Gift Guide Series: Little Wild Herbs

It’s already November and I’m sure you are starting to think about the holidays. In the past month I’ve sought out small shops that I’ve never tried before and I wanted to elevate them and share them with you. As a small business, word of mouth is so important and while my audience isn’t huge, I want to try to share businesses as much as I can.

Another important note about this series. As an Iranian American I’ve faced many struggles growing up in the US. I’ve not spoken about this a lot and on my own I already seek out small shops, women owned shops, BIPOC owned shops for my countdown boxes. I did the same for this series and I hope you’ll discover a new shop!

The first shop I’m sharing with you all is Alecks from Little Wild Herbs. Alecks is a Maryland based business which makes me so happy because I am always looking to support local shops since I am also a Marylander!

Alecks is in her first year of business too! Congrats! I ordered a custom blend and two other blends. The blend I created was good but the soul chai and keep your cool have been so amazing. She has a gift for blending together ingredients. I’ve been enjoying her blends before bedtime almost every night. They have added calm and deliciousness to my bedtime routine! You can also get an intuitive blend which is a custom blend she creates for you!

To learn more about Alecks and place an order check her out HERE

To get the December SolidariTEA Box head over HERE

Can you tell us a little bit about you and your passion for tea?

I have a passion for medicinal herbs and how they impact our body physically and energetically. I find tea to be the most accessible way to use herbs and understand what they do for our bodies. And there’s a special kind of magical about the art of making tea, you know? Everything slows down, and time seems to stop altogether when you take the first sip. It is my intention with this business to help bring people back to what really matters to them, to slow down, and enjoy this sweet, precious life

Was there a catalyst that pushed you to open your shop?

Honestly, quarantine. I realized pretty quickly how important it was to build rituals into my day as a form of self-care. I can’t even remember when I had the idea, “Hey, I’m going to start making custom tea blends based on my intuition.” I just started doing it. you could say that my soul led me here. For the past few years, I’ve been soul searching, wanting to learn what my purpose is, wanting to learn how I can be of service in a way that feels authentically me. And I’ve always had a practice of brewing tea as self-care. I would make blends as holiday gifts for people, or when friends or family came over, I’d brew a pot to share. Keeping a tea practice has been a transformative way to check in with my inner state and bring balance to my body and mind. With so much tension in the air, I felt called to share what I know and create an offering that can guide folks in the direction of transmitting energies, thoughts, and feelings that no longer serve them.

What is your personal tea ritual like?

First thing in the morning before I get to work (and after I walk the dog), I put on a pot of tea and enjoy it in complete silence. This allows my body to wake up naturally and become present. It's also a beautiful way to set an intention for the day, I will often whisper an intention into my tea just before I take the first sip, allowing the intention to infuse into the water and work it's magic throughout the day.

What is your favorite tea or other item in your shop right now?

My favorite tea blend currently is Soul Chai, a beautiful, warming blend of tulsi, oat straw, rose, cardamom, orange peel, and licorice. This tea feels like a warm hug and has the ability to wipe a sour mood right out of existence. The primary ingredient, tulsi, is an adaptogen, meaning it carries the ability to bring the body and mind into balance. Whether you feeling high tension anxiety or are lingering low in depression, Tulsi is a lovely herb that asks you to center your mind into the present moment.

Do you have any holiday specials going on?

Another offering I'm super excited about is my December (and first ever) SolidariTEA box! Truly the gift that keeps giving, this SolidariTEA box contains 12 individually wrapped gifts to be opened every other day until December 24th. In this box, folks will receive 6 tea blends made by me and 6 handmade *secret gifts.* I'm partnering with 3 small businesses to make this offering super special, but the icing on the cake is this: 15% of each sale will be donated to one of my favorite nonprofits, I Believe in Me (a Frederick-based nonprofit striving to provide youth-development and empowerment through mentorship. Over the course of COVID-19, this organization has also been providing free food and resources weekly to the people of Frederick who are most in need).

This is my first year in business and I know how much work it goes into providing a soul-led offering. My goal is to give back to the community in whatever ways I can.

