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While sipping tea recently with a friend, I was impressed by her sugar dispenser, a little glass bauble which puts out exactly one teaspoon of sugar each time you invert it. I sheepishly admitted that I don't get out much, and I might even have uttered the word "newfangled." Then she told me the piece was actually old. Oops.
So I shouldn't have been surprised that the tea-focused segment that I caught on TV yesterday was actually a month old. Pop-culture medicine man Dr. Oz was spouting age-old wisdom anyhow: his "Teas to Fight Disease" are nothing new, but perhaps they've reached a new audience in recent months. Of course I'm thrilled by the possibility that Oz's Oprah-fueled fame is providing well-brewed advice to reduce the incidence of diabetes, Alzheimer's, and various cancers with black, green, and white teas, respectively. But I'd like to highlight an aspect of his article which was not at all its focus.
When we talk about tea as a healthful beverage, we often focus on antioxidants, the benefits of caffeine intake (or, paradoxically, the benefits of reduced caffeine content when compared with coffee), or the beverage's super-soothing effects. But tea was flavored water before flavored water was hip - that is, before you could bottle flavored water and charge people for it. One of the greatest health benefits for tea drinkers is that they're upping their water intake without consuming extra sugar or calories - of course, as long as they're not drowning their tea in cream and sugar. Don't get me wrong: I love cream (or milk) and sugar in my tea, but it's not as necessary as I think it is. And so my favorite feature of the Dr. Oz feature was his little "Flavor Meter" for each tea, showing which teas were sweetest and which were strongest. His list was painfully short, excluding red teas and herbals blends, but maybe I'll create my own someday. For now, I'll be satisfying my sweet tooth with healthy cups of Darjeeling, matcha, and Silver Needle teas.
What are some of your favorite sweet-without-sugar teas? (And when you do need some sweetener, doesn't that old-timey glass dispenser sound positively tea-lightful?)
My husband, Will, and I planted our first vegetable garden at the tail end of spring. We were so excited to harvest a variety of tomatoes, pumpkin, okra, squash, cucumber and a plethora of greens and herbs by the beginning of fall. After carefully planting each and every seed, hand watering daily, and taking morning garden tours and connecting with their progress, much to our dismay, a pesky little rabbit or squirrel took it upon themselves to feast at our expense.
What they don’t find appealing to their palate are the more potent herbs, such as the mint and tarragon and spicy greens. For some reason they have also left behind the delicate thyme too. Lucky me!
This recipe made me rethink salads. Growing up when I tried to help my mom out in the kitchen, she would always put me in charge of the veggie chopping for salads. I barely learned the secrets of cooking the main entrees, but I got really good at nailing the salads.
It is truly such a fulfilling pleasure to pluck fresh herbs from your garden and include it in your meal. I picked some thyme, sage and tarragon, which I couldn’t believe I found a recipe that called for three untouched ingredients from my garden! I soaked, washed and chopped them and took a little over a tablespoon of the mixture and tossed it with the salad. The combination of the baby greens I used along with the potent herbs was fantastic! Not too overbearing from the defined sage and tarragon leaves.
Brewing the Darjeeling with rice vinegar was innovative. Darjeeling has a naturally flowery aroma that complemented the herbs and greens and fit into this salad in its own defined piece of the puzzle.
Will, who is a clinical salad dodger, devoured it. Perfectly light and airy, it went well with the main course of whole, roasted chicken.
A while back I embarked on a journey to try every recipe printed in the fabulous book, Culinary Tea by Cynthia Gold and Lise Stern. My journey was interrupted by a gift from God…I became pregnant with my first child. As I could not reap the fruits of my labor, i.e., as I was now prohibited from consuming caffeine, I decided it was best to wait until now.
With my son sound asleep right next to me this 3rd month of his birth, I have shaken the dust off of my copy of Culinary Tea and am ready to dive back into trying all recipes.
 What I have discovered is that a copy of the book in its entirety can be found in Google Books. So rather than typing in all of the recipes into my own blog, you can follow along as I post the link to each recipe I try. This way, you can be sure to get them verbatim and I can be free from any blame for a typo of something like 2 tablespoons of sugar vs. 12 tablespoons of sugar. Not that that has happened so far…but anything is possible.
