Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. A grower there passed along several of his wares for sale. I even featured three of his senchas in my first ever TeaCuplets entry.
However, his green teas weren’t the only thing he passed on.
The owners also brought back a black tea blend created by the grower – one blended with yuzu rind. Upon tasting it, they – and those that worked for them – exclaimed, “Oh yeah, we’re gonna need more of this!”
The story behind the blend goes as thus: On the tea farm owned by this Shizuokan grower, there is a solitary yuzu tree. It was planted by his ancestors several hundred years ago. Said grower used the fruit from that one tree, ground up the rind, then blended and scented a batch of kocha (Japanese black tea) with it. The results (apparently) were magic.
When I learned all of this, I had actually come into The Jasmine Pearl for my usual standby – their Earl Grey. When the teashop girl on duty told me about this, though, I immediately demanded a cup. A large cup.
I proceeded to nurse three servings of the stuff over the next two hours.
A week or so went by, and I couldn’t get the tea out of my head. It was like an Earl Grey…but for samurai. I could seriously see a bunch of swordsmen in kendo gear drinking this prior to sparring. It was very much a Zen Earl Grey.
Which made me wonder…
On a second visit to the Pearl, I asked for the Yuzu Black iced. It was a hot enough day, I could totally justify it.
I expected some sort of flavor loss – less rind in the taster notes and such – but the exact opposite occurred. The citrus presence was even stronger than before. Even further cementing my earlier Earl Grey comparison.
Another week went by, and I sampled many other teas from many other sources. But thoughts of yuzu still danced in my tiny brain. I had just finished a 93-hour, two-week pay period, and I was exhausted. However, the results of that labor showed on the paycheck. I had a little bit of extra money in my jeans.
I did two things: One, I purchased a U.S.-grown white tea I’d been eyeing. And two, I finally picked up a couple of ounces of the Yuzu Black for home use. Every few days or so, between my usual morning bouts of eso-“tea”-rica, I eye the bag.
Then I get to brewing.
Earl Grey, I think you have a challenger, and he’s armed with a katana and a teacup.
You – fair reader(s?) – may have noticed a very significant change on this blog. No, not the content. Look up. Awwww-yeah! That’s right; this blog finally has its own domain name. I announced it via the social mediasphere, but in case you’re new to this tea musing circus, that’s a big deal to me! And a lot of the thanks goes to the Tea Trade Powers That Be. (I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to do it by myself, honestly.)
The reasons for finally domain-ing it up are twofold: (1) It’s a helluva lot easier to say, “My blog is ‘Steep Stories’”, than it is to list off a URL. (2) I’m about to start a book, and this is its online mouthpiece.
Some of you might know that November is the time of NaNoWriMo – where a bunch of would-be writers try to kill themselves by producing 50,000 words in 28-or-so days. I tried it last year…but never started. This year, I was about to opt out, but I had a better idea. I was going to cheat. And it was all thanks to my mother.
Before the advent of NaNoWriMo, my mother had suggested I should compile my blogs as a book. Originally, I thought this was a stupid idea. Then I got to thinking, Wait, I have almost written a novel in blogs alone. And the idea was born.
No, I’m not going to simply compile all the blogs as is into a bundle and shove it on the market. The way they’re formatted currently is not conducive to that. What I am going to do is repurpose them – add nuances and anecdotes, flesh out the details, so-to-speak. That and I have the fictional Steep Stories to finish. The saga was left incomplete.
The idea is this: To transform the blogs, reviews and musings I’ve done on unique teas (and my stories with them) into a cohesive narrative. Then, when those have ended, they will segue into the fictional stories. In total, there “should” be about 60% new content to the endeavor. Be on the lookout for news on Steep Stories: Fact & Fantasy. Let CheatoWriMo commence!
Now, I know what you’re thinking, fair reader(s?), “Don’t you need to have a popular blog for this to work out?”
My answer: “I write about f**king tea.”
It’s an issue I’ve struggled with since the summer, trying to find an audience for this tea blog; fashioning it to receive some attention. I’ll be truthful, the sheer lack of numbers was disconcerting. Especially when I compared the analytics of my own site to this. Measures were taken to ensure some success. Plus, I also learned that my website analytics weren’t as good as I initially thought. Even after four years, I was not properly trying to build an audience. Then it hit me.
“F**k it, I’ll do what I want.”
