Tea motherf*****
The title of this post is a throwback to a late 2005/early 2006 parody of Lazy Sunday that probably no one besides me has ever seen. Anywhoo...
I've had the idea for this post for a while. And by a while, I mean probably about a year, after my mom gave me a loose tea sampler and I was just lost in a world of constantly-changing teas for weeks. I figured it would be fun to talk about my 5 favorite teas. So why am I only posting this now? Well, because for the longest time, I only had four favorites.
Well, sort of. I had a tea that I knew I really liked, but I'd yet to find a good brand/type of it for purchase that I could actually talk about. Now that I have, however...
1. Banana-Nana
Now, this one is probably the least accessible of my list, and for that I apologize. But it was just too good to not include. I regret not taking a picture of the baggie I had of it when it was still full, when you could still see the chunks of banana in it... I am glad I took a picture at all though, as now it's totally gone. :P
Anyway, Banana-Nana is a tea I purchased from a local shop called Evermore Herb. As the name suggests, they primarily specialize in gardening materials, but their small selection of teas is 100% amazing. Although the name only talks about the Banana component, this tea mostly tastes like chocolate. And the smell of it is amazing - it permeates everything around, even when the bag is sealed, just tempting you to mix up a chocolatey treat.
This is Evermore Herb's tea page on their website, but I've never purchased things from them online, so I have no idea where they ship to. Also, Banana-Nana isn't even available on there. Sorry!
2. Almond Biscotti
This tea I did in fact fail to photograph before I drank all of it, so I apologize for stealing a random google image result here.
Anyway, this tea is sold by Teavana, and therefore about 500x more accesible than #1. While this one smells pretty good too, unlike Banana-Nana, I think the taste is what really makes this tea. I don't even really like biscotti all that much, but this tea is just rich and nutty and wonderful. Teavana is always amazing, so no surprise, really. Only downside is how expensive they always are.
3. Buckingham Palace Garden Tea
Another one I don't have a personal picture of, obviously. I used up my stores of this tea years ago, but it's so good that the memory of it has always stayed with me as one of my favorites. (I later used the wooden box it comes in as a pinhole camera in my photography class, which was fun) The only unfortunate factor into this one, however, is that since I haven't tasted it in so long, it's understandably difficult for me to now describe the flavor of it. I remember when I first tasted it that it had something distinctly floral about it - at the time, it made me think of lilacs. The only website I can find selling this stuff, however, says it's jasmine, so that's probably right. I probably should just buy some from this site with how much I keep talking about this unattainable tea, lol. I know for a fact that there is a tea room and gift shop about an hour north of me that sells it, as it's where I first bought it, after having afternoon tea there for some girl scout event. I tried to go back to said tea shop a few months ago, however, and found that it's only open like two days a week, which is incredibly annoying.
4. Pumpkin Spice
All I'm going to say is this: You will never, never find a Pumpkin Spice tea that has a more authentic pumpkin taste than Stash's. Conveniently, they also don't sell this one in most stores. I ordered like a 500-ct package of it on their website in 2010, and because the flavor is obviously best fitted for fall, I still have plenty of it left.
If you're wondering how I came across a tea no one sells, it was in a care package I got freshman year in college. It was one of those packages that parents pay for, but the school fills with random snacks. So, I have no idea where the school got this tea, but I'm very glad they did. (Especially since the rest of the snacks in the package were crap)
And finally... the moment you've all been waiting for....
5. MATCHA!!!
Matcha, simply put, is this amazing gift from the gods. It tastes like no other tea. It looks like no other tea.
Just look at that powdered green goodness.
Matcha is basically ground-up green tea leaves, and doing so just gives the tea a much richer and more distinct flavor. If you wanna get an idea for what it tastes like, order a Green Tea Latte at Starbucks. Doing so is what got me interested in this kind of tea. For the longest time, I had no idea what Starbucks was using to make their green tea taste so much better than the kind I would buy in the store. Whatever it was, I also recognized it as the taste of green tea ice cream in Japanese restaurants. So, what was this secret amazing green tea flavor that I apparently had to go out and buy expensive products to taste??? Finally one time when I was at a rest stop Starbucks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I leaned over and watched the girl assemble my Green Tea Latte, and saw that the green stuff she put in it was in a container labeled "Matcha." MYSTERY SOLVED.
Except not really. Because then I had to find it for purchase. Teavana had it, of course, for an insane amount of money. Whole Foods had something called "Double Matcha Green Tea" when I went there, which I assumed would be extra Matcha-y. Instead it's regular green tea combined with matcha tea in little satchets. aka, NOT TASTING LIKE MATCHA AT ALL. Big disappointment.
But, during my trip to New Orleans in January, I stopped in a store called The Spice and Tea Exchange, where I picked up this kind. For $12, it's still a little pricey (it makes 10 servings), but the flavor is absolutely perfect.
The pouch says to brew one "heaping teaspoon," and I'm happy to oblige...
Ignore the Miralax on the counter. My parents are old. lol.
Just look at the color. This tea is exquisite.
