Caribou's New Tea Latte Fusions

Caribou Coffee has rolled out four new tea lattes (that is, brewed tea mixed with steamed milk), Caramel Earl Grey, Black Thai, Cinnamon Rooibos, and Pomegranate Vanilla Oolong. Caribou has never been the place I go for tea (though I prefer their choices to Starbucks) but I'm always excited to see new tea options offered anywhere. I've only tried the Caramel Earl Grey so far, and hey, it wasn't too bad. I would have held the caramel, though. I'll try the Black Thai next time.

Recipe: Shrimp Couscous with Seafood Broth

After trying a couple recipes for seafood couscous, this is my favorite! Making the broth is kind of time-consuming, but not hard. It's adapted from a Cooking Light recipe; the directions are my own.

Ingredients:
1 lb unpeeled shrimp
1 tsp unsalted butter
1 onion, coarsely chopped
2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, coarsely chopped
1 tsp chopped fresh or 1/4 tsp dried thyme
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 big can diced tomatoes
4 cups water
1 cup dry white wine
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
Dash pepper
1 cup uncooked couscous
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup dized red bell pepper
1 cup diced yellow squash

Directions:
1. Peel shrimp (save shells a bowl!) and pop the shrimp in the fridge.

2. Melt 1 tsp butter in a large Dutch oven or heavy pot over medium heat; add shrimp shells, onion, celery, carrot, thyme, and garlic. Toss for a few minutes until the veggies start to soften and the shrimp shells are pink; add the tomatoes, water, wine, and tomato paste. Let boil, then bring down to a simmer and let bubble for 35 minutes.

3. When the broth ingredients are done, carefully transfer to a blender (in batches) and purée. Strain the puree into a bowl.

4. Pop 1 cup seafood broth, 1 tsp butter, salt and pepper into a saucepan and let boil; slowly stir in couscous. Take off the stove, cover, and let sit for five minutes.

5. In a large skillet, sauté shrimp in olive oil for one minute, then add pepper and squash and sauté three more minutes. Add couscous and another 1 1/2 cups broth; cook one more minute and serve!

The Perfect Cup of Green Tea

Okay, enough politics for awhile. Back to the tea.

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which is a weird name for a paper (I'm gonna intelligence you), up to 80 percent of the healthy antioxidants in green tea lose their power in stored tea or in your intestine and don't get absorbed at all. Sadness! How to combat this? Brew fresh tea and add lemon. According to "researchers" (I would feel more intelligenced, Seattle P-I, if you told me which researchers) a 50-50 citrus/tea mix will best preserve the antioxidants in green tea. Lemon works best, followed by orange. Yum!

Obama Invited to Take Tea with Queen

According to the Telegraph, the Queen has invited President Obama to take tea with her when he's in town for the G20 summit in April. Some in the British press (notably, the Telegraph reporter Iain Martin) are apparently annoyed at Obama's eagerness to accept her invitation after he gave Gordon Brown what they judge lame gifts including a DVD box set and some toy helicopters. Whatever, Iain. I'll take those DVDs if you don't want them. It would be totally cool to have tea with the Queen, too, but I think I'd be so nervous I'd drop my priceless teacup. I bet they'd have really good snacks, too.

Oregon Church Fights to Drink Hallucinogenic Tea

A Brazilian Christian congregation in Oregon is fighting for its right to drink hoasca, a tea with hallucinogenic properties made from the bark of tropical vines. According to ABC News, "Believers say the tea allows them to have visions and enables talks with God and communications with spirits."

The Justice Department classifies hoasca as a banned substance, but a federal judge is considering whether the church should be allowed to use the tea in its services through the religious freedom restoration act. For example, some Native American tribes are allowed to use peyote (a cactus with similar properties) as part of their ceremonies.

I'm not sure how I feel about hallucinogenic tea. What if these believers saw a vision of God telling them to kill somebody? Religious folks are crazy enough without visions. I do like the possibilities for a marketing campaign, though: "Drink tea. See God."

Right-Wingers Co-op Tea

Last Friday, conservatives across the country held "tea parties" to protest Obama's stimulus package. These "parties" were inspired by a rant by Rick Santelli, an analyst on CNBC. It's kind of unclear how tea was actually involved...looking at pictures I don't see much tea. Maybe some people put some tea bags in a fountain?

Anyway, it seems to me a very minimal tea connection, and a poor excuse to tie tea to conservatism! I don't have an incredibly strong view on the stimulus package myself, but I am sure that tax cuts are not going to save our economy. Personally, I think we should limit all salaries to one million a year. You can't POSSIBLY need more than that, let's be serious.

Update on Japanese Tea Garden

The Japanese vendor will be taking over the tea house! (See my previous entry here) I simply must visit once the change is made and see for myself.

