513 Tasting Notes
Oh gosh. Sleeping schedule has gone completely to hell. woke up at 4:30 again and of course couldn’t get back to sleep. There are a few loose ends going on in my life right now, and I expect I’ll probably be feeling a lot better once they’ve been addressed. Still though—possibly uncomfortable work situation today, and I think I’ll just be glad for the weekend.
I needed the type of comfort only a warming tea could bring this morning. And this tea manages to be both assertive and warming, which suits the outlook I need to have quite perfectly, actually. I sullied it a bit by adding too much milk, but hey-if that’s the worst thing that happens today I’ll be lucky. you know how all tea is warming, but some are more warming than others? this is among the warmest, I think.
It sounds like you picked the perfect cup for this morning. I hope your day goes better than you’re anticipating.
I know what it’s like to have your nerves wracked by unresolved things and anticipating uncomfortable situations. (cyberhug) This too shall pass!
Thanks, guys. You understand this so well. I’m so scared, but hopefully it’ll be ok.
I hope your work day goes better than you expect!
I desperately hope you guys are right. Thanks for thinking of me.
Update when it’s over so we all know you survived. Then treat yourself to a favorite tea!
I sure did survive. Who knows what’ll happen longterm, but when do we ever know that anyway? I want to go to bed for a few weeks. Thanks so much for caring—you are all far kinder to me than I could ever deserve.
Glad you made it through :) I hope you got that comforting cup of tea tonight and a good night’s rest for once.
Bad day at work. I want to go home and stay there and hide and only leave when it feels safe to.
This tea is largely unremarkable. Pleasant enough, if a bit nondescript. artificial mango taste, although not distinctly mango, if you ask me. Had it without additions because of general feelings of nausea. Not a bad blend, but am not inspired to acquire more.
That’s all.
:( I hope the rest of your day gets better and your tummy calms down.
that was me yesterday, and given what has to happen today, i will likely be keeping you company today. i’m sorry keychange. dirty days….. sigh. oh!!!!! here! http://www.wimp.com/phonesolo/ this made me laugh =0)
thanks, cherry. and justJames, I’m sorry you’re here, too. I just feel like throwing things and having a sobbing fit right now.
I’m sorry, I hope the day will go by quickly so you can go home and chill.
don’t sob- listen to the link i left you!!!
Haha no sobbing at work. And ok, off to listen to it now. And thanks, fgel. The day will be done soon.
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! that actually made me laugh out loud. Reminded me not to take life too seriously.
=0) i heard it last night at 2 in the morning and it made me guffaw. i might have woken people but the was crap enough i didn’t much care. a ‘caught off guard’ laugh can be invaluable… xoxo
I understand crap days. And also value really unexpected laughs. But we’ll get through awful days, too.
Ugh. had one of those nights where I slept fitfully and then finally woke up for good at around 4:30. It wasn’t all that bad though—I just read and entertained myself until it was time to get ready for work. Lately, I’ve been feeling randomly nauseated, and so my tea preferences have kind of been all over the place. This morning, I wanted a tea that was reliable but not too nausea-inducing, and somehow this fit the bill perfectly. Thick creamy vanilla mouth feel with a hint of bergamot, just the way I like it.
In other news, I’ve been feeling kind of hopeless about my career prospects lately, although nothing substantive has actually changed to bring on this current bout of anxiety. I just keep on thinking I wasted my time getting a stupid degree, and that I didn’t pursue what I should have pursued, even though I distinctly remember choosing this option at the time over the other one for very specific reasons. Still though. I just hate the thought of having to job hunt once this is over, because looking for jobs is among the worst first world problems ever.
That’s enough from me about that. Now to get to work and enjoy my tea.
i’m with you on the job front!
it’s really annoying eh?
