So, since early spring 2020, I have been the only person consistently in the office. Which means I can spend days, sometimes even weeks, pretty much alone. As an introvert, this isn’t much of a problem other than I start to develop some very bad habits, such as cooking steaks in the breakroom’s toaster oven.
As I was dealing with the most recent crisis of the missing master key, I did a lot of searching in nooks and crannies of the office that I had never bothered to look through before.
(I actually spent a week on this futile task before someone finally approved a locksmith to come out and open the door. At which point I discovered that the missing key was not only inside that room, but it was also inside a locked fire proof safe. And I did not have a key to said safe and the locksmith couldn’t open it. Thus started the new quest to find the key to the safe. Wait a minute, has my life turned into an Adventure game?)
Among the interesting things I found was the cabinent where we keep our overflow of coffee beans and bagged teas that I usually ignore. But I was bored and frustrated and annoyed, so I just started looking through the offerings and there wasn’t much of a surprise in what I found. Primarily mint or green jasmine, a few other tisanes that I have no interest in. Mostly the usual office crap purchased from an offcie supply store by people who don’t actually drink tea but think they need to try to be inclusive to the tiny portion of weirdos who don’t worship at the shrine of the coffee bean.
And then I ran across a box of this in the back corner. I almost ignored it. While I love almost all of the usual masala chai ingredients, I really do not like clove. And most masala chai style teas contain massive amounts of clove. Blech. But, I was bored and frustrated and decided I would rather look at bagged teas over searching for a key that I suspected was inside the locked room.
And, much to my surprise, NO CLOVE!!!!!!!!
So today I decided to give it a try. (Man, what is it with me and long stories lately.)
And I can taste and smell cinnamon and cardomon and ginger. Not sure on the anise. I expected it to be stronger, but I don’t necessarily find that a bad thing. And there’s no clove! (Queue hysterical laughter)
The down side is that the spices really over power the base tea. I wish it stood out a little more, but its not a major deal breaker. And hey, it looks like you can buy this in loose leaf in units of, holy moly, one pound! I could drink nothing but this for a year and still not be able to go through an entire pound of it.
I can stick with bags. I don’t see this as a staple so much as something I will be drawn to when the rains come and the winds are wet and cold. Oh man I am so ready for the rains to come back. Seattle shouldn’t be as dry as a tender box.
Oh, and I stole the box of tea and put it into my desk drawer with all of my other teas. :D