Happy 20th Choice Teas!

Happy anniversary to Choice Teas! I enjoyed many a cup of Lavender Earl Grey Choice Tea at Kiva Han Café while at school in Pittsburgh, but I didn't know until yesterday that Choice was the first exclusively organic and fair trade tea company in the US. Hooray! They even buy wind power to make up for the electricity they use. Rock on, Choice, and happy birthday!

Current Tea Trends

A few fabulous tea trends were on display at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco recently. According to a lucky correspondant (how do I get a job that sends me to Fancy Food Shows?) who attended the conference, some of the trends include:

• Teas meant for booze: bags that are steeped in alcohol, then mixed with other ingredients. (!!) The "mojito mint" as described is steeped in rum, then mixed with mint leaves, sugar, etc. This sounds awesome, as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not sure how well tea would steep if the alcohol were cold! I've always wanted to try making tea cocktails, though. These cocktail teas are made by Zhena's Gypsy Tea (previously known to me only as "one of those expensive tea companies") and will be available at Whole Foods.


• Tea in bar form. As in, power bars. Weird?


• Special iced tea brewing pitchers that have separate compartments for ice and hot tea, which are then mixed. Nice!

Some tea trends I'D like to see:

• Affordable teapots like coffeepots that brew strong tea and keep it warm all day. Maybe these exist, but I haven't really found them.


• Mix-your-own tea stores with bins of leaves and flowers and flavorings.


• More tea-infused alcohols!


• Bottled UNSWEETENED tea like they have in Japan in vending machines.

Read the full story on tea trends at the Fancy Food Show here.

Tea on Valentine's Day

I had a Valentine's Day treat this past weekend — tea at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill! It's become quite the affair since I last had afternoon tea there...there was a special room and a dedicated tea hostess who waxed poetic about the tea my date chose (a coconut oolong which really was spectacular.) My tea, a mixture of green and black recreated from some 18th-century blend, failed to thrill her.

The treats were wonderful! We each got two cucumber sandwiches (the best I've ever had!), a roasted bell pepper sandwich, smoked salmon biscuits, raspberry gems (amazing! high-falutin' gum drops!), chocolate tartlets, shortbread cookies, chocolate-covered strawberries, and (of course) currant scones. It was super awesome.

Twitter Saves Indy Tea Shop

A Kansas tea shop owner thought that with the current recession, he would have to close his doors when his lease ran out in May. But when the whipper-snapper employees of Zoomdweebie's Tea Bar convinced their owner to put his store on Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, business took off. His nationwide Twitter fans vote on what limited-edition teas he should blend every week. Could Twitter save other small independent stores struggling right now? If I ever get around to starting my tea room, I'll definitely have to get on Twitter!

Read the full story here.

New Owner for San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden?

The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park has always been one of my favorite spots to relax. I love wandering through the winding pathways, curved bridges, and manicured gardens and ponds that are dotted with flowers at all times of the year, thanks to San Francisco's constant climate. I always end my visit with a stop at the tea house for a pot of green tea and some sesame cookies. Now, however, it turns out a new buyer is making a bid to purchase the garden and turn it from what some consider a tourist trap into a more authentic Japanese traditional experience.

As someone who loves that tourist trap, I was kinda sad to hear this, until I read about what the new buyer would do. Carol Murata, who owns a café in Japantown, has promised to bring a $500,000 grant to improve the weathered garden, as well as to offer "authentic Japanese tea service and pastries, incorporate cultural events such as the Cherry Blossom Festival, sell goods made by Japanese artisans and feature traditional music demonstrations," according to a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Hey, sounds awesome. It's true that the current garden serves fortune cookies, which aren't super authentic, and sells some shlock in its gift shop.

The current owner, who's Chinese-American, cries racism, and so far city staff have recommended Murata. We'll see what happens!

You can read the whole story here.

TEA: Celestial Seasonings Puts out Two Teas for Breast Cancer Awareness

BOULDER (AP) - Tea maker Celestial Seasonings has introduced two new green teas to coincide with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.

The tea maker is known for having packages with art and uplifting messages.

The artists whose work adorn packages of the new teas are Colorado breast cancer survivors Dagmar Fehlau of Boulder and Heidi Kummli of Ward.

Celestial Seasonings has pledged up to $100,000 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

(Copyright Associated Press, All Rights Reserved.)

Tea: Mourners' tea drains reservoir

Tea-drinking mourners emptied St Johnston reservoir


By Staff reporter

Published Date: 18 March 2008
Source: Journal Tuesday
Location: Derry

Mourners drank so much tea and coffee at three separate wake houses in a Donegal town recently, the local council reservoir ran out of water. According to Donegal County Councillor, Tony McDaid, council staff couldn't work out how the reservoir serving the St. Johnston area had suddenly run out of supply. He said it later emerged the three wakes in the locality had caused the problems.
“There were three large wakes at the same time,” he said. “With people making so much tea over the weekend, they actually emptied the reservoir.”

