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.
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Ember's Tea Review: If I had to pick one tea to describe spring as a flavour, I would most likely pick Strawberry Champagne. There is just something about TeaDesire's Strawberry Champagne that seems all too fitting for this time of year. Perhaps it's the elegant and nuanced flavour of the tea, or the fresh and unmistakably fruity armour the tea has. Made with sencha green tea, carrot pieces, pineapple, strawberries, cornflower petals, and sunflower petals, Strawberry Champagne has a brightness to it that is sure to bring you out of your winter gloom. This is a fairly frequent sample we receive in our monthly Tea Sparrow box program where we get four different teas each month. There is usually a theme involved with the teas they pick, and Strawberry Champagne happened to be one of their March teas this year ( if you really love tea, or are willing to try new things, I highly recommend signing up for their program! ). From the moment I tore the sample bag the tea came in I could smell the succulent strawberry arouma. Anyone who knows me well knows that there are few things I love just as much as I adore tea. Strawberries are one of those things. The scent smelled just like perfectly sun ripened strawberries, with a hint of pineapple. The smell didn't shift too much after steeping it either! If anything, the strawberry flavour really got a foothold. The tea didn't really smell like a green tea at all, despite how pronounced sencha can be. The fascinating thing? It drank more like a green tea then it did a flavoured green tea. Don't get me wrong -- the strawberry flavour was definitely still there. The flavours were just so perfectly balanced that one flavour was not competing over the other, or overly pronounced. We had quite a heavily seasoned meal with our tea (our mistake), so some of the subtleties of this tea were lost. After waiting for my pallet to cleanse (and a bit of water to help), I had another cup. The new pour tasted divine! I would recommend Strawberry Champagne for those simply looking to have a nice, relaxing cup of tea. Strong flavours can easily overwhelm the taste of the tea. If you are going to have any kind of food with Strawberry Champagne, we recommend perhaps something more sugary to help bring out the sweetness of the fruit, like macrons for example. I also prefer this tea hot over cold, and as always with your green teas, using under boiling water and only steep for 1-2 minutes (I personally did a minute and a half)! Those who love the taste of green tea but are bored with what they have might like to mix things up with trying this tea. Those who prefer a strongly flavoured green tea may find this disappointing. Those tea drinkers out there that are looking to move away from overly strong flavoured green teas in to more traditional green teas may find Strawberry Champagne to be the perfect transition. At the end of the day, this is a lovely tea definitely worth taking a chance on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Astra's Book Review: The Scarlet Pimpernel is perhaps the best forgotten gem of Georgian literature. You may recognize the name from the Loony Tunes parody “The Scarlet Pumpernickle”, or may have seen the play, Takarazuka revue, or either of two film adaptations (my favourite is the 1982 version starring Sir Anthony Andrews, Sir Ian McKellan, and the lovely Jane Seymour). But few have read the books, despite there being 14 in the series! I paired The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy—the 6th installment in the Scarlet Pimpernel Adventures series—with Strawberry Champagne from TeaDesire for their shared sweetness, vivacity, and quaintness. “Everything that happened to me was so wonderful that I am ready to accept all your theories of the supernatural powers of the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel.” You don’t need to have read the other books in the series (they are demmed hard to find! as Sir Percy would say). All you need know is this: the setting is the French Revolution, our hero an enigmatic Englishman who is master of disguise, risking life and limb to sneak into France repeatedly, saving the innocent from Mam’zelle la Guillotine while the agents of the revolution constantly try to trap him. Baroness Emmuska Orczy was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwrite. Her tone harkens back to Regency-style prose, but is so over-the-top that it is almost of a parody of the stuffy style of Jane Austen, flamboyant characters of H.G. Wells, and daring-do of Robert Louis Stevenson. You can practically hear the over-acted way that the characters speak (which is delightfully captured in the 1982 film version) and this is a large portion of the book’s charm. The comedy of near misses, the eternal rivalry between Agent