My Experience

     So far this has been a pretty fun experience. I never knew about what blogging was until I started this class. I had heard about it but didn't know what it was. And I'm impressed! My classmates and I have come up with some really cool blog ideas! Lot's of them are really interesting! And aside from that it has been a great learning experience for me! 
     I learned things about tea that I never knew before! From exactly how long you are supposed to let tea steep for to learning that the most expensive tea is made using panda poop! Needless to say this has been pretty cool and I think I just might attempt to keep posting things! 

Cooking with Tea

      If you think tea is only for drinking, think again! You’d be surprised at how cooking with tea can enhance the flavor of foods, making a meal truly memorable. The many varieties of tea, whether green, white or black, and flowery, earthy or spicy, contribute subtle aromas and delicate flavors to many wonderful but not necessarily complicated dishes. You can use brewed tea in place of water in many recipes and you can also use tea leaves directly in your dishes. I personally have not tried cooking with tea but I discovered it is totally doable and quite a fun culinary adventure! Being in culinary school this makes me think about all the different ways I could use tea leaves in my food. Next time I'm playing around in the kitchen I'm gonna give it a try! 

Here's a picture of silver needle tea leaves crusted onto pan seared scallops in this fresh summer salad! 

Gift Ideas for Tea

      Got anyone you know that really likes tea? There are lots of great gifts for tea drinkers! One of my favorites is the double glass tea mug! Teavana has a really cool one that I really like using. It has a strainer at the top so that when you are drinking tea you aren't consuming tea leaves. Another great gift idea is a tea set! People love entertaining! And tea is a great outlet! So why not give someone a set that they can use to share their favorite teas? These are just a few ideas! Many more tea products available. 

Tea Bagging

    Tea bagging.. What is that you might ask. Well one definition is the gamer"s term of tea bagging. That's a little inappropriate and I won't share that. However, the way that I am using it is to describe a type of tea. Bagged tea. Many of you may have seen the little boxes with tea packets in them next to coffee stands or even gotten tea from Starbucks and other coffee shops. The process of making a tea bag is really quite simple. All you do it take you selected tea leaves, and place them on a cheese cloth like paper and tie a string around it keeping the leaved contained. It is a very simple and easy method for preparing tea. Sometimes when I'm on the go I will use tea bags instead of loose leaf tea. 

Tea VS Coffee

     As much as I love tea, I also love coffee. Sometimes I feel bad for cheating on tea by drinking coffee. You just can't help it if you need a coffee fix. Now when I say that I drink coffee, I'm not one of those Starbucks coffee drinkers. I admit, I have had it and it's decent coffee. However, to me, coffee is like wine or any other kind of alcohol. There are some kinds that are good and others that aren't very good. And there are some kinds that pair well with different foods and other kinds that don't pair well. My all time favorite coffee shop recently closed down. It's pretty sad. It was called Dripster, located in Vancouver, WA. Pretty small coffee shop. Was a branch of River Maiden  which is another one of my favorite coffee places. The cool thing about Dripster is that they often offered certain blends that you can't find anywhere else and they would make them fresh for you. It was pretty cool. I still cannot say if I like tea or coffee more. They are on two different levels. 

Most Expensive Tea in the World

         So I did some research on what the most expensive tea in the world is and where it comes from. I was kinda shocked! The most expensive tea in the world comes from panda poop! And no, I'm not kidding! A man in Sichuan Province decided to grow tea, but from panda poop! Panda's only eat bamboo. Apparently their bodies only ingest about 30% of the nutrients found in bamboo. So what happens to the other 70%? It's found in their poop! So the tea leaves that are fertilized with it are extremely valuable and healthy! One cup of tea using the leaves produced in this manor costs $200. It really is a great idea when you think about it! The man who came up with the idea wanted to find a use for all the waste. So in a way it's the ultimate way of recycling! Pretty cool if you ask me! And profitable! I don't know that I will ever be able to afford that tea. I would try it though if given the chance! 

Medicinal Tea

       For a long time, tea has been used for it's medicinal properties. Tea has proven to be very helpful in remedying various afflictions and forms of sickness. That's part of why I think tea is so wonderful! One of my favorite teas that I drink when I am sick or have a soar throat is called "Herbal Throat Coat." It is very sweet. Also very refreshing! It combines fresh herbs and tea to make a substance that can help cure/prevent soar throats and coughing. I drink it every time I catch a cold and want to get rid of it quickly. You can buy it at almost any store like Freddie's or Safeway. Perfect for when you're sick! Full of natural vitamins that help kick sickness in the butt. Best consumed when hot. If it is cold, it doesn't work as well and sometimes tastes gross. I boil water, pour it in a glass with the tea packet, then place a plate over it to keep it covered form 10 minutes and then drink it. Often, I will feel better even before the tea is all gone! It's wonderful. 

Jasmine Tea

     Now another really good tea that is perfect for first time tea drinkers is Jasmine Tea. It comes from the jasmine flower. And is also a white tea just like the ginseng oolong. However, it is much more floral and lighter to the taste. Equally refreshing as the oolong but more suitable as an introduction to tea. It happens to be the very first tea that I tried in that Xian Tea shop in Bellevue!

