tea and whirled peas

One thing I like to do is imagine a topic as far from tea as possible and write a blogpost about that. This strategy serves two purposes.

First of all, it means that I never run out of topics. Ever. I've written about football here, and sex, and religion and and and...

The other thing is that because I have a relatively hard time paying attention, this method of choosing things to write about plays to my strengths.

In most of life's endeavours, this inability to concentrate is a problem. In writing, it can be a problem, or one can actually make it an advantage.

For example, if you like a columnist, you go to his/her column regularly and if you miss a week, you go back and look at the archives. If I really love a writer, I go every time I know there'll be something new. I find Cary Tennis at http://Salon.com to be intriguing in almost every way. So I read him almost every time he leaves something online. Was devastated when he had surgery relatively recently and I had to find someone else to read religiously.

Or blog. That's roughly when I started seriously considering this teablog lark. And many things he said pushed me to finally stop talking about doing something unique. I used to imagine the songs I'd one day write. Or the short stories. Or certainly one day a novel. Even if, Ignatius J. Reilly-style, my mother had to hand the manuscript over to the publisher.

Here's what I love about his forum:

I can talk about literature. To my heart's content even. Middlemarch one week and Rilke the next. Music is never off-limits. Neither is politics.

Come to think of it, because it's mine...I can pretty much say anything.

So what am I going to do with that platform today?

I'm going to make a proclamation. Are you ready for it?

Everyone reads Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, and assumes that'd only work for the third world. My contention is: we in the West should be practicing this now. Right now.

Allow me to paraphrase:

We drink a cup of tea, and we're still strangers. As a result of drinking the second cup, we're now friends. By the third cup, we're family.

Sounds like something out of Hair, right? Or now you think I'm some Abbie Hoffman throwback. I assure you I'm not. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky theory.

Think of someone you don't get along with, but you must. Your in-laws. Your co-worker who smells like feet. The neighbour you've never liked. Many people you can just ignore. Easily solved, right?

But now imagine your kid wants to marry their kid. Or your spouse really digs their spouse at the company office party, and they want to hang out. Go out to eat. See a movie together. What'll you do now? If you follow the advice of ol' lahikmajoe, you'll share three cups of tea. Can't hurt, can it?

Cutting the cheese (with #tea)

Most people would ask, 'What sort of wine goes with this cheese?' But I'm not going to do that. Instead: What kind of tea? With cheese? Well sure. Why not? You drink your cheese and nibble at your wine. While you're doing that, I'll be having a nice cup of tea, thank you very much.

And while I sip my dark, steaming, brewed deliciousness, I'll be having a little cheese. Cheese glorious cheese.

Was at a cheese fest in Bad Tölz in the mountains (or in the foothills at least) yesterday and tried more varieties of cheese that I could shake a stick at. Must've tried a few dozen kinds, but I'll only bore you with the ones I brought home with me.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that there's no way I could brew all the tea I'm describing as I write this. Well, I take that back. I suppose I could do that, but I'm not going to. I'm drinking a Darjeeling Gielle at the moment. It's a light first flush. Now on o the main event:

First is a bleu cheese from Bavaria. I decided it was strong enough that I needed a mild tea. So I drank Ceylon Adawatte with it. Perfect combination. If I may say so myself.

Then I wanted to pair a cheese with some Darjeeling Singbulli, so I chose Austrian Bergkäse. The Floral notes in the tea seem to somehow fit with the wildflowers I think of when I imagine the cows grazing in high mountain fields. Mmmm...lecker.

After that, I had an unbelievably good French cheese from the Haute-Savoie region on the Italian/Swiss/French border. The cheese was called Reblochon AOC fermier and also made from raw milk. This cheese needed something distinctive. Since I can think of no nicer Oolong, I decided to eat this cheese with Jun Chiyabari Oolong.

I must mention that there was a mustard stand at the cheese fest (Senfmüller Guido Breuer). If you've followed me for any length of time at twitter, you know I have an unhealthy obsession with mustard. Sent an inappropriate amount of time when I should've been tasting cheese trying this and that mustard. Was truly the high point of the afternoon. As good as the cheese and wine are, I'd give nearly anything for a mustard festival.

Back to France, but this time to the north coast to a ville called Lessay. Just looked it up on Google Maps and it's on the coast near Jersey. Old Jersey. The cheese-makers are called Fromagerie Reo (reo@wanadoo.fr) and they make one of the best raw-milk Camemberts that I've ever tasted. This cheese calls for an exquisite cheese. That's why I'll eat it with a Japanese Sencha I adore called Fudji. It's much stronger than other Senchas I've written about. If you ever happen across Japan Sench Fudji, try it. You'll be glad you did.

I've had so much cheese in the last few days, I think I might burst. Maybe that's partly why I instinctively reached for the tea. Without some liquid to mix with the tea, I might've gotten some cheese lodged in my throat.

If you die of cheese lahikmajoe, there'll be no more tea.

What's lahikmajoe drinking?

Today I'm drinking a Ceylon with peaches and roses. Sounds odd, eh? I know.

