So doing the weekly tea blog definitely burnt me out. That's probably why you haven't seen us posting a lot. I won't bore you on all the details because that's not what we're here for! We're here to talk about tea. Today we jumped back in to the deep end with a completely out of season tea that, in my opinion, makes for an excellent comfort tea. Witch's Brew is a roobois base tea with heavy cocoa flavour. This tea in particular uses cocoa beans and cocoa husks. Normally I stay far, far away from cocoa teas because they just don't do it for me -- and neither do roobois teas. Yet, somehow, the two marry vary well together in this particular blend. This tea also features sweet blackberry leaves, elderberry flower, safflower petals, adorable witch hat shaped orange and black sprinkles and a mix of natural and artificial flavours. If you're like me and sometimes just have a bad day, this tea is a pretty no hassle tea to make. You can throw it in to a strainer, let the kettle boil, and not worry too much about the temperature of the tea. Rooibos can be treated in a very similar manner to herbal infusions, so you can steep it for as long as you want without fear of burning. I typically recommend 4-5 minutes for rooibos. For this one due to the sweetness inherently present in the tea I chose 4 minutes as I don't have a heavy sweet tooth. If you want to be specific with this blend, the recommended water temperature is about 200 degrees Fahrenheit or 95 degrees Celsius. Whether you want a decadent pick-me-up after a long day at the office, if you're feeling the witchy vibes, or simply wanting a hot and yummy drink on a crisp cool night, this is a tea that you can still enjoy out of season. If you're interested in trying this tea, you can check it out on the DAVIDsTEA website, but it won't be available again until the fall. --- A Pocketful of Crows & Witch’s Brew “The year it turns, and turns, and turns.” So begins the lyrical and beguiling A Pocketful of Crows by Joanne M. Harris. This felt like the appropriate book to resume our blog. It has been some time since our last pairing, but with our new witchy teapot (from TheInkedShop.com) and Summer Solstice upon us as I write these words, it felt right to continue. Sing a song of starlight A pocket full of crows. See the bonny brown girl In her borrowed clothes-- Immediately, the bold design and strong voice of this little book arrested me. It begged to be read aloud. So, over the course of a few nights, I read it out to Ember and we both agreed it was spellbinding. It’s full of primal magic, nature worship, misplaced trust, and thwarted love. It’s about sacrificing yourself wholly for another—and needing to cast off stifling comforts to ensure your own wellbeing. It’s about feminine power, and smashing the patriarchy, and returning to the world. In short, it is timeless. Harris presents the story through the turning of a calendar’s wheel, part fable and part fairy tale. Yet, the issues woven through her poetry and verse and prose feel just as relevant now. We, collectively, have embraced a modern life and forgotten our wild roots. A Pocketful of Crows would throw us, body and soul, back into the power we’ve forgotten we possess. Interspersed with Cornish folktales, nursery rhymes, and folk magic, we follow our nameless Queen of the May (for names are only for tame folk) as she meets a lordling from the local hamlet, falls in love, and learns about the boundaries between what is tame and what is wild. A Pocketful of Crows repeatedly stole my breath and made me look deeper: how have I given away pieces of myself? How can I re-anchor? How can I give back? It felt only right to pair with it the Witch’s Brew Tea by DAVIDsTEA. This technically is a holiday exclusive that came in a glow-in-the-dark tin covered in ghosts. Its woodsy, herbaceous, but invigorating flavours remind me of running through long grasses on a sunny day, birds winging above, the earth warm under my feet. Both book and tea alike evoke the same lost sense of freedom—not precisely childlike, but a feeling of being unencumbered. Especially after months of working from home, I have felt a deep need to re-evaluate my priorities and meaningfully reconnect. Just like our Queen of the May understands, this richness and bounty of the natural world is something to be cherished and reveled in. And we are part of it. It is also something to be cultivated and nourished so that when the spring comes around again, we can all be healthy and free together. Embrace your inner witch. Sip some brew. And turn the page. . .