The randomly nauseated thing happens to me all the time, and I totally get feeling anxious. I have that same feeling even though I’m only halfway through the schooling I hope to do for what I want as a career. I hope things start looking up for you though. :)
Thanks, and back at you. It’ll all eventually work out, I’m fairly certain, but it isn’t a matter of just coasting along and waiting for stuff to just fall into your lap, you know? and your desires often don’t correlate with market demands, and you’re a young idiot and beggars can’t be choosers and all that sort of thing (not that you’re an idiot, I mean the generic young us LOL). And hate, hate, hate random stupid nausea. It just comes and goes and it doesn’t really seem worth fretting about to doctors and such.
Haha! I read “you’re a young idiot” and thought: Hm. Alright, I’ll just roll with it. :P Ah yes, I’m always reminded of those things. I want to do research in marine science, so my desires will never correlate with market demands. Often people can’t fully comprehend why I want to do something that won’t make money. I’m lucky I absolutely love what I’m doing so I’m hoping the hard work will pay off, even if it doesn’t “pay off”. HAH. Also, I’m so accustomed to the nausea now I just roll with it. I’ve come to realize that’s how my body manifests sickness and stress.
Hmmm, that’s interesting. I don’t tend to get “sick sick” very often, but almost always have something minor going wrong i.e.the nausea, random pain that comes and goes, unexplained weakness, etc. And yes, there’s a lot of pressure to pursue degrees that will “open many doors” and “give you the most options”, but little to no pressure to pursue what will likely bring you the most peace. That being said, we won’t be feeling very peaceful if we can’t afford food (and tea!), so I’m not discounting that type of pressure entirely, but it also doesn’t have to be an either/or concept.
Haha I wrote the thing about being a young idiot and then was like wait, she’s going to think I’m talking about her specifically haha!!
Haha, oh yes. I almost never get “sick sick” either. But I always have the minor things as well – nausea is the main one, and random pains are the follow up. I completely agree about pressure haha! Yes, I still plan to be able to live (and of course order tea). I definitely don’t like the either/or concept. I’ve been in school a long time and switched my degree a handful of times now because of that pressure (commerce – biology – nursing – biology/psychology). In the end, it’s me who has to be happy with what I’ve done, so I switched back to my true love and stuck with it. Haha I love how this went from anxious to me explaining my life. :P
Haha it’s ok. I love it when we all get off-topic in our comments. It’s hard, because we’re rarely encouraged to choose an option where, when we put our heads down at night, we can actually say we’re really happy with what we did that day. As for the anxiety, it really comes and goes, don’t you think? Like there will be weeks, months even, when I’m just like “it’ll be ok, it really will be.” and then there’ll be times when I experience crippling anxiety and am all like “holy crap, what the hell am I even doing?”. Having debt doesn’t help, although surprisingly it doesn’t keep me up at night. I figure that if I can pay it off steadily, that’s about the best I can do and so be it. And if all else fails, we’ll just go into the tea business haha. It also helps to remember that choosing to follow our passion doesn’t mean you’ll be in a constant state of bliss, so maybe the anxiety is just par for the course in any career—I mean, we all have to start somewhere, and starting sucks.
Yes! I have far worse times than other with anxiety. I have a semi-permanent “thin layer” all the time, just due to my personality, but I have days on end where I question everything and wonder if I should’ve gone a different route. My facebook is filled with people getting married and having their first, second, or even third kid, and I’m here getting ready to apply to grad schools. It doesn’t help when J’s family is always asking when we’re having kids. “Uhhh, we aren’t?”. :P Sometimes those things trigger that crippling anxiety and make me wonder if I what I’m doing is right, even though I know it is. Debt doesn’t bother me either. It’s those “deep” life questions that keep me up at night. I haven’t been sleeping well for weeks actually.
