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Cooking TTB #14

This smelled buttery and nutty right off the bat, which was totally good news to me. I’ve been wanting to try a walnut green for a while now and was very happy to see this in the TTB for that reason! I’m definitely sold on trying others now, as well as trying other things from Indigo Tea Company! There was a lot of sweet nuttiness here but not so much that I didn’t get any green tea. So glad to have tried it!

Cooking TTB #13

Once again, I tried a tea without knowing what it was supposed to taste like and was left saying, “Seriously…what the heck?”

Now, if I was held at gunpoint and forced to give an answer to what this tea tastes like, I would have said a hot bath. I am well aware of the fact that I should not have tasted a hot bath before in order to even be able to compare a tea to a hot bath, but I’ll be damned if I could compare it to any other thing in this world. (For the record, I am now attributing said bath-like taste to the ginseng) It’s like when you eat something that tastes like horse (like pork chops—forgive me if you like pork chops)…only you’ve never eaten horse and what you really mean is that it tastes the way horses smell when they’re hanging out in a barn after racing….no? Am I the only person who totally associates smells with tastes? Those two senses sort of run on connected systems, so…I can’t be the only one.

Anyway, this tasted the way a hot bath smells when you don’t put any soap in and the water is all steamy. Yeah. So, this tea and I will probably never meet again, and that’s okay by me. But, I can appreciate its ability to give me a very strange sensory experience.

Cooking TTB #12

This was so cool because the flavor of this tea changed like three times just within one sip. It smells distinctly of strawberry and tastes quite fruit as it hits your tongue…but, then it goes straight oolong while it hangs out on your tongue..and then, oh joy!, the strawberry sweetness is there in a different way as you breathe in after you swallow. Lovely. I enjoyed this for sure. I’ll be keeping some more cup’s worth of this!

Cooking TTB #11

Oh boy! Another one to add to my eventual DAVIDs tea purchase!

This was so perfect to have on Christmas Eve when I was home alone and making cookie dough. The three most predominant flavors I got were the Brazil nuts, coconut (in taste and smell), and raisin. Those three were so delicious together. I am very grateful to Inkling for sneaking some of this in there for me!

Cooking TTB #10

I didn’t expect this to be nearly as delicious as it was! I made it without reading anything about it and was pleasantly surprised at just how malty it was. I had it with some cookies after dinner, which was perfect. My coffee-drinking grandmother said it was so good that she’d even like a cup. So, because I am eagerly trying to get through as many samples as possible from the TTB before sending it on, I figured I’d give her my cup and get to try another tea! :) This makes me more curious to try other high-quality English Breakfast type teas since I’ve been generally avoiding them thinking they’d be pretty much all the same (shame on me). I’m also happy to have tried another new tea company!

Cooking TTB #9

I probably came in to this one with too high of expectations after having tried their Jingle Bells blend and falling in love with the sparly grape flavor it had. I wanted more a more complex flavor out of this than I felt like I got. It was nearly there when I had it cold, but I wasn’t as happy with it hot as I had hoped to be. I’d pick Jingle Bells over this, but this is growing on me as the cup goes on. This is another one I’ve been hoping to try since finding Lupicia!

Cooking TTB #8

Did I do something wrong? I didn’t taste any berry of any sort, let alone a berry of the “yum” variety. Not that this was bad, but it just didn’t taste like much other than the base tea. Considering how much you pay for the weight of the pretty-looking berries, it just doesn’t seem like something I’d buy.

Flyawaybirdie sent me a sample of this in her Christmas card :) Thanks, Flyawaybirdie!

I have been wanting to try another earl grey cream for a while now and this fit the bill! I think there may be better versions out there, so I’ll keep looking for a few more to try. But, this is definitely something I could enjoy drinking regularly, especially for the price.

Thanks to Nicole and this lovely sample she sent in her Christmas card, I was finally able to try a Kusmi tea.

I was quite busy at work while drinking this, but I very much noticed how smooth it was. It is very easy to drink. I seem to find bergamot to be soothing. This really makes me interested to try more of Kusmi’s takes on earl grey.

Cooking TTB #7

This was unlike any other tea I’ve had. It was delightfully sour in a way that hibiscus often wishes it could be. I read that soursap is supposed to taste similar to pineapple and something else…I can see the comparison to pineapple, which would probably be made stronger by the addition of sugar.

I had this both hot and cold (which means I intended to have it hot but got distracted part of the way through my cup and came back to it being cold…and I’m totally okay with that!) I really liked it both ways. I can imagine this would be quite refreshing as an iced tea in summer.

I’m grateful for the chance to try so many different teas that I would normally never be brave enough to order without trying!