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Cooking TTB #6

This has been on my wishlist for a while and was so so nice!! I absolutely will be picking some of this up. I can’t say that it outright tastes like peach, but the peachyness seems to soften and sweeten the jasmine just enough to make it so much different than any other jasmine tea I own. Not to mention that I was able to get 3 steeps in my 12 oz cup with 8 pearls. Love.

Cooking TTB #5

This was a weird experience….

I was super-duper excited to try this based on the smell. It was so wonderfully grapefruity. However, once it was brewed, I made an association that I now cannot unmake…and because of that, I’m thinking I won’t rate this. So…Halls makes those Defense Vitamin C drops that taste like lemon, orange, and grapefruit. This tea reminds me exactly of those grapefruit lozenges, which therefore reminds me of that weird acidic feeling in the back of your throat right when it is about to get scratchy and painful but isn’t quite there yet. Yeah. Not awesome. This probably would have been a lot better if I hadn’t thought about that…

Cooking TTB #4

I’m so glad Inkling tossed this in for me to try! I’m going to have to go 2 rounds with it, though. I made the mistake of putting some vanilla almond milk in it before trying it plain because I was really craving a latte sort of thing. After the fact, I can say that I’m pretty sure the almond milk just completely covered all the other flavors. At least I can say that I didn’t taste anything I didn’t like ;) I’ll withhold my rating until I drink it again with nothing added.

Cooking TTB #3

Okay…so….I admittedly did not take this cup the way I normally would. My boyfriend offered to help me get through all the teas I wanted to taste from this box by drinking a cup of something alongside me so that I could taste it without having to necessarily drink a whole cup. Well, that meant that while I was at least able to steal one sip of it untainted, the cup quickly made friends with my sugar bowl as soon as it was passed along to my boyfriend. The first sip I had was all hibiscus tartness. All subsequent tastes were all berry kool-aid. I didn’t get any almondy flavor at all (although I could smell it when I was brewing this).

I’m glad to have tried this because it was one I always kind of wondered about from Teavana. But, it’s not for me.

Cooking TTB #2

Get ready for a backlog bonanza…

This was surprising! It smells divine and exactly like a creamy lemon cupcake or something. The only thing I was a touch disappointed by was the fact that the creaminess only comes out in flavor and not in mouthfeel. I was also happy that this wasn’t too green-tasting. I would definitely pick some of this up if I were placing an order!

This was a lovely introduction to Cornelia Bean teas :)

Cooking TTB #1

Oh boy. This past week was one of the most stressful weeks I’ve endured in quite a while. We are opening a kindergarten program at the school I teach at and my boss wanted the kindergarten rooms to be painted. Five employees volunteered to help out. He told us it had to be finished in a week so he could show the moms during our Christmas party this past Friday. We thought, “No big deal. It’s only two rooms.” …..yeah….well, what he neglected to tell us was that the walls weren’t simply being painted a solid color….they were instead going to be painted with murals of storybooks characters and woodland creatures. Also, we are not artistic by any means and were relying on one particular employee to plan and draw the entire thing on the walls so that all we had to do was fill in spaces with whatever color she handed us. Needless to say, we did not finish because IT WAS AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK. On the last night, we were there painting until 2 am. I literally made no tea during the whole painting experience (though I had some Starbucks and Coffee Bean stuff that others brought). Anyway….it was terrible but the room looks freaking awesome.

This was the first thing I pulled out of the TTB after looking at it for 3 days but not having a single moment to actually make tea. I have really liked all the rose teas I’ve had before, but this one didn’t exactly taste like I had expected it would. I liked it quite a bit more cold, surprisingly. I don’t know that I’d buy this as my go-to rose tea, but I’d never say no to a cup.

I’m really glad I got the chance to try this before buying a tin because I was expecting to like it more. When I first started getting into loose leaf tea, I gravitated towards coconut teas like nobody’s business. However, I’m starting to think that I much prefer them cold if at all. This was pretty good, but I can imagine many other pu-erh flavors I’d rather be having hot. This isn’t quite coconutty enough to be satisfying in summer either, though (I think). Thanks for the chance to try it, Inkling!

This didn’t suck.

I say it this way because the first pu-erh I had from Numi (Emperor’s Pu-erh, I believe) was SO not my thing. This at least smelled and tasted much better. It smelled like chocolate and baking spices. The spices didn’t carry through into the taste for me, but the chocolate flavor at least masked the weirdness that I tasted in their other pu-erh. I’d still take any of the Lupicia puers over this in a heartbeat.

I’ve decided I really need to be more on top of trying all of the samples you lovely people have sent me. Since most of the tea drinking I do happens at work while all of my samples sit at home, I didn’t realize how many I have. I also forgot how excited I was about some of them. I’ve been drinking my favorites so much lately that it’s time for a change anyway.

So, this. Courtesy of Ost.

First, let me say that I don’t actually like traditional s’mores all that much. When I make mine, I always use cinnamon graham crackers and skip the Hershey’s in favor of a piece of Chunky bar (if anyone actually knows what that is…brownie points for you because I am apparently the only person that knows what they are and enjoys them)……(okay, fine, I’ll tell you what they are—a not-so-high-quality chocolate bar with peanuts and raisins throughout)…….(I promise they’re delicious)……..(really)………(alright, now back to your regularly televised programming)

Sometimes I’m extra rebellious and spread a schmear of peanut butter on the graham cracker first, skip the chocolate all together, and just lay the extra melty/extra burny/extra fantastical marshmallow on the peanut butter. Oh man.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that I’m not a huge fan of this tea because it tastes like normal s’mores. Seeing as how this would be a plus for most people, I won’t rate it. But, you know you’re totally gonna try s’mores my way next time!

Um….what? Excuse me, but….when you put “fig” in the name of the tea, I fully expect to taste figginess….and then, when I don’t, I get grumpy.

Let me clarify—this tea is not a BAD tea. But, well, it is very distinctly NOT fig. In fact, it both smells and tastes like liquid sweetarts to me. It has this weird, fake, tart, sweet thing going on. Not at all what I wanted.

However, this could be good to drink sometimes. Just not when you want fig or a mellow oolong.