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hello friends I am here (honestly all the problems loading things on here have made me sad, so I want to either read all your notes – which I can’t, or none at all. BOO.)

Too much work and too much drama. My boyfriend and I had been taking a break, well that break is completely broken up now as I found out he had been seeing someone else, VIA REDDIT (I peruse my friends’ comments and there it was), and he tells me she lives across the country and it’s nothing but SERIOUSLY the way he wrote about her was extremely disturbing when he didn’t talk to me for those 2 months and it was very betraying and yeah I absolutely lost it on Tuesday.

Which was when I drank this tea because I didn’t go to work and my manager is great and covered for me and I’m actually going to give her one of the teas from my Butiki order as a thank you. If I can just decide which one to part with.

This one is not it. This was actually not at all what I expected. For some reason I was thinking like cloying, stick to everything caramel. It’s more like the caramel sauce from Baked/Baked Explorations I’m not sure which book they first put this recipe in but oh my god it’s not your average caramel. And it’s just like the one in this tea, and I didn’t even add anything to this cup.

Actually I just saw that caramel doesn’t even have butter in it, this one is buttery caramel, with just the right hint of vanilla. I think it would be like the sweet/salty Baked brownies minus the sea salt. The Assam adds just a little cocoa flavor to me, so this isn’t full on brownies but just reminiscent of them.

And like them, everything just blends so well together that you expect nothing was mixed and measured, it all tasted this way from the start.

Next time, I add sugar and see if it gets even more like those brownies.

Fun fact: my grandma once paid me $20 to make her another batch of the brownies after we had them at Christmas or Thanksgiving. I’m not sure what the point is since I’m pretty sure sometimes when you’re older grandparents just look for whatever way they can to give you money since toys no longer work, so it’s not really a testament to how good they are, but seriously look that recipe up if you like sweet and salty combos (and in their first cookbook they did just a regular chocolate brownie but the caramel chocolate one is AMAZING).

I brought this one with me so I could show it to my brother. Apparently he has never seen an herbal tea before. I had him try it the next day and he said something like, “it tastes good, but it looks like potpourri.”

I cold brewed it for almost a day. It’s mostly hibiscus and somehow this really took away the tartness. I could taste orange and apple a lot better. I also made it probably 50% stronger. So now maybe I have half the tin left and I REALLY WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO BUY THIS.

Since I probably won’t drink it again I figure I will rate this here. There is a Taiwanese bakery not too far from where my parents live, and they always have coupons in the newspaper for a free Assam milk tea with the purchase of 5 buns. So I got a cold one and bought 5 buns, 4 for us to have later and one for me to have with my tea.

The one thing I did not know though was that the tea was going to be southern sweet. I wasn’t even asked anything about sweetener and holy cow if I could have I would have toned it down A LOT. The first taste was clearly hearty Assam but then it was like being slapped with sugar. I thought maybe it was going to be in a Hong Kong milk tea style but the sweetness didn’t taste to me like it was coming from sweetened condensed milk. It also didn’t seem as creamy but who knows I could be wrong, it just felt like that sugar syrupy kind of sweetness.

Totally have to give them props for actually saying it’s Assam rather than just calling it black tea.

The one good thing though is if you’re familiar with Taiwanese buns, they’re always so buttery and not heavy on sweet flavors, so having such a sweet drink brought out more of the flavor of the bun, which was a “milk cream” type. It made a mess.

Well I went up to my parents’ last week and I’m still here, I made this on Sunday for dinner and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I even had to steep the bag a second time after dinner because so much of it was had!

I added a couple packets of what I guess would be the generic version of Equal because anything I like I know my family and my brother’s highly irritating girlfriend does not like. This of course made it WAY too sweet for me but of course everyone else loved it. I couldn’t even taste watermelon because of it. But I know for some taste buds, specifically my brother, who wasn’t sure at first that he wanted any until I had him smell the dry bag, it must have worked because he didn’t complain.

It smells amazing though, so I will be ordering another one within a few minutes that I can enjoy on my own. And it sounds like actual sugar is the way to go but I can’t go around doing that to the ice princess girlfriend. (Sorry I AM STILL MAD AT HER she was incredibly rude to me she didn’t even say goodbye leaving, and my mom says I’m the one that doesn’t try to be nice. PFFFFFFT.)

:( I do not like not being sure if I have logged a tea before.

I knew I had this though, I just wasn’t sure how but thankfully my note isn’t way down hiding. I for some reason thought I tried it iced before but didn’t. Well good then. I am drinking it iced with some condensed milk. It looks a lot like Thai iced tea.

It’s okay. Like last time I think it could use more coconut. The creaminess is definitely there, and I think sweetening it up in this manner takes away from the gross rooibos taste.

I have the old version though so maybe the new one will be more to my tastes. Of course I have no intention of finding out anytime soon because I. DO. NOT. NEED. MORE. TEA.

