This month, The Tea Spot “SpotLight” is on our Jasmine Pearls Green Tea. This delectably floral green tea is an absolute treat at any time of the day, and has been my afternoon “go to” for the last few weeks. Let’s take a quick timeout today to talk about what makes this tea so unique! Our Jasmine Pearls hail from the Fujian region in China. They are hand-picked in the Spring, layered/scented multiple times with jasmine petals, and are then expertly shaped into pearl form.

Pretty pile of our Jasmine Pearls

This pearl form is a truly unique twist on loose leaf tea. Tightly rolled, when steeped in water, these pearls slowly unfurl and can actually get better and better with each additional infusion.

Our Jasmine Pearls start out in pearl form (left), and after the first infusion the two leaves and leaf bud that compose the pearl can be clearly seen (right).

Pearls Before and After First Infusion

While preparing this spotlight, I was able to take one teaspoon of Jasmine Pearls and make four 8 ounce cups of tea in one day! With this tea, you really can get “bang for your buck” with the potential for so many delicious re-infusions! Just remember when re-steeping tea in this way, you want to add about 30 seconds of steeping time with each additional infusion.

The brew and leaves after one infusion

Best steeping practices- use one teaspoon per 8 ounces of water, steep 2-3 minutes with water that is 175° F (bring water to a boil and let cool three minutes).

Enjoy!

Jasmine Pearls is featured here with our Steeping Cup!

We are all familiar at this point with the slew of health benefits associated with drinking green tea with its antibiotic, anti-cancer, and anti-depressant properties… to name just a few. Now, a new study indicates a correlation between green tea consumption and a reduced risk of functional disability later in life.

This study conducted by researchers at the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine took into account 14,000 individuals age 65 or more, for three years. In total, people who drank five cups of green tea per day were about 33% less likely to develop disabilities than people who drank very little green tea, while daily consumption of three to four cups per day resulted in a 25% decreased risk, on average.

The short of it? Those who drank the most green tea each day were least likely to develop disabilities. While there is certainly always more research to be done in this realm, we find this news positively inspiring. When there are so many delicious options are available to us, why not join in on the fun?

We recommend a nice full cuppa Boulder Blues (with Strawberry and Rhubarb), and our two newest additions to The Tea Spot Team: organic Clouds and Mist and Sencha.

Cheers!

To see a full report on this study please follow this link: http://www.healthcare-today.co.uk/news/green-tea-promotes-healthy-ageing/20998/ from Healthcare Today.

Our blog is not about promoting our loose leaf tea products. It’s meant to be a forum for anyone in our company to talk about anything tea – even if it’s just remotely tea-related. But after this morning’s cup of goodness I just soothed myself in, i feel compelled to share just how extraordinary our Genmaicha green tea is.

Genmaicha steeping in our Glass Infusions teapot

Perhaps this is just my own little lesson in loose leaf tea vs. tea bags. I almost never make Genmaicha myself. My daily tea ritual includes a steaming cup Bolder Breakfast or Organic Pu’erh tea in the morning, along with my daily dosage of matcha green tea powder. The matcha may be mixed into a breakfast smoothie or post-cycling recovery drink – or on colder days, I’ll just make the traditional green tea beverage. Beyond that, I’ll usually steep (and re-steep and re-steep…) a cup of green tea or oolong tea at my desk in the afternoon, or else indulge in whatever we’re serving up at a tea tasting during our daily afternoon team meeting. But for whatever reason, I’ve only been ordering Genmaicha when I go to a Japanese restaurant, which happens maybe once every two months. And it’s fine – I enjoy the hot beverage at the end of a big meal – as well as the ritual of holding a warm cup of tea in my hands.

But this morning, I knew we had a heavy black tea tasting day ahead of us at work, so I wanted something very low in caffeine, and Genmaicha fit the bill. This traditional Japanese tea blend stands out as a curious melange alongside all the purest of single origin teas you’ll see from Japan. It looks like a happy, almost comical, blend. Genmaicha has as its base a quality Japanese green tea “cha” – generally either Sencha or Bancha. The green tea leaves are blended with popcorn (!) and toasted brown rice kernels “genmai”, which to any American look strangely like Kellogg’s Rice Krispies.

Genmaicha green tea steeping

What I steeped up in my glass infusions teapot was wondrous – the green tea leaves unfurled beautifully, and a savory, toasty aroma filled my kitchen. It was clear right away that this tea was going to be very different that the Genmaicha I’d been in the habit of drinking at restaurants…
The flavor of the tea is spring grass vegetal, but at the same time soothingly robust and nourishing. The roasted brown rice and popcorn complete this loose leaf tea blend, making it a most pleasant and easy to drink green tea, even without food. And because it’s a blend with caffeine-free ingredients, I estimate that it would have about 10 mg of caffeine per 8 oz serving, or about one-fifth the caffeine you’d get in a cup of black tea. All in all, an exquisitely satisfying way to start the day!

