Saturday Morning Tea

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It’s a beautiful summer day (finally!) and I’ve invited a sunny daylily to join me for my morning tea. I love its golden light. It reminds me to let my own light shine through.

I’m sipping a Darjeeling white tea from the Okayti estate. Processed entirely by hand, this rare production tea is truly an art form. In the photo above, you can see the tiny white hairs on each leaf tip which give white tea its name. White tea is the least processed of all of the different types of tea – just a short wither and steam heated to halt the oxidation process which naturally occurs. The white tea leaf buds are not rolled or bruised at all so each tip looks very much as it did when it was plucked from the bush.

Close to the border with Nepal, the Okayti estate is located at approximately 6000-7000 feet in Darjeeling district’s Mirik Valley of northeastern India. They have been growing tea since the late 1800s.

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I steeped the leaves in 180 degree F water for 3 minutes. As I removed the basket, the tea’s sweet aroma lifted gently from my teapot.

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I delighted in sifting through each intact leaf to create this fun design. The tea itself is a light buttery color, a paler version of my daylily. Its flavor is delicate and smooth with an amazing sweetness that lingers after each sip.

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I purchased a new teacup this week and enjoyed pouring my first cuppa in its smooth, rounded shape, a perfect fit for my small palm. Created at Cornwall Bridge Pottery in CT, a beautiful dragonfly has been painted onto its side.

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I found this amazing information regarding their symbolism:

“Dragonflies are reminders that we are light and can reflect the light in powerful ways if we choose to do so. “Let there be light” is the divine prompting to use the creative imagination as a force within your life. They help you to see through your illusions and allow your own light to shine in a new vision.”

Wow…

Saturday Morning Tea

Jul4

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Happy Birthday America! I am so blessed to call you home.

I’m hoping that this weekend will bring a break out of this cool, rainy weather pattern we’ve been stuck in here in New England. The sun has peeked out here and there but hasn’t stayed for very long. My colleagues at work and I were celebrating yesterday when we saw some blue sky!

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My tea today, a hand-made Oolong called Xiang Pao, comes from a small family farm located in the Shan Ling Xi area in the mountains of Nantou County, Taiwan, approximately 1800 meters above sea level. As part of their business philosophy, this farm practices the LOHAS concept. LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability and its companies promote “responsible capitalism” by providing goods and services using economic and environmentally sustainable business practices.

After graduating from college, the family’s daughter made the decision to stay and work in the family business. In an e-mail to my company, she writes:

“I told my father we need to insist on selling top quality and handmade when I graduated. Special Oolong tea is well received in Taiwan. We have paid more attention and have tried some ways to make sure our tea quality, and we got some awards from competitions in Taiwan.

We asserts LOHAS concept, to provide top teas to customers in order to make sure all customers get the nature health and nature beauty in the life. Therefore, we emphasize the quality and manufactureer processes so that our teas are high quality and good benefits.”

Just as I am happy to support small local businesses in my area, I am glad to support and share teas from an environmentally and socially conscious tea farm such as this.

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I steeped the leaves for 4 minutes in 190 degree F water. The aroma and flavor are of earth, wood and chestnuts with a mild sweetness. A hint of flowers lingers in my mouth after each sip.

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I am enjoying my cuppa with a bowl of lusciously ripe black plums. I love the velvety, dark sweetness of the fruit combined with the tang of its skin. Mmmm…

Today I am going to a dear friend’s home to sit out amongst the profusion of blooming flowers in her backyard garden. We’ll enjoy some tea and even read each other’s tea leaves using an interesting new teacup she just purchased at the bookstore recently. It’s called “The Cup of Destiny”. What fun! Stay tuned to see what the cup has to say…

“…do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there…”

exerpt from the poem The Sun by Mary Oliver

Saturday Morning Tea

Jun27

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Welcome back sun!

As George Harrison sang, “it feels like years since it’s been here”.

With a booming thunderstorm last Thursday night, our weather finally turned from cool and drizzly to hot and sunny. Summer’s finally here. And with the warmth, it’s time to make some iced tea!

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I make iced tea with the “cold brew” method. It’s so easy to make iced tea this way. Gather up your supplies either in the morning before work or in the evening before bedtime. This will give the leaves sufficient time to steep either all day or all night.

You’ll need a container, a tablespoon and some tea leaves. For my iced tea, I use a glass pitcher I purchased at Target and some organic green South African Rooibos. I’ve written about this herbal before here and here.

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Spoon your tea leaves into your pitcher, using one tablespoon for every 6-8 ounces of water. Next, pour your water into your pitcher. I recommend either bottled spring water or filtered tap water. Hard water can definitely affect the taste of your tea.

