Tea Chat RSS 1 RSS 2 Atom

Some people just have strict daily routine. I know this, I have friends who are. They always go to the same bakery to get the same pastry; they remember to put everything to its original places. I am not one of them. I usually take risks, especially about food and drink. So when I come up with a really fantastic way of drinking tea, it’s cause for much celebration and publication on the Internet.

I just bought a big pack of hot chocolate, a box of Vanilla sleeptime herbal tea( I am a vanilla-smell savvy. This milky and sweet smell makes me addicted.) and a bottle of skim milk from the grocery.

I didn’t want to mix them up when I got them. However, several things made me try this crazy mixture.

1. First, I found that the paper container of my milk is disposable. There is no lid to cover the container after I opened it.  
2. I am so into vanilla smell and hot chocolate. It is pathetic that there is no vanill a smell-hot chocolate.

In such a scenario, I decided to mix them up. What I can get from this crazy behavior are: first, I can use up my milk as soon as possible; second, I can make my unique hot chocolate with the fresh and mint flavor from my herbal tea.

So let’s start. I have a Keurig coffee brewer. Basically, I use it to brew both coffee and tea. I put the tea bag into it. Just less than two minutes, the sweet vanilla and fresh mint smell infused my whole kitchen. Then I gradually stir hot tea into the hot chocolate. The last step was adding milk into them.

With wonderful smell from tea, silk,sweet but not saccharine taste from hot chocolate and creamy feeling from milk, my vanilla chocolate milk tea is my strict daily routine now.

When the camelia sinensis plant gave birth, she produced a similar yet very distinctive set of quadruplets: green, white, oolong and black. The siblings that shine the most are the oldest and the youngest...green and black. As the youngest, black tea has for many generations been the spoiled, all American favorite especially in southern households as it is welcomed with every meal, iced. Green tea, although it chose to go backpacking around the world and thus developed a finer sense of appreciation, has far lived in the shadow of its youngest sibling at home.  Brewing with jealousy, green tea rebelled with a vengeance, ostentatiously serving its world- reknowned health benefits at the family dinner, thereby securing its birthright. Thriving off of the fierce competition, black tea did some soul searching and discovered that it too, is more than just the little favorite. Below is a scoreboard of health categories to square away the sibling rivalry and to reveal where their respective talents lie.

Healthy Heart. Black tea wins. Black tea contains flavinoids which is a phytonutrient that contains anti-oxidant benefits. The consumption of black tea, with the aid of the flavinoids, can lead to the reduction of stoke and heart disease risk because it reduces the levels of bad cholesterol (LDL) that is associated with helping to cause these two diseases.

Fights Cancer. Green tea wins. Green tea has high levels of EGCG which has been found to inhibit experimental tumor growth in animals.

High in Anti-oxidants. Green tea wins. The main benefit of green tea is that it is loaded with a powerful anti-oxidant called EGCg. When it comes to the process of making black tea, this chemical compound is converted into other compounds, leaving researchers to believe that anti-oxidants are not as prevalent in black tea as they are in green tea.

Weightloss. Green tea wins. Green tea contains high levels of catechins which are anti-oxidants and polyphenols that are easily oxidized.  Catechins are more abundant in green tea than any other due to the least amount of fermentation that it undergoes.  One study suggests that the high levels of polyphenols in green tea activate the enzyme that is responsible for dissolving excess triglyceride, thereby burning fat.

Stress. Black tea wins. According to a study at the University College of London, black tea has an effect on the stress hormone levels of the body.

Less Calories. Draw. Neither black nor green contain any calories without any additives.

More Caffeine. Hard to say. Some researchers state that the least fermented would contain more caffeine. However, others say that caffeine does not evaporate and its levels remains constant even though black tea is fermented the most. Lets just say if their birthdays came around, they would probably get the same present.

What's fabulous about LA is that you can wake up in the morning, have your breakfast, and decide to spend yourhard earned day offat the beach... in no time. This past weekend we ventured out to sunny Malibu for our third stair-climb, gaining one step closer to conquering our Mount Whitney feat. Continuing our exercising with tea adventures, our featured tea of choice was Silver Needle white tea, no sweetener, chilled.

Parking on Pacific Coast Highway was polite, possibly because we discovered a way to cheat the parking gods. Since the stair climb is throughout the residential neighborhood of Malibu, we figured to park uphill on a windy street where our climb would weave through, and it worked. We squeezed our car on a tight roundabout where parking was permitted on non "red flag days" (has anyone figured out what that even is?)

Walking by an SUV with an open trunk we see blond haired, sun-kissed kids in swimsuits looking too young to be drinking enjoying the views of the ocean on a beautiful weekend. Down a flight of stairs and crossing the overpass of PCH to the west side we stayed true to the stair count and began our journey with sandy feet.

Charles Fleming,the author of the LA stair climbs andnow our guide, describes a set of lingering, steep stairs along this trail as the "stairwell to nowhere." These nowhere stairs are exactly that, but they add a very nice level of difficulty if you decide to scale them a couple of times during each round of the Castellammare hike like we did. We're not sure if these steps were included in the article's count, we added it to ours anyway. After all, it couldn't hurt to throw in another 66 steps one way to spice up the mix.

Passing through homes which make you want to play that game of "which house would you want," we see evidence of neighborhood unification: handwritten blue signs every few feet warning drivers to "slow down" and "watch out" for "children at play."

We incline up to experience a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean dotted with sailboats on the left and a decked out, Italian style mansion called Villa de Leon, once belonging toLeon Kauffman, a wool magnate famous in the1920's lies straight ahead.

Perhaps it was the large, wide and smooth stones with ornate detailing that gave this villa its authentic, transcendent exterior. A sprawling lawn overlooking the ocean makes you stop and stare...one can only imagine the frolicky horseplay at this mansion's 'hay-day'.

Up and around the bend we come back down to PCH for another two rounds. A lookout into the ocean reveals swarms of what appeared to be orangey-brown sea kelp which we couldn't help but think of the view of the oil-ridden Mexican Gulf.

Altogether, we conqueredthe Castellammare's 396steps three times plus the 'Stair's to Nowhere' 132 times three, giving this workout a total of 1584 steps. Silver Needle White Tea was the perfect selection for this journey. Its naturally airy-sweet taste complemented the soft, oceanic breeze upon our skins. The chilled version of the tea felt more replenishing like a Gatorade, but with added immune building strength and no sugar sticking to your teeth and clogging your throat. I'd definitelychoose Silver Needleagain as a workout companion. Not to mention we are both noticing an increased endurance drinking tea with our cardiovascular workouts versus working out without tea.

If you're trying tea with your workouts, comment here and letus know or write us about it. We'd love to hear about it.

On their own, both tea and exercise have many benefits to one's health. But did you know that there are identical and specific results from tea drinking and physical exertion? And by drinking tea—as opposed to just plain water—during exercise, these results can be doubled?! Take a look at the list below of the similar effects tea and exercise can have on your mental and physical health, and start using tea as your beverage of choice during your cardio or strength workout routines!

•    Increases metabolic rate
•    Increases endurance
•    Boosts mental alertness
•    Boosts immune system
•    Lowers cortisol, the stress hormone
•    Improves cardiovascular health