Details of the St. Johnston incident emerged at this week’s meeting of the Letterkenny Electoral Area Committee during a debate on the Glenmaquinn water supply outside Letterkenny.

Executive Engineer, James Kelly said on three separate days last month, residents served by the supply were left without water because of problems at the Listillion Reservoir.

Mr. Kelly said there were all sorts of reasons being suggested for the problems but the council had yet to discover what the real reason was.

“There’s talk of leaking pipes but that has still to be substantiated,” he said. “People were also wondering if farmers were using the water to divert water into slurry tanks to make the slurry easier mixed. That has also yet to be substantiated.”

Mr. Kelly said there were periods of frosty weather and the council engineers were thinking that maybe there were overground pipes left running in order to stop them from freezing.

The Executive Engineer said with the new boreholes development coming on stream in the Letterkenny area over the coming weeks, the hope is that the residents at Glenmaquinn will not have to face such supply shortages again.

Last Updated: 17 March 2008 1:36 PM

Tea Personality

Tea meets fortune telling, or perhaps Myers-Briggs—this master tea taster will create a tea blend based on your personality—or your friend's personality, or your company's...for the low low price of 27 pounds.

Penguin Tea Timer

I need this little gadget--I have a bad habit of forgetting my teabags and making my cups of tea all tannin-tastic. Check him out.

CONVERSATION: Gas ovens

Woke up at six-something this morning and stumbled sleepily upstairs to be awakened abruptly by the sickly sweet odor of GAS! MY GAS OVEN'S GOING TO KILL ME! IT'S GOING TO KILL ME! I'M DEAD!

Having grown up with electric ovens that turn OFF like NORMAL things when you're not using them and don't have tiny, insidious spurts of gas oozing out all the time ready to KILL you if their pilot lights go out, I am majorly freaked out by gas appliances. Okay, so at home our dryer and heater were gas, but they never threatened to kill me. My oven now likes to scare me every couple months, spreading gas across the living room and convincing me that the spark that turns on a light switch will erupt in a huge fireball, and any attempt to relight the pilot lights will send me to a fiery grave.

Though it was better than those two times in Chapel Hill when I was awoken by an overflowing toilet.

TEA: Milky tea is just as healthy

Tea—Milking It (Science News Online)

Janet Raloff

I'm a serious tea drinker. I'll down it hot or cold, plain or with lemon. Like most Americans, however, I don't regularly add milk. But when my colleague David Lindley, an editor here at Science News, was growing up, his family certainly did.

Being a Brit, David comes from a culture that holds considerable reverence for this brew and might be accused of being fussy about its preparation. When I add milk to tea, which I do only occasionally, I'm not careful about the amount. It's typically a big slosh—and always added after the tea is fully brewed and sitting in a mug.

In the Lindley household, by contrast, "a little milk was put into the bottom of a cup—just a touch," before any tea was added, David notes. And his mom invariably made tea in the pot, brewing it from some black, loose-leaf variety.

Because adding milk to tea is routine in the United Kingdom, a team of Scottish researchers decided to investigate the potential health significance of this practice. Their concern: Because milk can bind to some of tea's antioxidants, it might prevent them from countering free radicals.

These radicals can wreak havoc on DNA and other components of cells. And with the onslaught of age, disease, and pollutant exposures, our bodies find it harder to keep those radicals in check. The result: Studies have begun linking excessive free-radical production to a host of chronic disorders, from cancer and diabetes to heart disease.

Against this backdrop, Janet A.M. Kyle and her colleagues at the Rowett Research Institute purchased different teas from local stores, brewed them up, and then assayed their antioxidant activity. In a paper published online and in an upcoming Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, they report finding some brand-related differences in the inherent antioxidant activity of a brew. The good news: Adding milk doesn't alter that activity.

Moreover, they found, adding milk to tea doesn't diminish the amount of antioxidants—such as the epigallocatechin gallate, which many commercial teas tout as EGCG—that ends up in tea-drinkers' blood. So, it appears one can safely boost the protein content of your brew, by adding milk, without sacrificing tea's antioxidant bounty.

Rich in antioxidants

When it comes to quashing free radicals, tea provides an antioxidant bonanza. Best known are its catechins, a family of compounds whose star, EGCG, has been linked not only to weight loss but also to diminished cancer risk.

Teas also contain polyphenolic chemicals, another class of antioxidant compounds that appear capable of lowering an individual's risk of heart disease and cancer. Tea's chief polyphenol constituents are quercetin and kaempferol. However, because milk can bind to these, there had been concern that such chemical pairings might limit the polyphenols' biological activity or even their uptake by the body.