0 Comments
It has been a while since our last blog post, so thank you for sticking with us! The delay was in part due to having to locate the book we wanted to do (we thought we had a copy! We didn’t, and this was a review we had planned since before the blog came to life), but also because life got a little chaotic. But we’re here! For now, we are switching to bi-monthly instead of posting four times a week. We already have our next blog post planned, and moving forward I’ll try to post more tea and bookish things to our instagram to fill the void while you wait for our reviews! But, back to what matters – tea! And books, of course! This week we decided to feature Silk Road’s Gunpowder. The great thing about Silk Road is that it’s local to Victoria, British Columbia, and the book White Jade Tiger takes place practically next door to the teashop! Astra will touch on this a little later in her review! This particular review will be short, because it’s a fairly classic green tea. The tea itself is exceptional, and if you are a tea lover like us then you will appreciate the nuances it has to offer. If you are less of a tea enthusiast, then you might think – hey, what’s so special? It’s just a green tea! If you think that then you are wrong. A Chinese green tea, the smokiness that Gunpowder offers is a trait I often look for in my green teas. I find it very relaxing, and being a summer child with a knack for being nostalgic, anything that reminds me of my childhood summers is a quick way to my heart. Gunpowder takes me back to the nights we used to spend around the campfire. While lapsang tastes like a campfire, Gunpowder tastes more like it has been infused with smoke while still retaining all the wonderful aspects of a high quality green tea. At first when I brewed this tea I thought that I had oversteeped it! I had made a fairly small pot this time, so I was worried I had been off in my ratios. I hesitantly sipped the tea to see if it was usable, and – mmmmmn! It was absolutely the perfect brew! Normally when steeping a green tea if the tea turns a darker yellow-green or almost amber colour (like this tea did) it means it is horrendously oversteeped. As I have mentioned many times before, there are always exceptions. Gunpowder is one of those exceptions. For this tea I recommend steeping for about a minute, or a minute and twenty seconds if you like to push your luck. This tea is a great transitional tea, perfect for the cooler spring nights right before summer bursts on the scene. As always, I recommend 90 degree water for your greens! Overall, this is a wonderful tea for anyone who likes simple, traditional, but flavourful teas! I don't recommend this tea if you have caffeine sensitives, however. If you haven't tried this tea yet, or ever been to Silk Road, you can check it out here! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This week, we pair Silk Road's Gunpowder Green Tea with Julie Lawson's White Jade Tiger for a bit of hometown nostalgia. There are not a great many books set in the City of Victoria, but this one specifically deals with locales that I grew up in: Sooke, Douglas Street (and the bus rides into downtown), and Fisgard Street with "Canada's Oldest Chinatown". This book was one of my required readings in grade 4, and I hadn't reread it since then...until now. While a simple middle-grade book, the references to the "never-ending store" in Chinatown, the views of the Parliament Buildings all lit up at night, and even the historical description of the Inner Harbour which perfectly match the extant photos of the area in those days give credence to this historical fantasy. Lawson's details bring the vistas to life, and for those familiar with the area: you'll be nodding along. This sets the stage for an equally believable presentation of 1880s Victoria and mainland British Columbia, with gold-panning claims, railway worker camps, frontiers towns, and steam ferries. We follow Jasmine, a young girl from Sooke, as she becomes part of a 2000 year old Chinese legacy thanks to the ghost of Bright Jade and her missing white jade tiger pendant. In the story, Jasmine's aunt asks her to pick up some Gunpowder Tea from Chinatown—matching perfectly with this week's selection. Silk Road is a veritable tea institution in Victoria, located on Government at Fisgard. Inspired by the Chinese Silk Road tea merchants, and set in a heritage building that's part of Chinatown, their Gunpowder Tea is a rich and heady green tea with a smoky flavour that blends perfectly with the smoky transitions for Jasmine as she walks back in time through Fan Tan Alley, only a few doors down from Silk Road Tea Shop. As Jasmine finds herself sliding through time, present day collides with 1880s Victoria. Chinese immigrants were flooding into British Columbia to work on the CPR railway. Jasmine navigates very