MAN. Career crap blows so hard. I have a fairly useless humanities degree and made the stupid decision to attempt a mid-career change, which has essentially rendered me unemployable. I’m lucky when I can get an 8-hour temporary retail contract. I’m haemorrhaging money. People keep telling me something will come along and it will get better, but it kind of sounds like useless platitudes when I’ve been at it for over 10 months and I can’t even get an interview. Employers are wary of taking risks on untested talent, even for entry-level positions at the moment, it seems. I feel like I’m just destined to be lost in the shuffle and never actually get to do anything meaningful. Or even be an office administrator. I’d be a great office administrator. Do you know how hard it is to get an interview as an office administrator? Now I’m just ranting, sorry. Let’s just go into the tea business. That’s something we’re good at!
I hear you all on the job front. I’m looking for work right now and have had some interviews, and I’ve got a savings cushion….but you still feel this sense of “I have to do something now” because you’re worried that if you don’t do anything, it will be harder later. Fingers crossed that things turn out okay for all of us.
I hear you on both the poor sleep (I awake for almost 2 hours in the night with my asthma. It took me almost an hour to realize that it was my asthma and that I needed to use my inhaler.) and on the career. Lately, I just haven’t been very happy with my job and how things are. :( At least the tea was perfect this morning!
Oh, job hunting. Is it bad that I’ve been perusing job ads while at work? Any wait I have that’s not long enough to do anything productive, and I’m looking at other jobs. Sadly it’s mostly a money factor. I haven’t worked up the nerve to apply for anything yet. Maybe I should.
I’m really sorry about the job situation. But maybe whatever degree you did get could be applied to different kinds of jobs? Many are more flexible than what people think, and in many cases, employers don’t really care about what you have a degree in, just that you in fact have one. I’m floating in some weird academic purgatory right now myself, hardly waiting to graduate and get away from academia, yet terrified of what I should do and which path I should take. But I’m trying to tell myself what I’m telling you, that degrees are flexible and try not to look at it as some terminal life choice.
Took the carry mug for a test drive to work today, and so far I’m really loving it. I especially love the mesh top for drinking, because it simulates drinking out of a normal mug so unbelievably well. I’m going to keep using it for the next little while and then write a proper tasting note.
But this tea was a great choice as my first tea in this mug. I take it without additions (I know, I fainted, too), and given that I’ve been feeling prone to random bouts of nausea lately, was exactly what I needed. sweet but not too sweet, with a pleasant combination of pineapple and blueberry. This cup was a bit more pineapple heavy, and there was a bit of lemongrass at the end of each sip to make the tea taste appropriately refreshing. I was determined to bring spring into my life despite its glaring absence, so I opted for a spring tea and a spring perfume (nerolia bianca by Guerlain).
Good travel mug tea overall, and good travel mug.
Oh, and it finally cooled down at like 1:00 this afternoon and tastes steller that way also!
Look at the MF trend in my life lately! I’m actually really glad, because I actually got these teas in October of 2013, and figure I need to actually get to them instead of just hording them because they’re “too nice”. But I was craving this tea ever since I got home last night, and chose to have it with breakfast this morning. As I sipped at it, I found it passingly reminiscent of glitter and gold, but only vaguely. Perhaps it’s because both have a touch of spice to them, although this one also has the delicious marzipan component, whereas glitter and gold is more similar to a pumpkin tea (in my opinion anyway—I know it’s an odd comparison). I also like that I could really get a hefty base here, and I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that it’s a base that MF is proud of, because there aren’t any attempts to obliterate it with a ton of flavour, although this tea is very flavourful indeed. and not in the “delicate but nice” way—there really is a lot of flavour here.
yeah, i agree, there is a vague similarity between the two. (BTW, your stuff’s finally all arrived and i can send it sometime this week, sorry for the delay!) :O
This sounds really interesting! Strongly flavoured, not delicate, but the flavour doesn’t drown out the base. Sounds very well balanced.
Ifjuly, I’m so excited! and no worries on taking your time-I’m like the slowest swapper ever, but everyone’s so forgiving haha.
Christina, it really is great. would you like me to send you some?
I’d love to try it, but I’d like to hold off on a swap for now. I just got a few samples in the mail and will be getting even more (as well as 2 orders) in the future, so I don’t want to get inundated by new types of tea.
