Steep Stories

Tag: Oolong

  • I Can’t Believe It’s Almost Not Oolong

    Norbu Tea has been one of my go-to hookups for weird teas for – well – almost as long as I’ve sipped. Greg Glancy seems to have a palate similar to mine, or at the very least an unrelenting geek-ish lean for teas with stories behind them. I finally had the pleasure to meet the…

  • Wrestling a Wild Yeti

    The yeti – or Abominable Snowman – is a possibly mythical, ape-like beast native to Nepal and Tibet. The name “Yeti” derives from a Tibetan compound word that loosely translates to “manbear from the rocky place”…or something like that. “Abominable Snowman” was coined by a British lieutenant-colonel on a Mount Everest expedition. They located some…

  • Throwing in the Towel after a Tea Fight

    A couple of weeks back there, I attended a different sort of tea meet-up. The Portland Tea Enthusiasts’ Alliance and The Jasmine Pearl Tea Merchants joined forces for a movie night. The movie in question? Tea Fight (or “Dou Cha”) – a Taiwanese/Japanese co-production centering almost entirely around tea, and the people who drank it. One…

  • Writing Epiphanies and Japanese Pu-erh

    I had an epiphany last week…and I abhor it. While in the middle of filing some tax papers at a temp agency gig, I was attempting to outline my CheatoWriMo project. Motivation was proving hard to muster. The idea of compiling and collating old blogs and stories seemed boring. An odd realization to come by…

  • Tea Pairing with Job Hunting

    The idea for this entry was suggested by my mother, as great ideas often are. It never occurred to me to pair tea with job hunting until she posed the idea after reading my tea-fueled rant. This reflection has – in no way – any science to back it up, just anecdotal “evidence”. Trial and…

  • Blending Tea and Fiction

    To those that have been following the sporadic attempts to give this blog focus, you’ll know I’ve been experimenting with tea fiction. Sometimes with wondrous results…and other times with startling missteps. Train-wreck or not, I figured an exercise on how these yarns developed was worth exploration. Up until the “Great Vanishing” of September, I had…

  • Soba Up, Buckwheat! You’ve Had too Much Oolong Beer!

    Obviously, I’m still playing catch-up. This is a flashback to late-January. I assure you, though, it’s totally worth it. Well, if you like tea in your beer. Moving along… Tea and beer are my two favorite beverages in the world. Yes, the entire world. Both are also extremely habitual and have a lot of history…

  • Trippin’ on Moonlight

    Some weeks back, I got a message from my cousin. He made an outright demand for “ADVENTURE!” Yes, in all caps. At first, he had a hankering to go to the Oregon Coast, particularly a brewery (or two) we had stopped at before. I suggested something a little more approachable – an idea we’d discussed…

  • Oolong Way from Gnome (Part 1)

    Thed was on a cloud…and he wasn’t happy about it. Gnomes weren’t meant for flight, especially zooming over mountain ranges at wind-wispy speeds. Cloud-travel was air elemental territory – not for earth ones like him. Yet he found himself flying on a magic cloud with five unlikely companions. Three of them claimed to be demons.…

  • Smells Like Pure Nirvana

    In Buddhist thought, nirvana is defined as “freedom from suffering”. That doesn’t just mean pain, but rather freedom from the game of life (or “samsara”). It also signifies freedom from the endless cycle of death and rebirth – the ultimate goal for attaining spiritual oneness with all things. The word was also the name of…