Yea! I get to cook with tea again! Is it strange that I like being a housewife? And a mother? How old fashioned can I get really? I’m 33 years old, grew up in the states, have a graduate degree, worked full time in a high profile profession, run an online business and I still believe that wives should cater to their husbands.
We have friends where their wives don’t know where to find the measuring cups in their own kitchen. These same friends come to potluck dinners with the husbands making the food. I must really be old fashioned because this notion always bothers me. Either way, I believe being a great cook is part of being a strong, well-rounded woman, and I'm excited to share ideas and recipes when I come across a good one.
Back to the amazing tea recipes. I recently cooked up a batch of Smoky Tea-Spiced Almonds, a variation from Smoky Tea-Spiced Pecans because I didn't have pecans and I was determined to do a recipe soon and not be held back any longer.
Not having a tea spice grinder, because I haven’t heard of one until today, I used my hubby’s coffee grinder instead. Yes he does drink coffee. Que lastima! I wonder if he will notice the hints of smoky Lapsang Souchong in his morning cup tomorrow, hehe!
Nuts and Lapsang are like tailgating in football. They were made for each other. Smoky Tea-Spiced Almonds are an excellent, healthy snack to any sporting event. It has the smoky touch that Lapsang provides but not too overbearing, in fact, it could be a bit smokier. It also has a sweet and spicy combo from the cayenne and allspice that makes you want to pop one after another into your mouth. It makes a perfect snack for football playoffs.
If you are like many people, myself included, it's hard to remember to drink enough fluids when you're not hot. Most of us remember that if we're exerting our bodies physically, we need to replenish them with water, tea, or other beverages; but when temperatures drop and we find ourselves shivering our way into work, hydration is not quite so intuitive. The fact is, however, that the white mist you breathe out is actually water vapor: you lose just as much water in the winter as you do during the summer!
Dehydration is no laughing matter, either. It can cause you to become more susceptible to falling ill and can even cause you to gain weight: the symptoms of dehydration can mimic those of hunger, causing you to overindulge when you're not really hungry at all; you're thirsty (source).
A good rule of thumb is that you should drink half your weight, in pounds, in ounces of water. If you weigh 150lbs, you should be drinking 75 ounces of water, or other beverages like tea, per day, year-round. If you exercise, you should be drinking even more water than that!
Of course, it can be difficult to drink that much plain water each day, so why not give yourself an incentive to drink more fluids by drinking more tea? Brew a cup in the morning; bring a thermos with you to work; and drink a cup with dinner and after dinner. I like to indulge in roobios blends, because I don't have to worry that caffeine is causing me to lose -- and need to replace -- even more water.
The elderly are particularly susceptible to dehydration: According to a study conducted by the NIH in 1991, 6.7% of Medicare hospitalizations were at least partially due to dehydration (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8059883). Make sure your elderly loved ones have access to a wide variety of teas and other beverages to appeal to their taste buds and ensure they remain adequately hydrated! With the holidays drawing near, it may be a great time to stock your grandparents, parents, and aunts or uncles up with teaware, tea brewing accessories, and new tea blends.
As any tea drinker is aware, most types of tea, from green to black to herbal, contain various amounts of a group of chemical compounds collectively referred to as "tannins." But what does this mean?
Tannins are compounds found in virtually every plant on Earth (source). They play a role in the ripening of fruit: if you have ever bitten into an unripe apple or banana and experienced a bitter taste, it's tannins you are tasting (source). Likewise, if you have ever choked on an accidental swallow of unsweetened black tea, the tannins are to blame.
While for most people, the ingestion of tannins is harmless, some sensitive individuals may experience bowel irritation, kidney irritation, or liver damage upon consumption of extremely large amounts of tannins (source).
Additionally, even in moderate amounts, tannins do possess one negative side effect: they inhibit the absorption of iron found in vegetarian foods (source). This means that anemic individuals and vegetarians may want to stick to drinking herbal and Rooibos teas with meals, while enjoying black, green, Oolong and Pu-erh teas a few hours before and after meals.
For the vast majority of mankind, however, tannins stand to do quite a bit of good: in scientific studies, they have been found to possess antiviral properties (source). And, much more importantly, as any tea lover knows, they add a wonderful dimension to the flavor of tea.
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