It is. Odd, I mean.

For me. In general. Roses and tea? Really? Do they go together? Sure. Why not?

If I find a shop that mixes two things...tea and something else, I'm going to write about it here. I'll tell you why. I'm certain you're waiting with baited breath, huh?

Several weeks ago, I wrote about a shop in Stuttgart that sold both tea and yarn. Knitting and tea drinking. Loved it. Not because I like knitting necessarily. I just like inventive mixtures of shops.

Maybe I enjoyed such fusions before, but the first time I remember being so excited about two sorts of shops smushed together was when I was in school. I went to the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. Long time ago. Really good music school, but it seems like a lifetime since I was even in Cincinnati, much less in school.

In Clifton was a laundromat that was also a bar. The name was nearly as inventive as the idea to mix the two types of establishment: Sudsy Malone's.

Today, I was in a little city in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps called Bad Tölz. Was there for another reason, that I plan on writing about tomorrow, but I happened upon a shop that sold roses. Fresh roses, dried roses, rose soap, rose perfume...everything roses. Including tea with rose petals. Sounded dreadful to me at first, but then the woman in the shop let me smell the Ceylon in one of the cannisters.

Was surprisingly good. To smell at least. So I got 100g, and brought it home to Munich. Brewed it up a few minutes ago, and it's delicious. Don't be misled. I won't be drinking this daily. But periodically, I think I'll pull out the peach/rose flavoured Ceylon. Maybe when all of my warm friends are here. You know how warm they can be.

(in German warm is a euphemism for gay. This joke will only be funny to some of you who understand German. Not many, but some of you)

hundredth post (woo hoo!)

Have been at this for nearly half a year now, and am amazed at how much has happened thus far.

Considering my nightmare scenarios about blogging, I'm pleasantly surprised at how far from reality my fears were. The biggest concern was that I'd write what interested me and others would find it boring. I was also worried about running out of things to write about. If you read this blog regularly, you might think to yourself; 'Hey lahikmajoe, you ran out of interesting things to write about the third week.' Ha!

You might be right there.

But I'm still having a blast. Someone told me a few months ago that some of the best blogs have daily content. If you write something everyday, then people are more likely to come look everyday for what you've got to offer. So for a while now, I've been writing everyday. For better or worse.

I've focused on black teas and India/Sri Lanka because I know more about them, but haven't shied away from talking about green tea. Have been obsessed with Japanese culture/people since I was a teen, and I grow increasingly more interested in China. If I had to predict the future, I'd say I'll continue to specialise in Indian teas (black, Oolong, green and white) but that I'll learn as much as I can about Japanese and Chinese teas as I go along. there are decent Indonesian and African teas that no-one seems to notice. Not no-one, but few of us.

If you're reading regularly, thanks for doing so. If you're new here, it used to be better. If you think it's better now than it used to be, you're being kind. But you're possibly mistaken. Writing everyday has given me an opportunity to find a bit of a voice. Although this blog is ostensibly about tea, that's really only the jumping off point in my opinion. Don't want to delve into too much of a *meta* conversation, but my favourite writers aren't ever talking about what it appears. At least not exclusively.

Melville was writing about whaling, but that book isn't really about the whale. I love tea and everything associated with tea drinking, but this is about something much bigger. Most bloggers would have two separate blogs for what I try to do here. If I want to write about another one of my passions: music, film, politics, media, food (cheese, slow food, chocolate), or various other things, I should consider having a miscellaneous blog for all of that other stuff.

But I have another opinion about that. I write all of that stuff on my teablog. All of it. And people seem to appreciate it. I wouldn't be writing my hundredth post if I wasn't getting such positive feedback. Might still be writing for the hell of it, but certainly not so regularly or so passionately. Thanks for your support. You make this a place I like to visit.

Tea torture

‘In England, health claims and warnings, often fanciful, were touted almost as soon as the first cup of coffee was served…In Advice Against Plague, published in 1665, Gideon Harvey, an English physician and medical writer, counselled, “Coffee is recommended against the contagion,” that is, against the bubonic plague that was then in the process of killing a quarter of London’s population. However, there were two sides to this debate: A translation of an Arabian medical text admonished English readers that coffee “causeth vertiginous headache, and maketh lean much, occasional waking…and sometimes breeds melancholy.”

The health claims for tea are even older. The Chinese scholar Kuo P’o, in about A.D. 350, in annotating a Chinese dictionary, describes preparing a medicinal drink by boiling raw, green tea leaves in kettles. Because boiling kills bacteria, the putative health benefits and claims for longevity may have had some foundation. In England, during the years of Cromwell’s Protectorate, the importation of tea was made acceptable only by its sale as a medicinal drink. A typical advertisement in a London newspaper at the time claimed, “That Excellent and by all Physitians approved China drink, called by the Chinese Tcha, by other nations Tay alias Tea.”’