Sounds good! :). I totally understand being overwhelmed with like five million inbound packages lol
I’m doing a bit of backlogging this morning, although I actually didn’t drink much tea at all this weekend, because the hotel we stayed at didn’t even provide us with a kettle! and there’s no way I was going to have sloppily brewed tea, so this note is actually for the tea I had Friday morning.
And let me just reiterate that the French really know how to make a mean cup of tea. Mean, I tell you. The trick with this tea is to avoid overleafing at all; just a tsp for 8 oz (and not my usual tsp and a half) yields the perfect combination of spice, warmth, and chai. I took it with milk and sugar, and this had the effect of toning down the ginger just enough to make it a perfectly balanced cup, whereas before, I found the ginger to be a touch too prominent, with the clove not far behind. So yes. Four minutes, bit of milk and sugar, and only one level tsp. Perfection.
Hope you had a great weekend!
Thanks! it was alright. A bit exhausting, and too much travelling, but alright overall. I came home and slept for like fifteen hours!
It’s interesting that you felt this one was a bit too gingery. I had this last week, and to me the clove seemed like the strongest flavour (although it was still well-balanced).
You know, I sometimes struggle to identify ginger vs clove, so I’ll say that right off the bat. did you like it?
I did, but I’ve got some chais in my cupboard and another one on the way, so I’m going to stick with those for now.
Ok so I’m sure this tea can actually be quite scrumptious indeed, and when i was at DT today, I thought I’d order it in what I’d previously thought to be the fail-safe method of ordering a latte. But alas, it was not to be. It was the same guy who helped me last time, and although he’s alright, he’s a bit awkward and polite but not too friendly or chatty (which is seriously not usually a problem with me, only I’m so giddy and ridiculously over the top with joy and excitement when I go into any teashop that I want to chat up everyone in the vicinity (well the sAs I mean) and they all probably heave a sigh of relief when I leave), and he isn’t the best at the water to milk ratio when making lattes, because this one turned out so watery and thin that I took one sip and abandoned the cup. Like I said, I could taste the potential, but it just wasn’t going to happen at such a watery consistency.
But I got the carry mug! I kind of want it in a nicer colour, so, you know, I’ll probably just do the irresponsible thing and do just that once nicer colours come out. fml.
Ok, off to bed soon. A friend and I are heading to the thousand islands for the weekend to use a groupon and live the good life for a few days. Swimming pools, hot tubs, spa vouchers, good food, good conversation, great tea…should be solid. Oh, and I get to fly Porter which is always lovely.
Aww, too bad about the watered down latte. Makes me wonder if he even drinks them himself.
AWESOME! wave as you fly over me! and you just let me know when you replace your carry mug LOL
fjel, I wondered the same thing! because who in their right mind would enjoy a watery latte ever? I mean, there’s only one right wayto have it: creamy and milky! mmm
And sil, keep an eye out for me around noon tomorrow! I’ll be in an adoreable little porter airplane haha.
And yup, I know where to go when I need to…ummm…recycle my mug. heh!!
your weekend sounds awesome! Have fun!
Yay for the carry mug!
Have a great trip!
Glad to see you mention that you got your mug. I saw your post earlier today and wondered what you did. :).
Have an awesome weekend!
Thanks guys! And yeah, super excited about my carry mug!
Have a fun weekend!!!
Have a great time this weekend!
I want to come, too! PACK ME PLEASE PLEASE.
Oh wow, that sounds like FUN!
Have an amazing trip! :)
Thanks guys! the trip was kind of lackluster, although fitting anna in with all her lupicia melon oolong would have helped! hahaha!
You did not PACK ME. I was NOT PACKED. I have sads.
But you also (presumably) have melon oolong. Which cures pretty much everything, as far as I’m concerned. So no more sads! (besides, you would have hated this place. It was very not-anna-like)
Aww. That’s disappointing your vacation wasn’t all you hoped for. :(
It is, although to be honest, I should have known better. I seem to be one of those people who need a lot of recharge time, and this didn’t allow me to have as much as I needed, hence the wind it took out of me and the subsequent 15 hour “nap” I took once I got home. LOL.
