Steep Stories

Tag: The Jasmine Pearl Tea Merchants

  • Hugs, High-Fives, and Farmer Style Sencha

    A couple of years ago—on a visit to the Jasmine Pearl Tea Merchants shop— I tried a Japanese tea (that wasn’t sencha) that just . . . blew me away. It was a black tea blended with yuzu rind. Yes, the Japanese orange. When I described it to people, all I could muster was, “It’s…

  • A Crappy Christmas Cat Poem with a Cuppa Tea

    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.  

  • Tea and Sugar – The Weird Way

    NaNoTeaMo, Day 4: “Tea and Sugar – The Weird Way” In 2013, I was a regular follower of UK-based Canton Tea Co.’s Tea Club blog. Two of their employees went on a sourcing trip to Yunnan province, China, and picked up something rather unique. I certainly hadn’t heard of it before, and I try to…

  • The Zen of Using Yuzu

    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…

  • The Golden “Tea”-cket – A Tandem Tea Tasting

    Back in March, when I was visiting The Jasmine Pearl Tea Merchants, I ran across a particularly unusual tea. It was a small brick wrapped in gold foil, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a candy bar. I asked the teatender on duty at the time if I could sample it. She obliged and explained to…

  • Who Pooped in the Microwave?!

    Last week ended in a way no one could ever have suspected. I won’t say what I do for a job, but one of the tasks is checking microwaves. And someone had pooped in one. No, there was no log present, or a diaper…just dark matter, a rancid smell, and a feeling of “I-failed-at-life-choices”. Worse…

  • 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…

  • Cheating at NaNoWriMo by the Numbers on an Anniversary

    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!…

  • 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…

  • A Taste of Taiwan and a Teattle Trip

    Let’s talk about networking…or rather how much I hate doing it. Around this time last year, I was among the many underemployed folks out there. My mother – a former career counselor – always stressed that making contacts helps in the process. I knew she was right; she’s almost always right. That didn’t stop me…