-from The World of Caffeine (p.xiii)

Yesterday, I wrote about the preventative health benefits of tea drinking. I’ve looked at this topic before, but nearly every time I read about it, the scientists say that it looks as if there’s a connection between better health and moderate (even excessive) caffeine intake, but that they can’t say exactly which chemical compounds make it so. For me this is of no real consequence. I understand why they want to narrow it down to the specific compound. Then you could make a drug with the same effects. But there are allegedly so many chemical properties of caffeine that it’s difficult to isolate any one of them. At least that’s what I’ve read again and again.

Later in the text it states that when they did studies about caffeine’s positive effects, the subjects had to be told they were receiving caffeine for the results to be effective. This would indicate that a placebo might be just as good. Just tell someone the drink they’re enjoying is loaded with delicious, caffeinated healthiness and that makes it true? They feel better? This I have a hard time believing, but it seems at least plausible.

I have noticed that the careful preparation and the little habits I have before I can actually start drinking the stuff seem to be nearly as calming as the actual tea-drinking. That would seem to support the hypothesis. I’m not so sure one can separate the two things: the anticipation and the ingestion. As soon as I write that I realise, ‘Yes of course you could separate the two. Make some tea and don’t drink it.’

Sounds like torture doesn’t it?

Drink your vegetables

There are certain diseases and afflictions that I just have no connection to. I know a woman who's very active in Aphasia awareness and therapy and because I have no connection to it, I have no clue what Aphasia is. None. But most of us have some connection to Cancer. Some form or another. I'm constantly amazed at the general knowledge that the common person has about which Cancers are most fatal and what may or may not cause it.

A close friend of mine was diagnosed with not one but two forms of the really horrid varieties of Cancer. Won't go into any specifics about him here, except to say that this has completely changed the way he approaches nutrition. He's taking advantage of all the advantages Western medicine has to offer, but before he did any of that, he became quite an educated layman about what foods are and aren't safe.

When this blog was just getting off the ground and I wrote quite a lot about drinking tea with or without milk, he had some interesting points to make about the health benefits of avoiding cow's milk. Since then, he's kept me very well informed about different articles extolling the health benefits of green tea. If you're already into tea, this'll come as no surprise. Nevertheless, I do want to call attention to this.

Here's a page from the National Cancer Institute that says the results of tests are inconclusive:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/prevention/tea

But notice the green tea seemed to show results with stomach or throat Cancer, while researchers weren't able to prove black tea had any direct link to preventing the same Cancers.

And the link he sent me was promising because it showed a direct link between certain specific fruits and vegetables and their ability to help prevent specific forms of Cancer. You can see it for yourself here:

http://www.anticancerbook.com/post/Cancer-Prevention-Some-Fruits-and-Vegetables-Bring-Specific-Protection.html

I love it that this delicious, soothing beverage is also aiding my body in warding off toxins, and even though I write much more about black teas, I drink more than my fair share of green and Oolong. There may be no scientific correlation between how well I feel and the obscene amounts of tea I drink, but it certainly doesn't seem to be hurting.

Aside from having to get up in the night to empty my bladder that is. That's the one downside to all of this tea.

Wasting tea

from NYTimes 18 August 1900:

Wordsworth and His Tea

From threads from the Life of John Mills By His Wife.

We walked from Ambleside to Rydal. As we entered the gate, a lady was standing at the door, who, seeing us waited to give us welcome. She not only congratulated me, but taking my hand, gave me a kiss. I think she saw how nervous and excited I was. In the sitting room sat Mr. Wordsworth, who gave us a quiet but kindly greeting ---After we had sat a few minutes, Wordsworth rose and said to Mr. Mills, ‘Will you come into the library a while?---Mrs. Wordsworth and I then sat chatting in the sitting room. ---At five o’clock the gentlemen joined us at tea. Of that hour I can only recall two things. One that the talk between Wordsworth and my husband turned on Klopstock’s ‘Messiah,’ the other the quiet watchfulness of Mrs. Wordsworth. When her husband got excited, or went off into a sort of monologue, forgetting all about the tea, she quietly and unobserved took the cup and poured away its contents, refilling it with fresh, hot tea, and then saying, ‘William, had you not better drink your tea before it gets cold?’ He smiled and obeyed, but with no notion that it was other than the first cup poured out.


You might think this is a sweet anecdote about how doting this turn-of-the-century lady was on her husband. Not me. What a horrible waste of tea. All because he’s so absentmindedly holding ridiculous speeches while the rest of us are trying to enjoy our tea. Can you imagine a more rude teatime guest? I can’t.

Lucky for old Bill Wordsworth, I like the coot’s poetry. Really do. But his tea drinking clearly left a lot to be desired. Who holds speeches while drinking tea anyway? He sounds like he was a miserable bore. Really fun guy to no longer invite over for tea.

Now, the whole nature of a blog is that I’m holding forth a bit of a soliloquy here. I hope there’ll be a bit of dialogue. And I get more than some blogs, I assure you. But I never know what people most enjoy reading here. And the things that generate the most comments are rarely what I’d predict.

I’ll leave you with one of the old codger’s better pieces. If you’ve bothered to stick around, I’m sure you’ll dig this one. Check it out Daddyo…

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glorydo we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy
But he
Beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

-from ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ (1807)