Maddy Barone Send Message

I had a cup of this this afternoon, and when I opened the bag I got a whiff of the scent of a chocolate mint. It was sooooo nice. MY sense of smell is still weak, and some days it’s non existent. This afternoon it was strong enough for me to really enjoy this tea. :)

This tea is still the bomb! Love it. So smooth, so creamy and buttery smelling. I wish I could smell it even better. The sense of smell is fugitive. That is, it comes and it goes, and it’s never really strong. But I get hints of this, and it is delicious. I’m just about falling asleep in my chair, so I wont do a second steep tonight. I wonder if I could pop the tea sleeve into the fridge and re-steep in the morning? Really, this tea is too good to not use up every bit of it.

Another hit from Mariage Freres!

I had this one on my mid-morning break. Pleasant flavor, not too strong, not bitter or astringent. I couldn’t taste individual flavors, but it smelled sort of buttery, creamy. Really nice!

This one really is lovely. It’s a good tea to mark the historic decision by the US Supreme Court today, being both slightly sweet and slightly bitter. You see, for my brother this is a bittersweet day. It’s a victory for him and millions of others, but came too late for him to legally marry the man he loved, who died of a brain aneurysm some years ago. He was in a coma for weeks and my brother had no legal right to decide his treatment. So here’s to the future. May it be full of love.

I had this one tonight. Not much flavor to it, or maybe it’s just that I can’t taste it. I liked it better as it cooled. Might be nice iced.

This is one of the BEST TEAS ever!!! Many thank to beelicious for the sample!

My sense of smell is practically non existent in the morning, and pretty weak in the evening, but it’s better in the afternoon. Still not great (I mean, I know cucumbers have a scent, but I can’t smell them even in the afternoon) but I can get strong scents. I wanted to try a new tea this afternoon, and I went through the lovely samples I have in the tea drawer. I decided on this one.

Boy, am I glad I did! When I lifted the cup to sip I smelled something! Not precisely sure what, but maybe chocolate? CarameL? I sipped and this tea was luscious. Smooth, silky, almost sweet. Rich and mellow. A really great cup!

I don’t have a cold right now, but this darn sinus infection (and the other ailments that come along with the super-duper antibiotic I’m on) have me under the weather. My sense of smell is faint and fugitive, but I can get at least a whiff of this one, so I’ve had it the past couple of night before bed. I used to think I’d never want to drink this tea for pleasure, but I was wrong. It’s actually quite nice.

Guess what??? I got a little whiff of smell!! It turns out that a month after surgery, about the time my sense of smell should have kicked in, I got a sinus infection. Since June 1 I’ve been on two different antibiotics, and the doc just prescribed a second round of the last one. This infection, like a lot of sinus infections, is darned stubborn and doesn’t want to die. This antibiotic is very, very powerful. Naturally, I got a yeast infection. :(

But I’ll take it, if it comes with a return of a sense of smell. It’s not all that strong. Yet. Hopefully it will get clearer in time. Last night I could smell and taste DAVID’s Cold 911 just fine. This morning I made a cup of this and couldn’t really smell or taste it. But I have hope! I’ll hoard the last tablespoon of this tea in hopes of being able to tase and smell it soon.

I brewed a quart of this today. A friend and I stopped on our way home at the Premium Outlet mall at Albertville MN. One of the stores we checked out was Harry & David, a little shop full of gourmet cookies, coffees, crackers, salsas, packages of soup mixes, bread mixes, cupcake mixes, etc. They had a small section of teas.

I said I wasn’t buying any more tea until autumn, but I lied. There was a sale, buy one get one free. I picked up this one and one called Watermelon Mint. Both are packaged to brew 1 quart of iced tea.

This one is refreshing. I didn’t add any sweetening or other additives. I can’t taste whether or not it tastes like berries, since that surgery was a failure and I never did get any sense of smell. When I went for my third and final post-op check up, I found out I have a sinus infection, and bronchitis. The ENT said that could be preventing air from getting to my olfactory nerve, and when we get the infection taken care of it MIGHT allow me to smell. I’ve given up though. It’s been two months.

Anyway, back to the tea. Served over ice, it is delicious. As it warms to room temperature it gets a little bitter and leaves a slight bitter coating over my tongue that lingers. Obviously, the way to combat that is to drink it quick, before the ice melts. :)

I don’t drink a lot of hot tea in the summer, but my air conditioner seems to have one setting: cold. Not complaining, here, as I really hate to be hot. I can always put a sweatshirt on if I need to. And drink hot tea.

This still remains one of my faves. Malty, slightly sweet, and yummy. The perfect cup for sipping while knitting, nibbling Moravian sugar cookies, and watching TV. I’m trying out the Walking Dead. Still not sure if I actually like it. The TV program, not the tea. The tea is fine. The TV show is extremely graphic. I can see the need for some of it, but really, they’re just going for shock value on a lot of it. Still, I’m interested to see how these people come together to form a society of survivors.