To test that, Kyle's group purchased six locally popular teas and evaluated the composite antioxidant activity of each. They boiled water and added 3 grams of tea leaves—the amount in a typical U.K. tea bag, but 50 percent more than is found in typical European tea bags—for each brewed cup. Chemical assays showed that the brews' levels of polyphenols and catechins rose steadily for about 7 minutes.

"Except for the cheapest supermarket brand," Kyle notes, "we got similar results for these teas." The low-cost outlier proved lower than the name brands in terms of the free-radical-quenching punch it delivered, mostly owing to its low concentrations of polyphenols.

The researchers selected the tea that had exhibited the strongest antioxidant performance for their follow-up human trials. On three separate occasions, each of 9 healthy men in their mid-20s to mid-30s avoided tea for at least a day, fasted overnight, and then drank a test beverage for breakfast.

On one morning, each man got two cups of black tea that had been steeped for 7 minutes. Together, the cups contained 300 ml of tea mixed with 100 ml of hot water. Another day, volunteers got 300 ml of tea mixed with 100 ml of skim milk. On the remaining test day, each recruit downed 300 ml of hot water that had been doctored with 100 ml of milk. (Didn't the latter taste ghastly? "It did," Kyle concedes, "and I'm very grateful to my volunteers for actually drinking it.")

Before and at various points over a 3-hour period following the consumption of each day's beverage, Kyle's group sampled the volunteers' blood to measure polyphenols, catechin levels, and the blood's ability to quash free radicals. While the gross, milky hot water had no effect on these parameters, both brews showed equivalent increases in circulating antioxidants and radical-thwarting prowess, which peaked about 60 minutes after tea had been consumed.

Kyle says her group now hopes to examine tea's antioxidant performance in a larger group of people and for a longer period. She's hoping it proves substantial because the only other source of the antioxidant chemicals being looked at in her study come from fruits and vegetables—and "we don't eat a lot of those in Scotland," she says, "but we do drink a lot of tea."

And what about David: After 24 years in the United States, does he still blend a touch of milk with his tea? No, he says. Milk is for black tea, which doesn't much agree with his constitution. Today, his brews are "mostly green and herbal teas."

By the way, David's not just one of our editors. The author-physicist also has 6 books under his belt. On Feb. 20, Doubleday published his latest—Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science.

Editor's note: David Lindley played no role in assigning or editing this article.

TEA: Indian Scientists Invent Fake Nose To Smell Tea

Model nose invented by CDAC for tea testing

Kolkata, Jun 03: Good news for the tea tasters! The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) has developed a model "nose" which can help detect complex odours and manufacture better quality tea.

Speaking to UNI, ITA Secretary General Manojit Das Gupta here today said that the instrument, invented by the CDAC, uses sensors to detect and differentiate complex odours.

''An odour stimulus generates a characteristic fingerprint or pattern and based on these patterns the teas can be classified, identified and graded as odour lends flavour to tea,'' he said.

Tea tasters, who manually taste teas by sipping it, rolling it on their tongue and inhaling the smell could now see their jobs being done with this "nose", which can also act as a "tongue".

Its computing system was capable of sensing compounds of tea and predicting scores (or quality standards), which otherwise is manually handled by tea tasters.

He said the equipment was demonstrated recently during a workshop.

The instrument would be available to the growers at Rs 50,000 and the equipment could help improve quality.
--- UNI

TEA: London not Blair's cup of tea

London is not quite Blair's cup of tea
By Joe Murphyand Nicholas Cecil, Evening Standard

London: Tony Blair had London cafe owners steaming - after claiming they cannot make a good cup of tea.

The Prime Minister landed in hot water by moaning that it was impossible to find a decent cuppa in the capital any more. "I fear you may be right," he said when asked if he agreed that good mugs of tea were impossible to track down. "It's got to be properly strong, it's got to have the right colour. The trouble is, not many people do it like that."

"This is a British tradition that must not be lost. If I were running for office again, I'd make it a major part of any platform," he said.

But a spokesman for The Ritz, where afternoon tea costs £36 (Dh261) a head, said: "We are confident the several hundred cups of tea we serve a day are great."

A Downing Street spokeswoman declined to reveal who made the tea for Blair at No 10, but insisted: "It's always tea in his tea mug."

How to make the perfect brew

The Tea Council's official guide to the perfect cuppa:

Use a good quality loose leaf or bagged tea, stored in an air-tight container at room temperature.
Use freshly drawn boiling water - the water needs to contain oxygen to draw the best flavour from the tea. Let the tea brew for two to four minutes.
It does not matter if milk is poured first or last when using a pot. But milk must be poured last if brewing from a bag in a mug or it will cool the water too quickly.