Tea InfusiastRosebud tea can be delightful. Let’s compare the flavor, mouthfeel, and more of yellow vs. pink rosebuds steeped as herbal tea.
I have been drinking pink rose and pink rosebud tea for some time. Yellow rosebuds, by contrast, are relatively new to me. Realizing I had two different colored rosebud herbal teas, both grown in Iran, made me curious to compare them. The results surprised me!
Even though it’s often portrayed as a competition–tea bags vs. loose leaf—there are advantages of each approach to brewing tea. Let’s explore this issue!
Most Americans (and Brits!) prepare tea using tea bags (or tea sachets), not loose leaf tea. It was definitely in this category growing up.
Their flavor profiles, beauty, and more persuaded me to add persimmon leaf and magnolia blossom herbal teas into my tisane rotation at home.
I am a long time devotee of “real tea” (from the Camellia Sinensis plant) and relatively late to discovering herbal teas that I enjoy drinking regularly. No one was more surprised than I was when I wrote my first Herbal Tea Recommendations post a few months ago! Since then, I’ve found two new tisanes to add to my recommendations.
Note: always research any potential health risks associated with herbal teas before you try them.
This post shares how a long-term, mindful tea practice might help with equanimity in tough times.
For some weeks, I’ve felt like the volume has been turned up whenever I feel sadness or frustration. I still feel other emotions–even good ones–but they don’t feel amplified like the sad ones recently. Given my emotional state, my reaction in the face of a recent disappointing outdoor tea session was hard to explain. But, let me try. I think it speaks to the grounding magic and support of having a regular tea practice.
This is a story of how I grew up paying attention to the mouthfeel of tea, lost it, and am getting it back. This post also explains mouthfeel.
Until I went to college, probably 99% of the tea I drank was Lipton black tea with milk. Back then, I could tell by the color of the tea or the way it felt in my mouth whether it had the ratio of milk to water that I liked. I was always a fan of thicker mouthfeel for tea with milk (as long as the tea was strong enough).
To this day, if I am making a tea latte, my love of texture usually nudges me to take the time to froth milk. I just love that frothy, thick mouthfeel.
Last weekend, I led my first in-person tea event!
I’ve offered dozens of online events over the past few years–many solo, some collaborations. These online offerings have included my Virtual Tea Table series, Build Your Own Rest Practice workshop, Story of a Teacup, and so on.
Last weekend, I was very excited to finally lead an in-person tea event. I ran a workshop, “Tea as a Gateway to Mindfulness.”
This post shares some words to live by for a Happy International Women’s Day 2024.
International Women’s Day is celebrated annually on March 8th.
It’s a day to uplift what women have accomplished and what we do, while also raising awareness about oppression and barriers that impede women’s progress. (You can read more about the day and its history here.)
To honor a Happy International Women’s Day 2024, here are a few words to inspire us.
Welcome to the March 2024 edition of Tea Infusiast News–a newsletter for tea lovers to connect with and through tea. This is the 15th edition of the newsletter.
Make it easy to have restorative and mindful tea sessions this spring: sign up for my online Spring Rest Kit for Tea Lovers!
Registration is open now.
It seems like every month, tea shares another lesson about rest with me!
As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I’ve had to cut back my tea consumption. These days, I’m usually only drinking tea in the morning. The process of reducing my tea intake has made me confront one way I used tea that was denying me the fuller rest I need.
Before I share this insight, I would like to emphasize that I regularly incorporate short, mindful tea breaks into my days. They feel gentle, affirming, and restorative. A day with these tea-and-rest pauses is so much better than a day without them. I still interact with tea this way almost every morning. I used to integrate afternoon tea pauses into my day, too.
My experiences with tea have shown its generosity as a gateway to rest and mindfulness. That’s one reason why, for example, I’ve offered tea and rest experiences. Registration, in fact, is open for my online Spring Rest Kit for Tea Lovers. (It’s my second online Rest Kit. Alas, I accidentally overwrote the post about the first rest kit.) But, I do want to share some limitations, in my opinion, of *only* using tea as a rest practice.