Ginseng Oolong Tea

                Ginseng Oolong tea is by far my favorite. It is typically a white tea. When you first see the dry tea leaves they are small and dried up balls of oolong leaves. High caffeine levels make it the perfect substitute for coffee drinkers like myself. Given that it is a white tea it has lots of health benefits. Among them being energy and it is good for the heart and blood. A perfect drink to wake up with in the morning or even to relax with after a long day at work. Some say it is a great tea to drink if you are trying to recover from a hang over. I wouldn't have any experience with that yet but I might give it a try if I find myself needing to do so! Needless to say, it is a wonderful drink and I think everyone should try it. However, not if it's your first experience with tea. 

Molecular Gastronomy

        Have any of you heard of molecular gastronomy? Just recently, I was introduced to it by my sister's husband. He is a chef up in Seattle, WA. He graduated from the Art Institute in the culinary program. This last summer I was up visiting them with my girlfriend and one of the mornings I got up early and was looking at his books! He loves culinary books. And one of the books that I found was called Alinea. It was the coolest book I have ever seen. The food in there looked so incredible! In reading through it and looking at the pictures I found it was a cookbook from the restaurant Alinea, located in Chicago.

    This restaurant specializes in molecular gastronomy. I had to look up what that meant. Basically it is the science of breaking food down to a molecular level. Later I asked my sister's husband about it and he told me all about molecular gastronomy. I was insanely impressed. I decided that when I open a restaurant in the future, I want to tie in the old fashioned way of cooking with the new way of cooking and molecular gastronomy. Imagine taking classic french food and putting a twist on it with molecular gastronomy?

Where does our tea come from?

Ok. So I was doing some research on where tea comes from. And I thought that tea might come from lots of different types of plants due to the number of different kinds of teas in the world. Well I was wrong! All tea comes from the same plant! It's called Camellia Senesis. The only part that changes are the methods of harvesting. Often times tea is hand picked and only certain parts of the leaves and stems are used depending on the type of tea is being produced at the time. Silver Needle, for example, only uses the last bit of the stem on the tallest leaf of each plant. Only one is picked from each bush or plant to make silver needle. Whereas, oolong teas and others like it, the entire leaf is used and it doesn't matter how many are harvested from each plant as long as they are healthy and aren't damaged in any way. 

Blooming Tea

Here is a link to a time lapse video of blooming tea!  1,000 year Oolong tea
And this one is a video showing a little bit about how the tea is made. How it's made

Credit goes to YouTube.

These will give a better idea and hopefully help you understand more of how the tea is produced and made. Generally you cook the tea at 170 degrees and let it steep for about 10 minutes. Steeping means that you just let it sit with the lid on and don't touch it. You'll see the tea bloom into it's flower and you will see the leaves separate from the flower as seen in the video. I hope this helps explain it better!

Making of blooming tea

My favorite drink

       So, tea is like my favorite drink. Even more than coffee. It's wonderful! However, I'm sorta stuck in a rut as to what new teas I should try. I found a new favorite tea shop recently! It's called Xian Tea, located in Bellevue, WA. My sister found this tea shop while she was attending college at Washington State University. She often made trips to Bellevue and that's how she found Chinese Tea Lady's shop. After she found it, she called me up and got me to come visit her so we could go check it out. I was like a little kid in a candy store! So much tea! It was really cool! The lady was awesome and she told us to call her "Chinese Tea Lady." She learned our names and the next time we went she remembered them! It was awesome!
        One of her favorite things was to have us come in the back where she had a fancy hand carved tea table and she would bring out the newest teas she had and we would sit and drink tea all afternoon. It was really cool and the lady was wonderful. She always sent us home with her favorite teas and even gave us a jar of our favorite, Ginseng Oolong, which was her most expensive tea, for free!
         The part that I thought was the coolest is that Chinese Tea Lady would travel all the time and on her travels she would hand pick her teas and bring them back to her shop to sell. It was awesome! She always picked the nicest leaves and would dry them out herself before coming home and selling them. My sister and I always knew we were getting the highest quality of tea. Slightly expensive but it was worth it to us and we enjoyed going to her shop. By far my favorite tea place ever!

How it's made

         Thanks for the comments! It's nice to see people reading these posts! I know I have some catching up to do on them. One of the things you have asked about was the blooming teas! I love blooming tea! They are really fun and all of the different kinds that I have tried are really good. Sadly, I found it is very difficult to make them on your own. And they are rather expensive to buy. I found how the process works in the making of blooming tea and it is very interesting.
        All blooming tea is hand made. Manufacturing is not yet possible. Basically a group of people will take certain varietals of tea leaves and sow them onto the leaves of different kind of flowers, typically they are herbal flowers, and then after hand sowing the leaves to the flowers they are placed in a netting of some kind. After that they are vacuum sealed and the air is sucked out of them forming a tight ball. Sometimes a little piece of twine is used to hold them in place till they can retain their round shape. Then they are ready to go. Once they are placed in liquid, within 30 seconds they are re-hydrated and the flower will bloom releasing all of the tea tannin's and the flavors into the liquid.

       Blooming tea is somewhat of a new trend in the tea industry and they are trying to find ways to make it a machine made kind but I personally like the fact they are made by hand. Makes them much more enjoyable and feels more fresh as you drink the tea.