different social expectations by dressing up in a classic set of "coolie" clothes (a straw wide-brimmed hat, cotton jacket with frog clasps, cotton shoes, and loose pants), and soon discovers wearing it helps her to both blend in and understand Cantonese. While now considered a pejorative, Lawson uses the term throughout the book in its accepted Southeast Asian reference to mean a Chinese labourer, especially on the railway. The MG narrative focuses on issues of holding tightly to one's individuality while still honouring one's heritage, though Lawson has a bad habit of sliding around in her POV. As a writer, this is something I've fought hard to overcome, so perhaps I'm overly sensitive to it. Aside from Jasmine, Lawson also uses Keung's POV—another Chinese coolie searching for his father along the rail line—as well as from the perspective of Bright Jade, the ghost connecting these two young people across the centuries. There is a soft-touch romance between Keung and Jasmine, but perhaps due to Jasmine's age (not to mention space-time paradoxes), this romance is not developed. Problematic issues from the time, like racism, exploitation, and opium addiction (Historical fact: Fan Tan Alley led to opium dens in the 1880s!), are clumsily addressed despite good intentions. The real merit of this work is its romanticism and appreciation for many elements of Chinese tradition. White Jade Tiger espouses respect for the sacrifices of our ancestors, embracing progress and change if done conscientiously, and willingness to work hard to keep fractured families from falling apart. The characters, while a tad melodramatic in the vein of MG fiction, are nevertheless charming and plucky. The scenes are lush and the prose fast-paced. All-in-all, White Jade Tiger is an easy and heartwarming read that finishes on a wistful note. So come explore Victoria's heritage with us. Brew yourself some Gunpowder Green Tea, talk a walk down Fisgard's Chinatown (or Google Map street view, if you live farther afield), and journey with Jasmine as she tries to lift the curse of Bright Jade by restoring the white jade tiger to its rightful resting place. Ember's Tea Review: Davids Tea is perfect for Easter! With the big meals ahead for this weekend, this particular green tea would serve as the perfect digestive aid. Made with lemongrass, ginger, matcha, apple, licorice root, orange peel, blackberry leaves, and natural lemon flavours, this tea has a fantastically bright and refreshing flavour. When I went down to Davids Tea to purchase this tea for tonight's review, I was disappointed to hear they were no longer selling it loose. This was a tea we had known we were going to do for weeks, and had already picked out the date and book to pair with the Easter weekend. We couldn't go back now! Originally my plan had been for 50gs of the tea, just enough to get us our sample. Instead I ended up spending 32$CAD on 140gs of tea. It doesn't sound like much more than the 50gs, but when everything is done by weight it really adds up. While this tea is especially delicious (and my roommate was pleased I brought so much home) I was sad to hear that it was no longer available loose. It is, thank goodness, available in smaller increments online! As is expected with Davids Tea drinks, the smell is always way more fragrant. When I pulled the leaves out of the bag, it look like I was staring at the grass in the image we used for this week's blog post. It was the exact same shade too! Using the usual 85-90° water for my greens, I did find that this tea had to steep a little longer then usual. Sometimes this can happen when you mix in fruits with your tea. With matcha being so prevalent in this tea, I would recommend making sure to really watch your water temperature. Burned matcha is a horrible experience no one should ever live through. After steeping, I noticed that a lot of the green powder from the finely ground tea leaves had strained through in to the bottom of our cups, and we could not see the orange hues of the orange peels. The ginger and citrus aromas that had drawn us in when we originally purchased this tea were not nearly as strong. As you may remember from an earlier blog post, I mentioned that teas that lose a lot of their scent after steeping tend to be a weaker flavour. This was also part of the reason why I chose to steep this tea for three minutes instead of my usual 1-2 minutes. Once I poured our cups we were left with a wonderful light green colour. The flavours are not as punchy when the tea is still fresh from the pot. I recommend letting this tea sit a bit, or even cool all the way. While this tea did have some good flavours hot, I found that the flavour really bloomed once it had a chance to cool ( and I am still drinking from the same pot I steeped around noon this afternoon ). When hot this tea has a lighter flavour profile