Pictured if the custom blend, I really enjoyed being able to create my own blend to try. Let’s just say It was good but Alecks is much better skilled at blending!

First Try at Tea Eggs!

Pre-COVID I frequented a Chinese tea house in DC pretty often called Ching Ching Cha. I’ve written about it before, you can check it out here!

One of the visits I tried their tea eggs and wow, they were good! They have this potent aroma and flavor that really elevated the eggs. Ever since then I wanted to try it but was afraid I would ruin a bunch of eggs.

Fast forward to last week and I found a recipe that was relatively simple and while I didn’t get ALL the ingredients, I got most of them and made a few tweaks.

Here is the original recipe!

One big change is that I made only 4 eggs instead of the 12 in the recipe. The recipe mentions 12 eggs but because you are essentially boiling the eggs then placing them in the broth, I think the number of eggs can vary without causing any problems.

For my broth, here are the changes I made to the recipe based on availability of what I had.

• 4 eggs soft boiled

• 3 star anise

• 1 cinnamon stick

• 4 slices ginger

• 2 teaspoons sichuan peppercorns

• 2 tbsp Ritual from Aera Tea

• 3 Bay Leaves

• 4 tbsp soy sauce

• 2 tsp salt

• A dash of mirin

• A dash of rice vinegar

The method for this is very simple:

• Bring the eggs to room temperature and boil them to your preference of hardness. Put them aside.

• In a medium sized pot, take all your ingredients (minus the eggs) and bring that to a boil. Let it boil for a little bit. The original recipe called for 10 minutes but I left it a little longer until it was very fragrant. Turn it off and let it cool completely.

• Crack the eggs all over to allow the broth to seep in. Place the eggs into the completely cooled broth.

• Make sure the eggs are totally covered by the broth.

• Let them sit in the broth in the fridge for 24 hours at least. You can leave them for longer! I took 2 out after 24 hours and left the other 2 for another day.

While my eggs didn’t come out as marbled as I would have liked, these were delicious!!!!! They are so fragrant and the flavors of the tea and spices seeped into the eggs well! I think these are a really simple and fun treat! If you have a lot of tea, this is a great experiment. I definitely want to try using other teas as well!

A little bit about the Tea Thoughts Journey!

Happy Sunday friends and thanks for joining me as I share a little bit about the Tea Thoughts journey. As my next shop update approaches tomorrow I’ve been doing a lot of reflection myself and wanted to share. Before I start, I want to say that I will be sharing difficulties and triumphs with you. I don’t share the difficulties as a way to garner sympathy, just to share. I feel extremely grateful to be able to have the means and time to run a small business.

The Start

Many of you have been around since the inception of Tea Thoughts. I was hired for a creative type job that turned out to not be that creative, I felt drained and like I didn’t have a place to express myself. I’ve always crafted, hand making gifts and cards. I’ve also almost started an etsy shop maybe 10 times at this point but fear always got the better of me. So Instead I started a blog and since tea was such and important part of my life I wanted to make it about that and learn more because I didn’t know that much.

I started my blog and began “reviewing” teas. This eventually turned into me creating recipes because that was something I enjoyed more. After a couple of months, that creativity bug was still biting and I decided to start an etsy shop. That was back in May of 2016. At the start, there was no direction, I was painting, doing calligraphy, creating items for weddings, custom pieces etc. It was nice to create but It wasn’t working well so I made the decision to connect my shop and blog and create tea themed designs!

The Shop

Tea Thoughts has come a long way as a shop, mostly because I’ve come a long way as a designer and business owner. When I started my shop I also starting teaching myself design. Tea Thoughts has always been bootstrapped by funds from my full time job. Working at a small non profit, this isn’t a ton but I’ve made it work. There were some scary times where this funding method really took it’s toll on me but overtime as the shop has grown, the pressure is less.

The most difficult part of my shop has been keeping it stocked while at the same time trying different products to see what people like best. For a couple of years I was drowning. Funding an idea, having it fail and then being stuck with all of the stock in my tiny apartment. I think many people assume that if you have a certain amount of followers, you are rich or have a sell out shop. Not the case. The reality is that marketing your products is like asking over and over “please buy this.” Something I did a lot of was watching webinar after webinar about how to have a successful social media presence. They always say that follower count doesn’t equal a paycheck and let me tell you: TRUE!