Perfection. (except for the fact that LJ somehow seems to have flipped that picture. Weird.)
I've had the idea for this post for a while. And by a while, I mean probably about a year, after my mom gave me a loose tea sampler and I was just lost in a world of constantly-changing teas for weeks. I figured it would be fun to talk about my 5 favorite teas. So why am I only posting this now? Well, because for the longest time, I only had four favorites.
Well, sort of. I had a tea that I knew I really liked, but I'd yet to find a good brand/type of it for purchase that I could actually talk about. Now that I have, however...
1. Banana-Nana
Now, this one is probably the least accessible of my list, and for that I apologize. But it was just too good to not include. I regret not taking a picture of the baggie I had of it when it was still full, when you could still see the chunks of banana in it... I am glad I took a picture at all though, as now it's totally gone. :P
Anyway, Banana-Nana is a tea I purchased from a local shop called Evermore Herb. As the name suggests, they primarily specialize in gardening materials, but their small selection of teas is 100% amazing. Although the name only talks about the Banana component, this tea mostly tastes like chocolate. And the smell of it is amazing - it permeates everything around, even when the bag is sealed, just tempting you to mix up a chocolatey treat.
This is Evermore Herb's tea page on their website, but I've never purchased things from them online, so I have no idea where they ship to. Also, Banana-Nana isn't even available on there. Sorry!
2. Almond Biscotti
This tea I did in fact fail to photograph before I drank all of it, so I apologize for stealing a random google image result here.
Anyway, this tea is sold by Teavana, and therefore about 500x more accesible than #1. While this one smells pretty good too, unlike Banana-Nana, I think the taste is what really makes this tea. I don't even really like biscotti all that much, but this tea is just rich and nutty and wonderful. Teavana is always amazing, so no surprise, really. Only downside is how expensive they always are.
3. Buckingham Palace Garden Tea
Another one I don't have a personal picture of, obviously. I used up my stores of this tea years ago, but it's so good that the memory of it has always stayed with me as one of my favorites. (I later used the wooden box it comes in as a pinhole camera in my photography class, which was fun) The only unfortunate factor into this one, however, is that since I haven't tasted it in so long, it's understandably difficult for me to now describe the flavor of it. I remember when I first tasted it that it had something distinctly floral about it - at the time, it made me think of lilacs. The only website I can find selling this stuff, however, says it's jasmine, so that's probably right. I probably should just buy some from this site with how much I keep talking about this unattainable tea, lol. I know for a fact that there is a tea room and gift shop about an hour north of me that sells it, as it's where I first bought it, after having afternoon tea there for some girl scout event. I tried to go back to said tea shop a few months ago, however, and found that it's only open like two days a week, which is incredibly annoying.
4. Pumpkin Spice
All I'm going to say is this: You will never, never find a Pumpkin Spice tea that has a more authentic pumpkin taste than Stash's. Conveniently, they also don't sell this one in most stores. I ordered like a 500-ct package of it on their website in 2010, and because the flavor is obviously best fitted for fall, I still have plenty of it left.
If you're wondering how I came across a tea no one sells, it was in a care package I got freshman year in college. It was one of those packages that parents pay for, but the school fills with random snacks. So, I have no idea where the school got this tea, but I'm very glad they did. (Especially since the rest of the snacks in the package were crap)
And finally... the moment you've all been waiting for....
5. MATCHA!!!
Matcha, simply put, is this amazing gift from the gods. It tastes like no other tea. It looks like no other tea.
Just look at that powdered green goodness.
Matcha is basically ground-up green tea leaves, and doing so just gives the tea a much richer and more distinct flavor. If you wanna get an idea for what it tastes like, order a Green Tea Latte at Starbucks. Doing so is what got me interested in this kind of tea. For the longest time, I had no idea what Starbucks was using to make their green tea taste so much better than the kind I would buy in the store. Whatever it was, I also recognized it as the taste of green tea ice cream in Japanese restaurants. So, what was this secret amazing green tea flavor that I apparently had to go out and buy expensive products to taste??? Finally one time when I was at a rest stop Starbucks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I leaned over and watched the girl assemble my Green Tea Latte, and saw that the green stuff she put in it was in a container labeled "Matcha." MYSTERY SOLVED.
Except not really. Because then I had to find it for purchase. Teavana had it, of course, for an insane amount of money. Whole Foods had something called "Double Matcha Green Tea" when I went there, which I assumed would be extra Matcha-y. Instead it's regular green tea combined with matcha tea in little satchets. aka, NOT TASTING LIKE MATCHA AT ALL. Big disappointment.
But, during my trip to New Orleans in January, I stopped in a store called The Spice and Tea Exchange, where I picked up this kind. For $12, it's still a little pricey (it makes 10 servings), but the flavor is absolutely perfect.
The pouch says to brew one "heaping teaspoon," and I'm happy to oblige...
Ignore the Miralax on the counter. My parents are old. lol.
Just look at the color. This tea is exquisite.
Perfection. (except for the fact that LJ somehow seems to have flipped that picture. Weird.)