I put measures in place to start building traffic, but I was not going to make that the end-all goal. Tea is a drink. Most people don’t want to read about a drink unless it gets them drunk – save for we shining few. And for the moment, I like it that way. Tea is what I know; tea is what I’ll show. I also vowed that I would no longer duplicate “Steep Stories” on my main website anymore. The tea tales needed their own permanent home, and that – I will happily say – is Tea Trade. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
Oh yeah…since this is a tea blog, I should probably talk about tea on it. Um…ah! Got it!
On Saturday, my brother and I made it a point to jaunt over to The Jasmine Pearl Tea Merchants for a tea pick-up. My mission: Earl Grey. I had absolutely no Earl in the house anywhere. This was disconcerting to me. I remembered that The Jasmine Pearl carried one that I liked; on several occasions, I’d stopped off to have it iced. My brother – on the other hand – needed to replenish his stores of Golden Needles. (That fact alone brings a tear to my old eye.)
Prior to making the tea trip, I learned that Saturday was also their eighth anniversary. Well, now we had to go. When we arrived, the place was packed with people. The owners – Chuck and Heather – were weaving through tastings and anecdotes like acrobats. For the occasion, they also had some goodies on hand – matcha cheesecake, chai cake, Lapsang Souchong popcorn.
Hold the phone!
Lapsang. Souchong. Popcorn!
It was the most beautiful thing my eyes had ever seen. The taste was equally mangasmic – smoky, buttery, slightly sweet, and – well – manly! I cried tears of machismic joy. On the inside. Never on the outside.
Oh yes, there was also plenty of tea that was had. Two new blends were put on display – Haiku (White Peony-base) and French Breakfast (Assam-base). I actually preferred the latter; maybe it was my French ancestry – I dunno. We bid fond farewells with tea wares in hand with promises of future visits.
As I write this, I’m currently nursing a 32oz. pot o’ Earl like a Picardian boss. Have I started CheatoWriMo yet? Er…no. This has been the one day of relaxation I’ve had in over a week. New jobs (plural!) were delivered to me on a platter. And mandatory celebrations sprang up from those. Okay, the latter bit wasn’t exactly work – just distracting. All said, changes are afoot…and I’m all hands on deck.
First, let me go on record by saying: “I am not against flavored tea!”
As a well-versed/rehearsed Earl Grey drinker, I can’t say I’m above a little dash of something extra. Some of the best teas I’ve tried have fallen under the “flavor”-ful moniker. Granted, I’m more prone to traditional(-ish?) approaches to scenting teas rather than the addition of gobs of extract. (And if it’s aged in an alcohol barrel, I’m all over that shit.) However, there is one recent abomination that I have to draw the line on.
Flavored matcha.
I noticed the trend back in the fervor of my reviewing days. It seemed like something that would be a passing gimmick. The first I ever ran across was a strawberry-flavored matcha. It was…vaguely strawberry-ish, and even possessed strawberry seeds in the powder. Did I prefer it to regular matcha…oh heck, no. The second one I tried was a blueberry matcha, and it had no flavor at all.
But it got worse.
In the ensuing year, other flavors began cropping up. Caramel, banana, lavender, cheesecake (!!!), chocolate, vanilla derp-dee-derp and…maple syrup?! That was the final straw. Maple syrup-flavored anything is a gateway drug – one that leads to bacon. Yes, folks, you heard this prediction here first. We are a mere flavor agent away from having a bacon matcha!!!
Granted, to some of you, that doesn’t seem like a bad thing…but ask yourself this: Do you really want green tea with your bacon?
That is my limit. I can’t take it anymore. Matcha is a ceremonial beverage, one that induces a feeling of calm when it’s prepared. It doesn’t necessarily have to be prepared correctly – just to the drinker’s liking. As long as it is still matcha, then I have no qualm. But I’m putting my snobby foot down at flavoring the damn thing.
Tea leaves are universally known for being able to pick up flavor from either (a) the surrounding environment or (b) surrounding ingredients. Rose-scenting, jasmine-scenting, osthmanthus-scenting, masala-ladening – these are all very common and ancient practices. But have you heard someone say, “Do you know what this powdered green tea needs? Cheese. It needs cheese.” The closest thing we have to natural dairy tea is milk oolong, and it should bloody well stay that way!
I’m willing to give a pass on the existence of matcha blends, though. Case in point: Green tea powder blended with goji berry or acai. Those fruits can best be had in powdered form, anyway. Even better? Matcha blended with actual useful herbs like Gymnema sylvestre (the “sugar-destroyer” herb) or lemongrass. Those work! I’ve had ‘em.
In the end, I guess I just want one thing that’s left untouched. One thing that is still sacred and sucrose-less. If I have to, I’ll horde the good stuff to make sure that it remains pure. Because some powders are worth saving.
Fuck flavored matcha.