with a hint of ginger and lemongrass. However, when this tea cools all the flavours really pop. You can taste the citrus,the ginger, the lemongrass, and the matcha all swirling together to create a perfect balance. This tea is great as a pallet cleanser, or good after a heavy meal to help settle the stomach. You can thank the ginger and lemongrass soothing your indigestion, as the two are known for aiding the digestive tract. Zestfully Green also is fairly caffeinated due to the presence of matcha, so please keep that in mind if you are sensitive to caffeine and the affect it can have on the body, or if you are wanting to avoid any restlessness before bedtime. All things considered, this is one of those teas that I will be trying to keep as a staple in our tea hutch, and will likely be drinking all spring and summer long. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Astra's Book Review: This Easter long weekend, what could be more fitting than bunnies?? Actually, Watership Down by Richard Adams was one of the first books we picked to feature on this blog, and we were simply waiting to line it up with Spring and the perfect tea: Zestfully Green. The lush green quality (both visually and flavour-wise) of this tea seemed like the kind of tea the rabbit characters in Adams' story would drink, if rabbits were to drink tea. Watership Down is a modern classic (originally published in 1972), and for good reason. Adams proves that a rich world setting can be woven out of even the most mundane topics. His viewpoint--even when speaking directly to his human readers--is so perfectly anchored in the sensibilities, desires, and dangers of a rabbit's life that the realism created is complete. We can believe that this is the secret life of all the meadow-dwelling animals, unfolding beneath our noses. Even his beautifully pastoral and in-depth description of the bucolic settings make sense in his prose; these details mean the difference between life and death for his heroes. A hero's epic, the tale begins with Hazel and Fiver, a pair of low-ranking rabbits in a warren grown over-populated yet sedentary. Fiver possesses a sort of prophetic sight (a rare but known quality some rabbits possess), and sees looming disaster. Yet, the warren's leader dismisses the warnings of this tiny rabbit, much like the Greeks ignored Cassandra. Only Hazel truly believes in Fiver's premonition, but using the growing unrest in the lower ranks of the rabbits, Hazel manages to gather those itching for a chance to escape the warren and make a new start. One of these defectors is Bigwig, an erstwhile enforcer of their commune. A rabbit as big as he is bullheaded, Bigwig is an impressive figure that the other runaways are willing to follow. So with Hazel, or perhaps Bigwig, leading the expedition, the defectors throw caution to the winds and set off on a haphazard journey to a distant "safe place" Fiver has dreamed of, praying that it truly exists and that they will all survive long enough in open country to see it. What unfolds is an adventure in acts, with each new place the rabbits discover representing different societal structures/systems of government. The dangers of each, from fascist dictatorships to nihilistic communes, forces our heroes to learn how to work together in order to survive. They make new (and often unexpected) allies, and face terrible losses. All through it, Adams beautifully conveys the dangers from the scope of a field-dwelling creature. Cats become terrifying adversaries, wide-open fields enough to make a rabbit go tharn, and man-made "black rivers" a deadly thing to cross. For those interested in getting into the richly built worlds of fantasy, but to whom the full alien quality of such worldbuilding is too much to swallow, Watership Down may be the perfect place to start. Adams' lapine dialect and sparse but enlightening footnotes make the story feel otherworldly, as if this were a text translated from a distant culture. The story's strongest merit lies in reminding us that humans are not the sole species on this planet. After facing Hazel and Fiver's trials in these pages, we cannot help but pay greater attention to the world around us--both natural and man-made. So sip your Zestfully Green, and really smell its bouquet. Watch how the sun dapples the leaves on the trees outside. Feel the breeze stir your hair. Watch the birds soaring up above and twitch your nose. Can you sense danger on the wind? Watership Down can lead you to a place of peace and plenty. |
AuthorsEmber and Astra joined forces to blog about their two deepest passions: books and tea! Here you will find information on various teas, and--alongside each tea--a book that will be perfectly paired and analyzed. The full book reviews (containing spoilers) as well as the source for the tea will be linked to in each blog post! Archives |