Attachment

Something I’ve really had to overcome is connecting shop sales and social media success to my personal worth. When your shop isn’t doing well, it can be really tough mentally. When I didn’t get likes on a photo, I felt like a failure. There were many times where when my shop wasn’t doing well and I saw myself as worthless because I couldn’t make it succeed. Much of my desire to start a shop was to have creative control and freedom and something I built that I could be proud of and these feelings made it difficult to go on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost quit Tea Thoughts because I didn’t think it could work. Thankfully I have a wonderful support network who always encourages me to keep going because deep down that’s what I want to do. While most nights look like: staying up late, falling asleep in front of my computer and burnt out, I don’t mind because I love Tea Thoughts. The feedback I get from you all motivates me to keep creating and thinking of new things! I’ve come a long way in my mindset. I spend less time on social media and obsessing over likes. I try to share good content with you all and that’s it. I’ve also learned to not take slow sales personally, just that I need to keep going!

Hope

Now for some good. Tomorrow, I release my second annual Tea & Treats Advent calendar. Want to know how random things are? Last year I was hunting for an advent calendar for myself and since I don’t really like tea bags or blends, It was tough to find one so I decided to make my own! Last minute I ordered tea from a few places and was able to throw together 15 listings of an advent calendar. It was so much fun wrapping everything and I was so excited to be able to combine my love of gifting and tea.

It was a hit! So I did a valentine’s day box and a spring box and a summer box and a halloween box! The halloween box sold out in one day and y’all I can’t tell you how much I cried that day. Tears of joy of course. I cried because I finally felt a little success after all my hard work. It was very emotional and I think about that day all the time to remember to be grateful. Now, selling out in one day sounds great but honestly, four years later and I am still working a full time job because I’ve barely scratched the surface of being able to make Tea Thoughts a full time gig. The reality is that on release day I get sales and between release days, sales ebb and flow. Despite this, I’ve never felt more hopeful. The items I’ve been putting in my shop have been doing well and while the countdown boxes are very labor intensive, I love them. I love curating, wrapping, and most of all - seeing your reactions.

The Future

Thanks to all of your support, I feel like I finally found my dream job. I get to design things that combine my love of tea and other items and also fill a need in the tea themed items category. Thanks to your support, the shop has been self sustaining in 2020 for the most part. Still have a long way to go but I feel hopeful and grateful. While I feel like my hard work and trying different things have helped I couldn’t have done it without you. People who shop from me, are putting their trust in me as they shop from a small business and I try my best to make your order feel special. As I look to 2021, I already have 2 boxes planned and depending on how this holiday season goes, lots of new fun items! Something else I am really excited about is that I am saving to purchase my own pottery wheel so that I can update my shop with pottery more often!

I wanted to write this to give you a little peak into Tea Thoughts. Most of you probably follow me on social media and there, I try to keep my feed put together and calm because I think that’s what we could all use more of. In an effort to keep it real though I wanted to share that it’s not always pretty pours and fun product shots!

I am incredibly grateful that I’ve been able to start this business and keep it going. As COVID hit, I thought that it might be the end for Tea Thoughts but in an amazing turn, this has been my best year yet! This is something that’s hard to celebrate, especially because people have lost so much. I will continue to stay humble and keep creating and bringing you tea goodies.

To all of you who follow on social media, thank you!

To those who like and comment on my posts, thank you!

To those who subscribe to my newsletter, thank you!

To those who order from my shop, thank you!

To those, who share about Tea Thoughts, you have been a huge part of my success and I thank you so much!

Wishing you lots of joy and tea,

Nazanin

It's Kringle Season!

I can’t remember exactly when it was but I think two years ago I was wondering the isles of trader joe’s when i came across a pastry I had never seen before, kringle. I have a huge sweet tooth and because it was near the holidays I thought that it would be a nice treat to take home! I also saw that this was a Danish pastry and was excited to try a sweet from a different culture.