So many cheeses to choose from...

Farmer’s Market season is gearing back up, plants are sprouting, trees are budding, and my palate is springing back to life as well. So thoughts of loose leaf tea and food pairings are once again helping to drive my weekend splurges. This month, we’re on to cheese. I love cheese, unfortunately. I’m a total sucker for artisanal cheeses, and even the basic cheeses are a weakness for me – some of the things I have most difficulty locking out of my mind when working to shed some pounds are pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches!

We tend to think first of pairing cheese in the traditional sense with wine or beer, but it is such an important part of everyday meals in many Western cultures, that more often than not, cheese is likely to be consumed at meals without alcohol. A general rule of thumb that clearly came out of my trials was that a delicate cheese should not be paired with a bold tea, or one that’s highly tannic. The same goes for sharp cheeses – stay away from the tannins. Another unexpected generalization was that our medium-bodied Jasmine Tea and silky-light Monkey Picked White, both naturally slightly sweet teas, paired well with most any cheese.

Swiss-style cheeses like Gruyere and Emmenthal went very nicely with our classic organic black tea, Blue Mountain Nilgiri, as well as the bold Rooibos herbal tea, Red Rocks.

The more delicate creamy cheeses are fantastic with the light and silky Meditative Mind, if they’re not herbed; otherwise, serve them with Monkey Picked White. If you’re looking for the perfect black tea to pair these with, steep up a pot of New Moon Darjeeling, also light-bodied, and well balanced.

Cheddar’s best friend is without a doubt, our creamy medium-bold black tea, Earl Grey.

Blue Cheese (my favorite is the organic brand of Roquefort, Papillon) was rounded out very nicely by Bolder Breakfast loose black tea, the medium bodied Mate Limon Chai, and worked sublimely well with the mellow Monkey Picked White. Blue cheeses are traditionally served with sweet or dessert wines, and each of these teas brings a natural sweetness to the pairing. Maybe because it’s such a favorite cheese of mine, I found that it paired with more teas as well – floral notes, present in Earl of Grey and Meditative mind, blended nicely with the pungent blue cheeses, and organic Darjeeling, with its floral top notes, also worked well.

Smoked Cheeses we enjoyed most with the fruity notes of Mango Tango and Boulder Blues. These worked especially well iced, alongside a smoked gouda, bacon and granny smith apples Panini sandwich!

Goat cheeses we can source locally here in Colorado, so we had three to try, and decided that the winning pairings were the mellow Monkey Picked White, the roasty medium-bodied Thin Mint Green, and Bolder Breakfast for a strong black tea pairing.

Finally (can you believe we tasted these in two days?!) we found that the creamy Camembert and Brie cheeses were fabulous with the silky Earl of Grey and for medium-bodied greens – Green Twisted Spears, Jasmine Petals, and Thin Mint Green.

This year’s inspiring field of contenders for Best Picture at the 83rd Academy Awards inspired me to do an Oscar-themed dinner Sunday night, to celebrate the event with our most movie-passionate friends. Each element of every course had a connection to one of the nominated films. It was a fun and laughter-filled evening, and I’m looking forward to what next year’s field of nominees might entice us to serve up.  I even won a $5 bet :)

Oscar-Themed Dinner Menu

Hors d’oeuvres:
“127 Hours” trekker gorp (with ginger – thought that would go well with the drink)
“Toy Story 3″ Snack Mix (with goldfish and other toy-like snacks)
“Fighter” Cape Codder cocktail (while going to school in Cambridge, MA, I worked in a dive bar… where besides the pitchers of beer that got slung around, the most populah drink was the “Cape Coddah”. I have trouble drinking them still. But this version with Tito’s (my new fav vodka) handmade in Austin, TX, and Organic Cranberry juice went down quite smoothly!

Appetizer course:
“The King’s Speech[less] Salmon” (King salmon filet which I cured for 3  days in green jasmine tea, coarse sea salt and honey – recipe to be posted next week!)
“The Greens are All Right” (field greens with a meyer lemon-shallot dressing)
“The Social Network” Butter Pretzels

Main course:
“Winter’s Bones” (BBQ marinated baby back ribs)
“True Grits” (cheesy grits with corn)

Dessert course:
“Black Swan” (Molten [black swan] chocolate cakes with powdered [white swan] sugar, in a raspberry coulis [representing blood] with a rock sugar candy epee [representing the broken mirror] – Sad but beautiful and delicious!)
“Blue Valentine” (A cocktail of Blue Curacao and white Creme de Cocoa, with a red heart ice cube)

After-dinner drink:
“Inception” Dream Maker (An Absinthe drip, to top it all off!

"Black Swan" - complete with black & white swans, "blood" & broken mirror!