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I have been clinging to this unpretentious morning tea like a security blanket over the past two unrelentless, frigid weeks-that-feel-like-months. It needs nothing, asks nothing, doesn’t get unpleasantly stout with neglect, accepts milk without complaining, has no flavor outliers that make you have to think. PG Tips, you’ve got competition.

After two weeks of staring at the same human and feline faces (we haven’t been 100% housebound, but it sure hasn’t been pleasant to go out) and a long, tedious work at home day, I needed a little change, so I broke into this little pouch which had found its way into my Valentine basket.

I like rooibos. I like cherry when it is done properly (which is, unfortunately, rarely). In the case of this blend, the cherry wasn’t cough-syrup cherry, but it wasn’t quite cherry-pie cherry, either. So the mildly fruity cherry butted up against the mildly fruity rooibos and my tired taste buds had a little trouble figuring out which one was which.

I didn’t dislike it and will give it further consideration, along with this perplexer: why is it so hard to make authentically cherry and authentically strawberry teas?

18 below (F) when we got up this morning! After that, the balmy 12 degrees we’re expecting tonight calls for beach party drinks.

But instead, I’m capping off a long day with Spiced Ginger Plum. While we’re still frozen sounds like a good opportunity to knock out all the chai stuff I didn’t get to around Christmas.

It leads with too much hibiscus, but there is something plummy and fruitcakey once you get the hibby out of the way. It might be better sweetened, but I’m near the bottom of the cup and I’m just too (spiced ginger) plumb tired to get up.

Bundle up, y’all.

With apologies to those of you who are farther north and even colder than I am, this kind of weather makes me tired, tense, and anxious. So the last thing I needed, even after stepping out in -22F wind chill to start and run my car for a bit and take a turn at snow sweeping, was a heavy hit of caffeine. But the thing I needed most was something with meat on its bones to warm me up.

This is a good compromise. While it would never fool anyone into thinking it’s coffee, the chicory is dark and just a little sweet; the cinnamon and spice is enough to warm you up and recharge your draining batteries.

This Fe-BRRRRR-ary afternoon is making me shamelessly (or deliciously) lazy, depending on how you look at it. Husband helped me defrost and de-ice and wander in to play with my Sunday kids for a bit. Remember playing with the scratch paper in art class that had a black waxy coating over a swirly neon pattern? That was our early arriver activity: my crew scratched out a panda bear, a t-rex looking in the mirror, an arsenal of swords, and a “Julie and the Phantoms” tribute page.

So that made me tired. Yeah, that’s it. All the better to enjoy a cup of tea that deserves your full attention.

This is actually the second steep report. I first reported that it had ground cinnamon mixed in with the tieguanyin (I think) base. Inaccurate. Omit ground cinnamon; insert “little broken hunks of cinnamon stick that you can smell from three feet away while you are steeping.”

The second steep is amost equally as strong as the first, minus the floral lilt of the first steep. Smells good, the steam is lovely in your face.

I feel like a cross between a freezer-burnt turkey and a wilted houseplant. We are on Day 4 without even a glimmer of sunshine (thus the houseplant) and a layer of permafrost that makes a four-block run to the post office a daredevil event (thus the frozen turkey). Prognosis is for this lovely pattern to continue well into next week, with temps dipping to the zeroes this weekend.

I needed a severe dose of warm and cozy this evening, and this little tea does the trick. The fine print calls it a “Warming Tea.” The ginger takes the lead in doing precisely that, the lemon clears out a gunked up throat, and the rooibos just serves as a holding mechanism for both of them.

Just one more bag left in my little box, and it appears to be distressingly discontinued. I’ll have to ration it juice-diciously.

(Pooh. I’ve tried four times to get an image to stick to the tea description. It’s a box. It says Ty-phoo. It’s gold. How’s that?)

After a couple of un-winters in our little corner of Missouri, we’re due for a week of bona-fide real winter this week (highs by Friday might make 10 F), and I am going to need significant quantities of unleaded fuel at work. The fun started yesterday with improperly unpredicted freezing drizzle that chilled me through and made me weak. And the Tuesday Morning staff looked a little gloomy and lonely. So I bought this box to cheer them up. (That’s the story I am sticking with.)

I regret nothing. The online product pitch mentions African teas, but I would swear the box itself threw “Assam” into the combo, and you know Assam is my magic word. Whatever voodoo Typhoo do, they do it well. No rogue acidity, no bottom-of-of-the-bin bitterness, just one beautiful cup of dark, smooth, slightly bready morning tea.

This one warmed my cold bones all the way down to my toes after having to scrape my windshield in a thick freezing mist. The base tea appears to be a nice large-leafed tieguanyan with a liberal sprinkling of ground cinnamon that reached my nose first the minute hot water hit it. The cinnamon pairs perfectly with the fruity personality of the oolong to create a lovely little cup of mock apple pie.

I don’t care who or who else doesn’t like this one under my roof (see discussion of previous domestic oolong differences of opinion); it’s a lovely treat!

Aha! We’ve found another one that husband will drink. This didn’t get a good rating the first time, but he and I were both sleep deprived and grumpy (ice storm). This morning’s review, which isn’t nearly as funny as Kiki’s: “Yes. Now that’s roasty tasting. I just don’t do the fancy fruit and flower stuff.”

As for me, I do agree—it’s a decent cuppa, with maybe a little bit of Juicy Fruit uptick at the very end.

From the sampler box. There is chocolate (not quite enough for me); there is rose (a little too much for me), but it performs exactly as advertised. Tea Forte recommends it with milk. I recommend it with a Russell Stover chocolate cream. Adds a little elegance to a glumpy afternoon, the highlight of which has been vacuuming cat hair and folding far too many loads of laundry.