Fast forward to getting home and trying the kringle with me tea, OH MY GOSH. It was so good! Warmed up in the oven for a short while the pastry was soft, gooey, sweet and flavorful! The flavor I got from trader joe’s was almond so it reminded me a little of marzipan which I love. I was hooked. I went back the next day and a few times that week to clean them out and ended up gifting kringle to family and friends that year!

While kringle is definitely enjoyed year round and is even at trader joe’s year round but because of my first experience I associate it with a fall/winter treat! The kringle that Trader Joe’s sells is from a bakery in Racine, Wisconsin called O&H Danish Bakery. This bakery has been around since 1949 according to their site and they have a ton of unique flavors as well as other Danish pastry offerings.

You may have heard the term hygge before. It is described by them as creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying life. This includes things like finding beauty in small moments and connecting with family over good food and kringle of course! I love this concept and try to live by this as much as I can.

At trader joe’s it seems they bring kringle to their stores in the fall, winter and spring with flavors like pumpkin, almond and raspberry. So if you have a trader joe’s near you, you can head over there to give kringle a try if you haven’t already!

The O & H Danish Bakery website has a TON of flavors, they are a little pricey but totally worth it. My sister and I went in on a bulk pack of kringle that gives you a slight discount, free shipping and you get to choose your flavors. I got harvest, cinnamon roll, pecan and turtle. If you check out my instagram you will see an IG TV video showing the kringle and tasting a little tea with it. I really enjoyed the harvest flavor which is apple themed. Apple is such a lovely fruit and when baked I really enjoy it!

I will keep you updated on the other flavors but I can’t imagine Ill have anything but raving reviews! If pairing with tea I would suggest a stronger tea. The kringle is very sweet so a strong tea could cut that a little. In my video I enjoyed a raw pu’er with it!

Have you had kringle? If so what is your favorite flavor that you’ve tasted?

White Tea Apple Crumble

Crumble? Cobbler? Crisp? What’s the difference? Honestly, I don’t know. Even after looking them all up several times I see people refer to different things, different ways. That’s ok.

I’m naming this dish a crumble because to me, it’s a little crumbly just how I like it :)

This is another super simple recipe. While I will do some more in depth recipes too, to keep me on my one blog post a week routine, I need to keep things simple most of the time. The benefit of this is that I can figure out how to use ingredients I have on hand to create yummy things and share that with you too!

So today’s quick recipe, you need:

-Apples

-Butter

-Rolled oats

-Flour

-Baking soda (optional)

-Lemon

-Brown Sugar

-White tea

I used 4 apples for this crumble, they were two different kinds that I got in my weekly product box. In terms of prep, I would suggest slicing them relatively thinly so baking is quicker and cut out seeds etc. Some people peel the apples but I personally love the skin so I leave it on! Feel free to peel them if you’d like!

Tea comes into this recipe at the very start! I brewed up some white tea and soaked the apple for 2-3 hours in the tea! I brewed some Columbian white tea very strong and let it cool slightly before I put the apple in because I didn’t want them to soften too much.

After about 3 hours, they looks like this, tinted with the white tea (compare to above photos) and they had a lovely white tea fragrance and taste. The reason I brewed the white tea strongly is that this is a very subtle taste and I wanted the apples to get as much flavor as possible from the tea!

This dish that I’m using is actually a quiche dish but I like the taller edges so I always use it for pies and other things besides quiche. I also added in a handful of blueberries and blackberries to this for a little variety. Feel free to add your favorite fruits!

For the inside, I sprinkled about 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, the juice of 1 lemon and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda. I usually use 1/3 a lemon but the lemon I had wasn’t very juicy so I used the whole one. I love tart so the more lemon the better but lessen this if you don’t want it as tart. As for the baking powder, I have made this without it and it was fine.

The topping is very simple also. I leave the rolled oats whole because I like the texture but if you want it less crunchy you can put them in a food processor and pulse a few times. I melted 2 tablespoons of butter and mixed it into 1 cup of rolled oats. I then sprinkled some flour over the oats, just a little like a teaspoon to a tablespoon. Sprinkle the topping over the fruit as evenly as you can and place in the oven!