I wanted to get this tea but I was waiting for someone to give me the card so I could get 30% off. Clearly 50% off is a better deal. I picked up 4 oz since after looking at it, it definitely looked like it’d be a heavier tea as a lot of fruit based tisanes tend to be.

At first I didn’t see myself drinking this hot ever, and I realized when I got home it was pretty funny I turned down even smelling Berry Almond Amaretto for its almond notes when this one has them too. And then I made it and I realize I definitely need to try it hot.

This isn’t as floral as I was hoping it would be :( It’s also way sweeter. It tastes a lot like cake, for me this is a definite product of the caramel flavoring. The fig flavor is decent, and the hibiscus isn’t too tart. I jut wish there was just a bit more rose, because it smells much more floral than it tastes.

http://www.pauladeen.com/index.php/food_section_articles/view2/peach_tea_cupcakes/

This is not so much a tasting note as it is a note on how this tea works steeped in butter. I made the above cupcakes and used this tea rather than an Earl Grey like the recipe calls for. I figured these cupcakes have the flavors of what I’d consider iced tea and I don’t have 30g of EG sitting around, so why not?

This was the first time I actually used tea this way, I put tea into muffins before (but I messed them up) and I kind of did something similar for the butter in a tarte tatin, but that’s definitely not the same as all the steps for this butter, it was hard to save 2/3 of it in the end! I was kind of surprised.

I let the butter sit overnight hoping that might give it time to really meld in its flavors. I could definitely smell the tea and you could see it in the color of the butter, but the other flavors in the cupcake were a bit overpowering so maybe EG would be better in this particular case.

I have some peach Torani syrup and I think I’ll be cold steeping a pitcher of this tonight and mixing some of that syrup in for a nice summer drink to take to lunch tomorrow. And this definitely has made me want to bake more with tea. I see some fun experiments ahead with tea infused butter, especially because the frosting recipe w/those cupcakes made WAY too much so I need to use it up with something else!

For a cheap tea that smelled pretty artificial this didn’t turn out so bad cold brewed. It definitely needed to just sit and mellow out for an extra day though.

There’s this weird floral quality to it though as it warms up. I don’t care for it. But I think I only have enough to cold brew another pitcher and I’d never have it again. But it tastes enough like mango. And black tea. I guess. It’s still nothing special even though it doesn’t taste terrible.

I have not been drinking much of anything interesting outside of water lately. Or probably much of anything at all. Blah. Such blahs.

And I did a go-kart race last night in some really intense go-karts and my entire body still hurts. I had to get up for work at 5 today too. It’s amazing I was actually able to put together the pastry case today and not have my arms fall off and I didn’t drop a plate of pastries on the floor either yay.

But in exciting news: THE PANDA AT THE ZOO HAD TWINS! and a hockey facility is being built half a mile from where I live. I am going to just go watch everyone play hockey because I can.

If you have Netflix instant and you haven’t watched Orange is the New Black yet, do it!!! It’s so good. I’m taking a break to watch this…I’ve already watched five episodes, oops.

I’ve also been mostly drinking coffee because I’m trying to get a sense of the flavors in it for work, I remembered I like Latin American coffees so I’ve got two from Whole Foods and all I really get is chocolate. Well that’s not really a problem I guess. I also learned that tea is about 32895289 times easier to cold brew. Holy crap it takes a lot of coffee. I went to work for the first time at 5:30am yesterday but I was only there roughly an hour, I actually quite liked being out at that time…cuts the travel time in half!

I’ve been holding onto this from last summer because I didn’t want to have to buy more, but now that I’m working I think it will be okay to load up again soon. This is definitely my favorite fruit tea. Or maybe tied with that cherry kiwi coconut one. I am terrible at playing favorites. But I seem to have forgotten how I like it, I used a tablespoon per cup for double strength tea to ice and it just doesn’t have the same oomph I remember. I know I definitely used a lot more. I did put 2 tbsp worth in the measuring cup and have left the rest just sitting so I’m going to pour myself another glass.

It’s a bit better, I’m wondering if it just doesn’t last, so to speak. It just doesn’t taste as good as I remember and this is one of my favorites!! So once I get my first paycheck I think I will order me a fresh batch. It has the sweetness I remember but it just feels like the flavors have dulled down.

I went on a tour of a really big Whole Foods today with Yelp and saw that not only were bottled Argo Teas on sale, but they had this one, which I had never tried before! So of course I got a bottle and I regret not getting two!

The name is a cute play on what it contains too…charitea is a cherry tea! It has cherry, hibiscus, and vanilla. It’s sweetened so it’s not too tart, but you can definitely taste each of these things. I really like the way vanilla and hibiscus taste.

I only drank half the bottle tonight because it’s pretty sugary and I wanted to try a coffee I bought. I enjoyed the coffee more I am so sorry tea.

But really this is one of the better bottled Argo options. I hadn’t ever seen this one in a store before.