Check out this incredible One-Touch Tea Maker from Breville! Talk about luxurious! This automatic machine will brew loose tea automatically, you can set it up to brew at a certain time of day, it has presettings for all your different green teas, black teas, and oolong teas…. The magnetic strip that holds the tea basket is a clever, well-designed touch.
Want want want! I hope someday I can level up to have this kind of tea-awesome in my kitchen. Until then….
→ No CommentsTags: about brewing · beautiful things · tea & design · what to brew in
This lovely teapot called Sorapot from designer Joey Roth uses innovative materials to provide an exquisite view of your tea while it brews. If only I could afford it! A girl’s gotta have dreams I guess. =)
The way it opens to add the tea is especially intriguing. It’s begging for some Adagio green flowering tea!
Rose Petals in Sorapot from Joey Roth on Vimeo.
→ 2 CommentsTags: flowering tea · what to brew in
Currently I have this electric tea kettle from Cuisinart:
Growing up my parents always had a real on-the-stove kettle, and the sound of the gas stove pilot clicking became forever linked in my mind to the coming cup of morning tea.
Once I left the nest and went to college, I began to look for my own tea kettles, but met nothing but disappointment. Design school didn’t help. My best friend and I obsessed over tea pots and kettles of lovely designs and proportions and colors, but actually acquiring one of these never happened. They were either too expensive, nowhere to be purchased, or in reality just pretty but not usable.
After college, after lasting disappointment with my somewhat stylish but incredibly annoying college tea kettle, I finally gave in and got this Cuisinart electric tea kettle. It is really quite wonderful. Nice-looking, easy to use, reliable. It was a reasonable price.
And yet have I always missed making tea on the stove, the whistle, the clicks, the heat! Hitting a button and hearing a click has just never been quite the same. Tea is a ritual for many with many, many different meanings, and for me the electric tea kettle has always been just too… convenient? There is something visceral and old in a kettle over gas that I love. Not to mention that it makes the kitchen look great and is slightly better for the environment and cheaper too.
So now that I am married and have my own home, I think it’s about time that I found myself a good ol’ tea kettle. It may not be easy, but I’m determined! I’ll keep this blog posted on how it goes.
→ No CommentsTags: what to brew in
One of the reasons I haven’t posted in ages is because recently I got married. w00t! When my fiance and I were thinking about what to give out as favors, we naturally settled on each of our favorite things: tea and chocolate! We wanted a favor that:
We bought about a gazillion Ferrero Roches at Sam’s Club (gold was one of our colors – yeah!) and also tons of Andes candies at Wal-Mart. (We’re still eating them.) But how to pick just one tea? And what kind? Black, green, white, oolong? Loose or bagged? I toyed with the idea of getting a custom blend and putting it in little custom tea tins – but really that was way too much work!
To meet our requirements of things that most people would like and were easy to acquire we decided on a mix of:
All lovely teas. A little variety so folks could trade if they wanted. Easy to acquire at our local Giant Eagle Market District. AND best of all — in our colors of gold and wine! ;-] Add a cute tag, some ribbon, and simple favor bags from Joann’s and viola! I loved them.
Tea and Chocolate favors (Image by Joanna Fassinger)
→ No CommentsTags: about tea · love · tea brands
I recently tried this red tea from Celestial Seasonings. They have the most gorgeous packaging, and when some colleagues at work bought me this while I was sick, I was intrigued…. Red tea is not normally my thing, it not really being “tea” any more than any other herbal remedy, but the African inspiration of this blend kinda sucked me in. And the cool lion, of course.
It was pretty good. Something about the vanilla reminded me of other not-tea beverages, and gave almost a medicinal quality to it. It was okay straight but i decided to add milk and sweetener and in general I liked it. I still like how the ingredients all revolve around Africa – not something I have every day.
Will it replace Salada and Earl Grey? Not likely. But when I’m feeling fickle or bored, it may be just the thing!
→ 2 CommentsTags: flavored tea · red tea · tea types
The summer has flown by and of course I’ve been too busy to write much. But I haven’t been too busy to make pitchers and pitchers of iced tea!!
I never seem to be able to make it successfully by the pitcher though. The five tea bags in five cups of water never seems to achieve strong enough results. So all summer I’ve resorted to this process:
→ No CommentsTags: about brewing · iced