I baked this at 350 for about 50 minutes. I did 30 minutes then checked on it and did 2 intervals of 10 minutes. After the first 30 minutes, I cute up some small cubes of butter and placed them over the topping to add a little golden brown buttery goodness. Let it cool slightly so you don’t burn your mouth and voila!

A simply crumble for you. The topping isn’t stuck together that much which is how I like it but if you would like it to stick together more I would increase the flour and butter when preparing the topping.

I could see this being pretty good with hojicha or roasted oolong apples as well!

I hope you enjoy tea soaked apple crumble :)

Pomegranate Ginger White Tea Mocktail

I’m so glad I’ve been able to stick to my new blog post every sunday for 3 weeks in a row! I’ve been thinking about fall because it’s been chilly for a week or so here. What do you think of when you hear the word fall? Pumpkins? Apples? Pears? For me, all of those but also pomegranates! They have been one of my favorite fruits since I was a kid and I enjoy them any time but in the colder months especially.

I get a weekly produce box called Imperfect Box that is trying to fight food waste. The box uses Imperfect produce and excess inventory on lots of items that would otherwise get thrown away. It’s especially cool because someone I went to high school with started this business! If you click the link above you can check it out and if you sign up through my referral link you’ll get $10 towards your first order. I’ve found this to be super convenient especially during the pandemic to get some essentials delivered to me. Please note that if you sign up through my referral code, I am also awarded $ towards my purchases.

Back to pomegranates, I had that as an option to me and was so excited to receive them in my imperfect box this past Tuesday. Using pomegranates as my base, I looked at my tea to see what would go well. I debated between an oolong and white tea and finally landed on a white tea. Next, to make this mocktail more interesting, I purchased some spicy ginger beer to add some sweet and spice!

This is basically the entire recipe but I wanted to share a few notes about it. For the pomegranates, I made a juice. For these two glasses I made juice from one pomegranate. After seeding the pomegranate, I put the seeds in a food processor, the pulp is almost purple! Then take the pulp and juice and strain it. I wanted a little pulp in mine so I wiped the strainer back and forth to get some of the pulp in the juice. This still keeps out the larger pieces.

If you’ve never seeded a pomegranate, here is a video showing you how I was taught to do it.

For the tea, you can cold or hot brew it. Due to timing, I brewed mine hot then ran it through a press brew that had ice to cool it down to make the process quicker. I would suggest adding a little bit of extra tea so the brew is stronger and will come through with the other flavors.

A note about the ginger beer. I only used ginger beer but I think to make it less sweet you could always change the proportions and do something like 1/2 the glass with tea then fill the rest with a combo of pomegranate juice, ginger beer and a plain seltzer.

This was made to be a mocktail but I took some of it and added a bit of whiskey to enjoy so it can easily be turned into a cocktail if you’d like that too!

My Persian tea traditions

If you follow me on instatgram, you’ll notice that I mostly share my gongfu style brewing sessions but that isn’t the only tea in my life! I share about that most often because it is newer to me and I am still finding out so much about tea through that style of brewing. I also want to share so that more people will try it! Please note that Persian tea culture encompass many different traditions and I am just sharing what my family practiced, it is not the end all be all.

Many people ask me when I started drinking tea and the answer is young. I don’t remember exactly what age but it was definitely in the 5-7 range. Most mornings we would eat noon-paneer (sheep milk cheese bread and walnuts) and sweet tea! This isn’t exactly sweet tea like in the south. The way the tea is brewed is very strong so we often would drink tea with a little sugar. The way I have shared before was with a sugar cube that you place in your mouth and keep there so as you drink, each sip is sweetened. I’m going to share some other ways we sweetened our tea too!

Let’s get down to the tea first. In my household and most Persian households, you will find black tea as the staple. While the type can vary, I feel like most of my family drinks exclusively ceylon. Below is a photo of the tea that I drink every morning. It’s from quality tea co and it’s called “best tea” which I personally find very fitting. As you can see it’s a loos leaf ceylon and compared to some ceylon that is a bit more broken up, this has relatively longer leaves. I do notice that the size of the leaf varies between sizes of packages I buy.