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Now all you have to do is place your container in the fridge. That night or the next day, strain the tea into another container to remove the leaves. I use a large Pyrex measuring cup to strain my tea into. Then I clean the leaves out of my pitcher and pour the tea back into it. You can also use an infuser or tea filter papers to put your loose leaves into, making cleanup easier.

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There are so many variations with iced tea creation. You can put lemon or orange slices in either while the tea is steeping or after you strain it. Or, you can fill your glass halfway with iced tea and then pour some flavored seltzer water in for a fizzy iced tea. The possibilities are endless!

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I’m enjoying my iced tea plain with ice and a bowl of fresh blueberries on plain yogurt. Mmmmm…. I’ve been exploring ways in which I can remove sugar from my diet because I believe there is just way too much of it in the food we buy. Even my Stonyfield Farm yogurt cup, while it’s very delicious and organic, has sugar added to it. So, I’m now buying plain yogurt and mixing it with fresh fruit, depending on what’s in season.

I’d love to hear your ideas on how to reduce sugar intake!

Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right

~George Harrison

Saturday Morning Tea

Jun20

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It has definitely been a rainy spring here in New England. As I look at the 10-day weather forecast, there are more clouds than suns and some of those clouds have lightning bolts coming out of them. Being an admitted doppler radar geek, I do love a good thunderstorm. But I digress from my cup of tea…

This morning’s tea is a black Ceylon tea from the Adawatte estate. Located about 1/2 – 3/4 mile above sea level on the eastern slopes of the mountains in the Uva district of Sri Lanka, this estate is a tea, rubber and forestry estate.

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You can read about how tea cultivation came to the island of Sri lanka in one of my previous posts here. Originally, coffee was grown there.

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The tea grown in the higher elevations of Sri Lanka tends to have a brighter, brisk quality to it. This tea is very characteristic of a high grown Uva.

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I steeped the dark, chunky leaves for 4 minutes in 212 degree F water. The dark amber liquor has a minty, citrus aroma that carries on into its flavor notes. This tea would make a very refreshing iced tea with slices of juicy lemon and crisp sprigs of mint for garnish. Mmmm…now if the weather would just cooperate with some hot, sunny, iced tea drinking days…

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Today I am attending a Garden Tea Party at the home of a dear friend. She has asked each guest to bring a plant to swap and also something chocolate to share. I was going to stop at my favorite local candy shop to pick up some dark chocolate creams. I especially love the ones filled with orange and raspberry cream. But then I came across this recipe in my blog wanderings. Made with melted milk chocolate, cocoa powder and milk chocolate chunks, it is sheer decadence in cookie form. In a recent issue of Vegetarian Times, I was so happy to see that cocoa was listed number one on the anti-oxidant list.

Tea and chocolate – what more can anyone ask for?

Giving chocolate to others is an intimate form of communication, a sharing of deep, dark secrets. ~Milton Zelman, “Chocolate News”

7 Simple Ways to make time for your art

Jun16

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As I’m now back to a 40+ hour workweek and my art time has become more compressed, I’d like to share ways that I’ve discovered work well for me in my goal to make time for my art. Of course, these ways can work for anyone no matter what your schedule is like.

Turn off the tv. Plain and simple. TV can be such a time sink and before you know it hours have gone by. The same goes for browsing the internet.
Schedule your art time & make it sacred. Pick a specific day(s) and time(s) and only do art during that time. Tell your family and friends that you’ll be turning off all communication devices and immersing yourself in your art. You and your art are worth it!
Learn to say no. Volunteering and helping can be wonderful and fulfilling commitments. The important part is learning the balance and being in tune to how you feel about the balance of your time. If you feel that you aren’t getting enough time for your art then it’s time to look at the balance.
Divide art projects into small steps. This works wonders to help you feel like you are accomplishing something and working towards your goal. Once I know what I want to create, I actually write a list of the steps needed to complete a project. I can then check them off as I go along. This might sound very left brained and not supportive of the creative flow but the flow actually happens within the steps. It’s important to be flexible with your steps and rewrite your list, if necessary, as you go along.
Relax your housework standards. Enough said.
Make your art project portable. Whatever your medium of choice, you can make up a small portable art kit to bring along for creating during the kids’ practices, lunch breaks at work, riding on the train, waiting at the doctor’s office, traveling on a plane.
Carry a notebook/sketchbook with you at all times. Ideas come at all different times not just when I’m sitting in my studio so I always have a notebook with me to jot down observations I make during my day – colors, textures, patterns, the light, nature changes. Anything that inspires me.