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!

Lotus Lemonade!

I decided to try out a lemonade recipe since every day seems to be getting hotter and it’s harder for me to stand the heat for my outdoor tea sessions!

This recipe isn’t actually “tea” as it uses a lotus flower for the base. I chose this because I worked with The Qi during their launch and have fallen in love with their flowers ! I have been restocking my collection every time I run out because they are such a beautiful and easy brew.

You can get $10 off your first order if you want to try them!

One of their flowers are the blue lotus and I thought this would provide a unique flavor for the lemonade!

I love tart things so I used quite a bit of lemon and I added some of my other favorite ingredients like seltzer and ginger!

I started with two lotus flowers and cold brewed them for about 12 hours but you could go longer if you wanted to! This is the base for the lemonade. I add the brewed lotus flowers last. In my big pitcher I added the juice of two fresh lemons and some ginger infused water.

For the ginger infused water, I cut up about 8-10 slices of ginger and boiled them in about 3 cups of water. I let it boil until the water was fragrant and boiled down a bit.

After adding the lemon and ginger to the pitcher, I added the lotus flower brew. Fill whatever space is left in the pitcher with water, mix them all together and voila!

If you want to add a little sweetener to your drink, you can definitely do that. I liked having the tang of the lemon and slight spice of the ginger.

The other note I have is that even after adding some water, this mixture if quite strong on it’s own. What I did was filled half of my cup with the mixture and then filled the rest with a seltzer water to give it a little bit of fizz!

I left the flowers in the pitcher so that I could garnish my drink with one of them but that is totally up to you!

Gyokuro Onigiri

The desire to make onigiri was a little random. I was looking through my shelves and saw that I had a little bit of sushi rice left. What could I make with this? I started looking things up and came across onigiri, which I‘ve always wanted to make!

Since quarantine, i’ve been cooking and baking things I usually don’t have time for but I honestly haven’t had the will to photograph and write a blog post. I’ve missed sharing on here so I decided to start back up with something easy!

While onigiri isn’t sushi, it does require short grained rice so I decided to use what I had left. I also chose to purchase umeboshi which are japanese pickled plums and bonito flakes. These are items you can probably find easily but if you want to order them online you can find them on amazon. I’ve put two links below, please note that these are affiliate links and if you purchase through them I will receive a small commission.

Umeboshi

Bonito Flakes

Eden Shake

Nori

The way I incorporated tea into this recipe is my favorite way, through the rice! Instead of using water to cook the rice, I brewed gyokuro and cooked the rice in the gyokuro! This is a subtle flavor but it’s there for sure!

I also soaked the bonito flakes in gyokruo as well!

Here’s what I did:

-Prep your ingredients: Brew your gyokuro, check the instructions on your rice and however much water your rice calls for, use that much gyokuro. Mine was 1 1/2 cups rice to 2 cups gyokuro. Use leftover gyokuro to soak some bonito flakes and add soy sauce as well. Take the seeds out of the umeboshi. If you squeeze them, the seeds come out pretty easily. Mix the umeboshi so that the piums break up and eventually form into a paste.

-Cook the rice. Do this based on the directions on your rice. Before assembling, let your rice cool down but I found it easier to create these balls when the rice was still warm. Totally optional but I covered the rice in eden shake for some extra flavor!

-When making these, either use plastic wrap or a cloth or wet your hands to stop the rice sticking to your hands.

-What I did was get a large bunch of rice, flatten it in my hand, place in the ingredients then start covering it with rice and forming balls

-Finally, wrap your rice ball in nori!

- I think these taste best warm but if you do refrigerate, make sure to seal it well so it doesn’t get too cold.

Oh my gosh yall, these were so good! The umeboshi is my favorite. I love how salty and tart they are.

I wanted to share this video for your reference in watching her make the rice balls a lot prettier than I did and she also shares a few other ingredients you can use in your onigiri!

Onigiri Video

Brewing Tea: An Act of Love

Tea is always on my mind but with the build up to mother’s day it was taking up a different space for me. My mom is one of the reason I’m such a tea lover. Both of my parents and most of my family drank tea of course but in Middle School and High School I spent most of my time at my Mom’s house. In this time, she taught me the ways of tea. We bonded over tea.

I always used to joke that a mother’s greatest love is dooning an anar - seeding a pomegranate- for her child. Well, on the flip side, a daughter making her mom tea is the greatest act of love. I’ve shared before that my mom has a fun name for me - kolfateh chaye- which is essentially tea butler. This name and all that it came with it is all love. I would make tea and we would sit together to talk, laugh, watch tv, whatever. This was our time. It was a special bond that only existed between her and I, not with any of my siblings. I didn’t realize how special this was until I moved out. Sure, I still have tea with my mom but it’s not really the same. Every step - turning on the kettle, pouring in the leaves, then the water was a recipe for love and our bond as mother and daughter. The tea always tasted good.

My mom enjoying a matcha cake I made for her, she loves matcha everything

When I started Tea Thoughts and started exploring other types of tea besides the black tea we would drink, my mom took interest too. I often share teas I buy with my mom and she loves when I prepare tea gongfu style. For several birthdays we have gone to a traditional Chinese tea house in DC and she always has so much fun. So for mother’s day I ordered the tea and honey pairing kit from Mansa tea. While we all have been social distancing because we live in different households, we gathered for a short time at my sister’s house (who is also a mother) and I made everyone tea!