This tea is tossed with bergamot oil. You’re probably thinking, oh so it’s an earl grey. Not quite. I’m not sure the difference because I’ve had other ceylon earl greys and they just do not compare to this. The aroma is so lovely and reminds me of my childhood and grounds me every single morning.

I brew this plain with a little honey because it’s the only tea I like sweetened, I think out of habit but there are times that other ingredients are put into the tea!

Rose and rosewater are common ingredients in Iranian food and sweets. I have had this tea prepared with rose and rosewater. While I love rosewater in sweets, I prefer the whole rosebuds. I often see tea companies that have “persian rose” type tea blends use rose buds as well. I throw a few rosebuds in sometimes when I brew. Growing up, we rarely had this type of tea at our house because my parents liked it more plain but some of my relatives would brew it this way when we would visit. A visit to my relatives consisted of walking through the door, tea would be ready or almost ready and everyone would grab a cup and sit down to talk.

One other way that I did have it sometimes but it was rare was with saffron. Saffron is another common ingredient in both sweets and our dishes. I for example use saffron every day when I cook. Sometimes you will see this tea with saffron threads brewed in it. It seems that some Persian/Iranian restaurants you go to serve tea this way to share a more unique experience.

Now onto the brewing. Iran wasn’t always a tea drinking country. They were actually majority coffee drinkers until the 15th century so it’s no surprise that we like our tea STRONG. Most Persian households will have a ghouri or samovar. I do not have one only due to space, once I have more space I will be getting one first thing! If you’ve never seen one, it’s basically a double decker set up with the bottom being the water kettle and the top being the tea pot. See a simple example below.

If you look back to more historical ones, they are very decorative. You can find some like that nowadays, we have a few that my family was able to bring from Iran. Many modern ones are free standing and plug in instead of using the stove.

Essentially how this works is that you boil the water in the bottom kettle then you pour the boiling water with tea in the top one. Then you put both back on the stove and let it brew until it’s super strong! While I do enjoy tea this way, it definitely doesn’t follow brewing instructions and is probably burning the tea some :D

The other thing to know when serving tea is “kam rang” and “Poor rang” which is basically like lighter or darker tea. As a kid, one of your tasks is to learn to make and serve tea to your family! I’ve shared before that my mom had a loving nickname for me “kolfat chai” which is like tea butler LOL. So since the stronger tea is in the top and you have water in the bottom, someone who wants a weaker tea you might pour half brewed tea half water and change it up for a stronger tea. Many people just like to have a cup full of the top kettle. This double feature also allows you to keep the tea hot or reheat easily.

The other usual way we enjoyed tea growing up was in small glasses. These are Turkish glasses that my sister brought home for me on a trip but persian ones are very similar. some have handles even though they are smaller but many don’t. Generally you would have several glasses of these smaller cups. Nowadays, I drink my morning and evening tea out of glass too but they are larger and with a handle. This is out of convenience.

A lot of households would have these turkish style tea cups as well as Persian ones. One style that I often saw growing up and I recently ordered myself are cups that feature Shah Abbas or Abbas the Great who was considered one of the greatest rulers in Persian history.

The first sweetener I wanted to share with you is “ab nabat” which I believe is what you call rock candy in English. The rock candy we had wasn’t artificially colored and usually wasn’t on a stick. It was either normal colored or tinted slightly because it was infused with saffron. This one pictured is held together by a string that you’ll find once it melts. Ab nabat was my parents cure all for stomach aches. They would put it in either tea or hot water and it always worked! It was also one of my favorite ways to sweeten my tea when I was younger if we had it.

This other method may be somewhat strange but it’s actually great, raisins! Instead of darker raisins, we use green ones and they were always a bit dryer and longer. These are a little tart but also very sweet and having them alongside your tea sweeten it up! These were often used as the”healthier” version to the sugar cubes or ab nabat.

Which would you choose? Rock candy or raisins?

If you’re interested in checking out some options, I created a list that has some options. Please note that if you purchase any of these items through my link, I will earn a small comission at no extra cost to you.

Shopping/Idea List

Summer rolls with a hint of tea!