:D That is totally my kind of nap. I did something similar when my Gramma took me and my brother to Mexico a few years ago. I was so wiped from everything we did I just slept and slept and slept. :)
Aw. You clearly deserve more melon oolong! And, you know, if a place is not-anna-like, upping the loincloth-clad grape-feeder staff ratio really is a small fix.
Have you ever taken one of those introvert/extrovert self tests? (Myers-Briggs, for instance.) I’m hugely sociable, but a solid introvert, so too much people interaction drains me. I remember when I was a kid, and went to birthday parties – I was always sick for like a week afterwards, because the interaction part took so much out of me. I loved it, but it really exhausted me.
Yes to the tests. I think I have a foot planted firmly in each world, although if we’re going with the question: do you recharge with people or on your own? my answer is firmly in the “on my own” camp. I get drained very, very quickly by social interactions, despite excelling in most social settings.
ditto! i think we should all have a party at my place. everyone gets their own room to relax in and we can meet up for 30 mins every 2 hours in the kitchen haha
LOL. Sil, you are a perfect person.
Indeed she is!!
That sounds like my kind of party! (In the kitchen for tea, right?)
Well, as promised, this is a sipdown. The tin will soon be replaced by Blue Lagoon, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of the sipdownery that has taken place this morning. I took this tea with a dash of maple syrup as I did yesterday, and, even with the tiny bit of astringency I got, was a wonderful cup to accompany my breakfast. I anticipate that come the fall and winter again (which, what a joke—it’s still resoundingly winter where I am), I fully expect to have this in my collection, so we won’t be parting for very long I’m afraid (especially because the summer lasts like five minutes).
This tea came to me from a place far, far away, and from the lovely Anna. You know the one: great hair, ziplock university, secret millionaire, very dear…
The scent of the dry leaf smells kind of like the inside of your trick-or-treat bag from Halloween. Or, you know, maybe that’s the smell of lychee. I must admit that I don’t tend to gravitate towards things of the lychee persuasion, so I tried this tea a bit cautiously. And I think I either brewed it wrong or I simply don’t like lychee. I gave it a four minute steep because that’s what I’ve done with all my other oolongs and they’ve come out delectable, but somehow this had very little flavour to it. remarkably, however, I could taste lychee lingering for like an hour after I was done sipping, although the taste of lychee wasn’t in the sip itself. Isn’t that so odd? Anyway, a most unusual tea, that’s for sure. I have enough left to try it again, and I may try a shorter steep time, but perhaps it’s just that I’m not a big lychee fan.
Thanks, Anna!! I’m so glad you introduced me to lupicia, because now I feel compelled to try Lupicia everything.
Yes! Let’s make it our mission to try Lupicia everything!
This one does linger a lot, and I am also on the fence about lychee – I’m really glad I’m not the only one. If I have to drink a lychee tea, though, it will definitely be this one.
In terms of flavour I really do recommend that you try to follow the 100C/boiling and 1.5-2 minute brewing instructions at least once for all the flavoured greens and oolongs (and, generally, blacks as well). For science!
Ok, for science. That’s what I’ll do with what I have left. Promise! and yes, operation try lupicia everything must continue.
Melon oolong. Try it. I dislike oolongs. I wanted to steal cavo’shalf of the bag she and Kittenna split.
oh god I have tried their melon oolong and I want piles and piles of it in my house forever and ever.
Everyone back away from the melon oolong. I repeat, back away from the oolong.
Ha! I want a melon oolong-flavoured life.
Maybe we can all organize a field trip to the Lupicia Tea Factory and you can go all Chocolate Factory on them and OOPS FELL INTO THE VAT OF MELON OOLONG MY MISTAKE JUST GONNA SWIM AROUND FOR A BIT KBYE.