The Pairings included aged teas and single origin honey.

1) 2014 Fuding Silver Needle paired with Lavender Honey

2) 2018 Bulang White tea paired with chestnut honey

3) 2014 Ancient tree raw pu’er paired with fir honey

This was perfect because each person had their favorite tea and honey. First up is the silver needle. I will admit I wasn’t as focused on the tea as I was serving. Here are my mom and younger sister who live in the same house and sat together.

For the silver needle, this was my mom’s fav! She raved about it. My sisters didn’t like it as much. Both of my sisters loved the lavender honey though! My mom made the “OMG” face when she sipped the silver needle. I think this is interesting because she likes strong teas and I used a large amount of leaf in my brew so this was definitely a factor.

Next up was the Bulang white tea. This is one of my favs and it was my older sister’s fav too! She is pictured below with her daughter who sat together. Sara, my older sister loved the white tea but didn’t like the honey as much. My mom loved the honey and so did my little sister! So interesting to listen to them all talk about their tastes. My mom was not a fan of the white tea, she said it was too “light”. I encouraged them to take a sip and make sure to use their tongue to taste all the different notes. After doing this my younger sister Sami decided she really loved the white tea as well!

Finally, the raw pu’er. I was so nervous about this tea. I think it’s mostly because it took time for me to enjoy raw pu’er BUT some of the first raw pu’er I enjoyed was from Mansa so I did have a little hope.

HANDS DOWN THE FAVORITE. Every single one of them raved about this tea. I was so excited. My mom gave another “OMG” for this tea. My younger sister said that it reminded her of whitton pond. This is a lake that we visit in the summer time in the white mountains in New Hampshire. I think she meant it reminds her of the place itself but if we’re talking about the water in the lake which I’ve definitely swallowed before….it’s a very pure and light taste but also packs a punch which I think is a great way to describe the raw pu’er. As for the fir honey, this was all my mom she loved it!

I think the best part about this tea tasting is that I did it with several different people who have different tastes and I got to listen to what they thought about each tea. I highly suggest trying this kit with a group of people!

Teaism - A set of Tea Houses in Washington, DC

Hi Tea Friends!
I hope you’re enjoying these posts about different businesses! I’ve been writing these posts in hopes of helping spread the word about their shops. Before all the social distancing mandates, I wanted to head back to Teaism and do a full post with photos but since I can’t, I placed an order and now I will share.

I first discovered Teaism by chance. It was early in my tea journey and I was taking myself on a little DC adventure. I like to go to explore new places on my own every so often. I saw a place called Teaism and I was SO excited, I hadn’t really found any tea places in DC. I was so excited because I could go into their shop and get pu’er AND a delicious meal! There is also a gift shop with all sorts of goodies from teaware to treats to my pins! Teaism is one of the first places that placed a wholesale order for my pins and I am forever grateful for their support.

When I chose what to get, I decided to get the essentials for quarantine. They had this granola which was perfect because we are thinking of creative breakfasts that we don’t normally eat.

I then saw that they had both bai mudan and bai hao and had to get those as well! As you can see below, their teas are beautiful! On the right is the bai hao and on the right is the bai mudan! I tried both and they were very fresh and flavorful!

One thing that I really liked about their packaging is that there is a clasp that comes with the tea bags so you can easily close it and keep it clsoed.

This is a shop that is a staple in DC and closing down their locations was a difficult decision I’m sure. If you’re not in the area, you can’t try their delicious food for pick up but take a look at their teas and other offerings.

https://www.teaism.com/

I wanted to share a little more about their story so here is information from their About Us page:

We founded Teaism in 1996 with the goal of making exquisite loose leaf tea accessible to all. In a time and place where tea was conceived as either a dark powder in a bag with a string – to be sweetened heavily and discarded – or a stuffy afternoon affair with china and linens, we wanted to highlight the beautiful diversity of the camellia sinensis plant itself. We wanted our guests to be enrolled in their choice to drink tea and have a relationship to the leaf.

To accompany the teas, and to highlight the cuisines of countries where teas are grown, we served curries, bento boxes, and other healthy Asian-inspired meals. Teaism’s offerings were prepared in a rustic, fast-casual setting, many years before “fast casual” became a dining term.

Our first location opened in Dupont Circle and is still there today. Teaism now has three unique restaurant-teahouse locations throughout Washington, D.C., as well as a small retail shop and a space in Union Market.

Twenty-plus years later, we’re still active in Teaism’s daily operations. We have evolved and learned so much, while also working to stay true to our values of serving tea and food with integrity. We have an amazing team, and we feel so lucky to be able to interact with our incredibly kind and thoughtful customers every day. Stop by and say hi!

– Linda Neumann and Michelle Brown

Here are links to the items I purchased:

Bai Hao

Bai Mudan

Granola

I will report back with additional information I learn, but if you want to help please support them by sharing about Teaism and place an order if you are able and want some delicious tea!