Following my post about incorporating tea into sushi last week, I wanted to do another post like that. We have a local pho restaurant that we absolutely love! They have a lot of great things on their menu but one of our favorites are the summer rolls!

There is something about the rice paper wrapping that I just love so much. Generally, their summer rolls have the thin rice noodles, shrimp, basil and a little lettuce. It comes with a peanut dipping sauce and is the way I ruin my appetite for pho every single time we eat there :)

I watched a few videos online about how to make these and they seemed simple enough! It looks to me that there were two different ways that I could easily incorporate tea into this dish.

1) In the noodles

2) In the wrappers

*Please note: I have linked a short shopping list at the end of this post. If you purchase through those links, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you!*

Noodles

Cooking the noodles is very simple, they are very thin so you put them in boiling water and cover with a lid for a few minutes until they are soft. Naturally, instead of using boiling water I used boiling tea!

I decided to use the same tea from my sushi post because I have a lot and I thought the savory flavors of the tea came through well in the rice. That tea is the pai mu tan from Chado tea room!

While I have seen people cook tea on the stove, as if they are boiling it I didn’t want to keep this tea on too long. I placed a large amount of leaves in a pot on the stove and covered it with water. I allowed it to come to a light boil and then poured directly over the noodles.

Not only did the noodles have a subtle tea taste, they also were dyed a little in the process. The noodles that are in our favorite summer rolls are bright white.

Wrapper

With the tea that you saved from cooking the noodles, the tea can be cool or warm but not super hot! You are essentially going to hydrate the wrappers with the tea. You want a container that is wide and not tall to do this.

When you hydrate the wrapper, you want to dip it into your tea, and gently rotate it so that the entire wrapper is hydrated. Then place is on a flat surface and make sure it is smooth. The it worked out well when I put my ingredients (minus the one I want to show off) towards the edge near me, far enough away to fold the edge closest to me over the ingredients. If you want certain ingredients to show through, place those on the roll now. Then I rolled once or twice and folded in the sides, then rolled it the rest of the way up. The wrapper is going to be super sticky!

Here is a video that you can follow :)

I decided to use ingredients I had in my house so I used tomatoes, mushrooms, thinly sliced zucchini that I fried and umeboshi! Since I didn’t make a dipping sauce the umeboshi in the rolls gave them a super kick of flavor.

You don’t want anything that is very wet in these rolls so if you do pre cook something like I did with the zucchini, make sure to take off as much excess liquid as you can!

Shopping List!

1) Rice Vermicelli Noodles

2) Spring Roll Wrappers

What ingredients would you use for summer rolls?

3 easy ways to incorporate tea into your homemade sushi!

Ok, before we dive into this I just want say that I use the term sushi here loosely! After watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi, I don’t think I can ever call anything I make sushi. If you haven’t see it before you should check it out. The artistry and passion that goes into his creations is amazing!

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about incorporating tea into your homemade sushi! So what is the inspiration behind this? I like to try to create recipes with whatever I have in my house and I had a lot of stuff left from my onigiri recipe so I decided to make sushi!

*I have the teas I used tagged when they are mentioned and at the bottom of the list I have a shopping list for some of the items I used for the sushi ! I have separated these because the tea links do not earn commission but the shopping list at the bottom does.*

This post is less about how to make the sushi and more about adding tea to your meal in 3 different ways. I like this concept because I think that in addition to drinking tea, there are so many ways to incorporate tea into our lives: Sweets, Savory, DIY and special drinks!

1. TEA INFUSED RICE

First up, let’s talk about this rice! This isn’t normally cooked sushi rice. It’s sushi rice cooked in cold brew baimudan! As you can see the color is a little darker and not as bright white.

I used sushi rice and followed the directions for cooking. The directions said to use 2 cups of water to 1.5 cups of rice. So instead of using water, I used my cold brew baimudan and voila!

Why did I use cold brew and not hot tea? I didn’t want the tea to be bitter but I did want it to be strong. I feel like cold brew can really draw out intense flavors without the bitterness.

The outcome of the rice is really nice, it smells a little like tea and has a little more savory flavor than usual. When this rice was done, I tossed it with eden shake ! Remember to use a wood spatula or spoon with sushi rice.

