Favorite Teas
I love teas.
I didn’t used to love teas, and in point of fact, I am still very leery of most black teas. Oh, and red teas still smell like warm, wet hay to me, so I can’t drink those, either.
And yet, I love teas.
I love the pomp and circumstance of steaming water transformed into a magical brew of soothing, warm herbs.
I love to lower the tea bag into the water, and that first rush of scent as the hot water drags the flavor into itself.
My Favorite Teas
My favorite teas are inexpensive. I love the Celestial Seasonings brand most of all. Such a dizzying array of flavors, and with so many tea bags per box. Granted, they don’t have the individual paper packaging that makes a tea super portable, but how often do you need to carry a variety of tea with you?
My absolute, 100% best-tea-in-the-world is
The green tea base is so mild that it doesn’t contribute very much flavor, and the peppermint and vanilla are so creamy and subtle that the whole thing is just happy. It’s a seasonal blend, though, so it’s only available during the christmas/winter season. I pick up ten or twelve boxes of these every year and enjoy them throughout. =]
Some other favorites include:
- True Blueberry
- Lemon Zinger (CANNOT be beaten with a dose of honey and a shot of lemon juice. Perfect for a sore throat, yummy for even when you’re healthy)
- Honey Vanilla Chamomile (I love their “sleepytime” teas, but this one’s my favorite!)
- Natural Detox Wellness (when they say “creamy vanilla flavor” they really mean it!)
Yogi
I’m also a fan of the more-expensive Yogi brand of teas. They’re always flavorful and delicious, and I love the fortune-cookie tea tag sayings that they include. My current favorite from them is the Honey Lavender Stress Relief blend. Very mild, and I really enjoy the lavender smell.
Your Favorites
What are your favorite teas? (Or hot cocoas or coffees if you prefer!)
17 Comments
I enjoy the blueberry tea the most : ] I’ve gotten the fruity variety box, but none of hte other fruity teas are good to me. I think the blueberry tea, with a little packet of sweetener, tastes like FRUIT LOOPS.
Also, I’m convinced IHOP makes the best hot chocolate.
I’m with you on the other fruit teas, especially the red ones (cherry, raspberry). They just taste like hot kool-aid to me!
I have two that I drink on a regular basis.
Either barley tea or tea made with roasted buckwheat.
I like then because when chilled, they make for a marvelously refreshing drink in the summertime =)
I have never even heard of either of these teas!
You tend to get a lot of barley tea at korean restaurants in lieu of water which is where I developed a taste for it.
And for buckwheat…it’s just some buckwheat, lightly roasted and tossed into boiling water lol.
They’re simple but I find them refreshing.
Very neat!
Using our homegrown herbs, along with strawberry leaves and sunflower roots, Jacob makes us his own specially tailored teas. He has special recipes for coughs/colds, relaxation and yummy tasting. I do not think he uses buckwheat, but he keeps the recipes secret. So we actaully have some secret family recipes.
Otherwise, we like ginseng tea most, but we do drink lots of varieties.
Jacob made mention of his teas in his most recent letter! I am very impressed.
Do you have a particular brand of ginseng tea you drink?
There’s really only three teas on the world: Northern, Eastern, and Southern.
There’s this Eastern tea. It’s usually green, and may have some medicinal purposes. I don’t know. I don’t hardly eat nothing that’s green so I can’t rightly see drinking something green. Expect maybe green eggs and ham, and substitute the ham for bacon. Mmmmm. Bacon.
Then you’ve got your Northern tea. Served hot or cold, and never with sugar added. Never understood the facination with this tea, but then again I don’t have a good handle on the way most folks think in the area of its origin.
Finally you’ve got your Southern tea. Always sweetened with a healthy bit of sugar, preferably pure cane sugar. It can be made many ways, but the absolute best is slow stewing in the August sun for about 10 hours. This is the tea the way tea was meant to be tasted, and one of the great blessings of being born in the deep south.
lol. “healthy bit of sugar”. Yup, that’s southern tea.
:) Yep. The brand that Mr. Yi sends me every year. Since it is a Korean brand, I cannot read the label. And he always sends me enough to last a long while, so I have never had to search for it here.
I appreciate my ginseng tea from Mr. Yi. It is a good, solid gift. Unlike the gifts that the Philippines send me: dried squid flakes, sugared mango slices, straw purses, or woven trays. The dried squid flakes I wanted to pass out for Halloween, but Bob was afraid our house would get egged in retaliation. It still mighta been worth it.
(I rather meant that we drink lots of other varieties of tea beyond ginseng.)
Hahaha. When I was in Japan, I once snuck a cookie out of the cookie jar when I was home alone.
It was a soy sauce cookie. With fish bits instead of chocolate chips.
I am no longer so trusting of cookies, and I can only imagine what a squid flake tastes like.
That is funny. Look at you being all sneaky.
When I was pregnant with Oldest Child, I decided to make some potato pancakes one day. Husband had never had potato pancakes because he was neglected as a child. I set down the first batch of pancakes and turned to start some more when I heard Husband gasp, choke and curse.
“What is WRONG with you people? That is the grossest *%&$ I have ever tasted!”
I turned, appalled because they are so yummy and how could he have that reaction.
Well, he thought “pancakes.” So he had poured syrup all over them and then took a big bite.
I laughed so hard. He was not so amused and got even angrier when I told him that he was meant to put either applesauce or sour cream on them. That was why those items were set on the table.
He will not eat potato pancakes. Ever. He is still angry about that.
So the prospect of fish cookies is soooo tempting to me. That would be all sorts of funny. Until I was a single mom.
What area of the country is this ‘food’ eaten?
I like The Republic of Teas. Just about all of them intrigue me. I really like the black blend though it is very flavorfull and, as a crazy “notherner” I don’t need to add sugar ;)
*laugh* I’ve seen people up north drink all kinds of tea without sugar! It’s MADNESS.
Taken me the better part of six years to drink unsweetened tea, and I still don’t really like black tea without some sugar. ^_^
I don’t know that I’ve actually tried any Republic of Tea flavors. I may have to look into those.
I have been known to add some honey every once and a while…