A note: some recipes call for adding rice vinegar among other things to sushi rice but because I cooked it in baimudan and wanted that flavor to shine through as much as possible, I didn’t add anything else.

2. TEA SOAKED BONITO FLAKES

Bonito flakes were something I saw a lot of people use in their onigiri so I bought a bag and had a lot left. Like many of the recipes I saw, I found that they were a lot better when soaked in something before being added to the recipe.

You might be able to guess where this is going but I used another white tea - Pai Mu Tan for the bonito flakes. This time I used hot tea for the bonito flakes to soften them up quickly. I poured the hot tea over the bonito flakes and mixed them around. I think this softened them nicely for the sushi and evened out the flavor a little bit.

Note: If you do this, make sure to let most of the water drip off the bonito flakes before putting them on your sushi roll!

3. TEA AND SOY SAUCE

This was a last minute idea and turned out to my one of my favorite things that I will probably continue to do! I added hot tea to my soy sauce! I used the same pai mu tan as I did in the bonito flakes. The amount of tea you add depends on the flavor your want. I tried to pour equal parts of both but it ended up being a little more tea than soy sauce.

Why I loved this is because it cut a little bit of the salt of the soy sauce and made it warm and comforting. Cutting the salt was nice, especially because I used umeboshi in my sushi which is a little salty on it’s own. There was also the lovely aroma of tea every time I dipped a piece of sushi into it!

You can use whatever ingredients you have on hand for your sushi but I think my favorite addition was the umeboshi. I love tart and salty things so this was such a delicious addition to my homemade sushi!

Shopping List:

• Nishiki Sushi Rice

• Sushi Matt kit

• Nori

• Eden Shake

• Bonito Flakes

• Umeboshi

Please note that if you purchase through these links I will earn a small commission but it is at no extra cost to you!

CAFÉ WARSHAFSKY SHORTBREAD

Hi again! As we make our way through murky waters, I want to continue to share small businesses with you that have great products! I feel the effects of the virus on both sides. As a small business, I see sales slow and overtime as funds get tighter for everyone, they may cease. As someone who has a blog and likes to share and try new products, I know that the least I can do is to share businesses with you!

Many of you know about my tea boxes by now, people are currently opening the spring box! When I start to curate these boxes, I try to fit a theme but also fill it with items you may not know about. I love finding small businesses that I can support. One of my favorite parts about the boxes is that while you are supporting my shop when you buy the box, you are also supporting several other businesses!

Cafe Warshafsky is a business that I was considering for a future box. I hadn’t purchased from them yet because I wanted to make sure the timeline is right and the product can be consumed asap at it’s freshest! The box I wanted to use them for isn’t happening for a while so I decided to order some for myself to enjoy during our time stuck inside.

Cafe Warshafsky bakes delicious shortbread in a variety of flavors, they also seemed to have recently added caramels to their offerings! They are currently offering free shipping on two or more items so I decided to get myself the sampler tin and I got my mom a box of the matcha shortbreads. She loves matcha everything!

TEA + SHORTBREAD = AMAZING

So first off their packaging is adorable! I also highly suggest their tin because you get to try several flavors and it comes in a convenient tin for storage to take out when you’re having tea! They were also kind enough to include a sample of their strawberry shortcake shortbread and a rose caramel!

So the tin I got comes with 4 different flavors and 3 packs of two shortbreads so 24 total! Of course my main focus was the tea flavored shortbread but it just so happens that I LOVE rose water and coconut so this box was made for me!

So taste test wise, they were all delicious! I like that they are sweet but not overly sweet. I actually enjoyed these with a session of pu’er and it the two went really well together!

If I had to pick a favorite it would actually be the lavender coconut! This one has such a unique flavor !

Btw, these are the petite shortbreads. If you get the regular sized ones they are a 2in while the larger ones like I got for my mom are 3 inches. I really do like these mini ones and two of them were plenty!

From the time these were ordered, they arrived super quickly and not broken! The one that is shown broken is actually my fault :) They were all sealed and stay fresh up to a month!

If you are in need of a treat for your tea or just in general check out Cafe Warshafsky!