Chauvelin and the Scarlet Pimpernel, and its innocent love stories help to make an otherwise grim setting romantic. The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel is perhaps an easier introduction than one of the books that focuses more heavily on the titular character, as folk who aren’t used to this style of writing may be put off by his foppish drawl and the wanton smattering of French used throughout. In this adventure, our focus is on a small middleclass family besieged by the Committee of the Republic of France. We start following Louise, the wife of a lawyer (Charles-Léon) that has thus far made himself useful and so escaped persecution. Louise is a somewhat limp protagonist who is not galvanized to action until tragedy strikes and she is determined to save her son from persecution. However, being none too useful, she mishandles nearly everything, and were it not for the Scarlet Pimpernel’s assistance, she surely would have perished. Persevere through Louise’s introduction, as it is mostly a foil to introduce us to (and contrast her personality with) our true heroine, Josette. As Louise’s handmaiden and confident, Josette’s pluck and extraordinary beauty have earned her the love of the family’s steadfast though dull clerk, Maurice. Yet it will take a threat on his life for Josette to realize how much she loves him in return. Josette is unsophisticated, but earnest, brave, and unflaggingly hopeful. She undertakes a daring quest to save her mistress and Maurice from death sentences. She becomes an unwitting pawn of Agent Chauvelin’s, mistakenly believing him to be a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. But fear not, her plight attracts the attention of the real Scarlet Pimpernel, as our heroine is pitted in a race against time, subterfuge, and blackmail. The entire thing is as melodramatic and delightful as it sounds. If you are one to read aloud, it lends wonderfully to sharing with a friend or lover…perhaps while also sharing a pot of Strawberry Champagne. Enjoy l’amour et liberté as you are swept up in The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel! Ember's Review: This week our blog post was a little delayed. Due to the Capital City Comic Con shenanigans (and a bit of a vision scare on my part), life certainly had a lot in store for us. However, this isn't a life blog, so I won't bore you with the details of our long, exhausting and equally exciting weekend. I would like to tell you about this amazing tea we got from Tea Sparrow called Lavender Cream! It was all too perfect that our next tea happened to be a cream tea. Recently my roomate's friend asked me if I had ever tried one, and whether I thought they were any good. Of course, I love cream teas. I find them very soothing and comforting after a long day, and they're a perfect companion when you want something "strong but soft". Usually the cream teas tend to be black teas, but I have also seen hibiscus based herbal teas as creams as well. You may be wondering what makes a cream tea a 'cream' tea. Usually--in the case of black teas--it is some combination of lavender and vanilla, which is exactly the case with this lovely tea! Black tea leaves, lavender petals, lavender pieces, lavender extract, and vanilla extract are all that are in this organic tea. I find that cream teas like this Lavender Cream are a good way to ease in to the morning, or to ease out of a hard work day. There is something about them that always soothes you, and even the smell of the dry leaves is enough to send you in to a euphoric daydream. I have not been disappointed with a cream tea yet, and the richness it boasts in its simple yet complex flavour is exactly why we chose it for The Picture of Dorian Gray. From start to finish, there's a smooth sophistication to this tea that we felt was very fitting for Dorian. The first thing I noticed about this tea was that its dry leaf smell had much more vanilla to it then lavender. It is really easy to overdue the lavender, so whenever dealing with a lavender toting tea name, I always get a little leery. It is very easy for lavender to taste like a soap product. I was really impressed once we steeped it how subtle and perfectly balanced the lavender was with the vanilla. The two were like perfect partners, leaving you with a very satisfying and a very round, full mouth flavour. After the steep, the leaves smelled quite a bit more like lavender. I always love seeing how the tea starts and finishes. I find the taste of the tea is usually somewhere between the beginning smell and the finished smell. If you have a good imagination, it's pretty telling! You'll note that some of the tea lacking in the flavour department tend to have all their aromas stripped once steeped. Next time this happens, smell the wet tea leaves. I'll bet you anything that the tea leaves don't smell like much after you've poured hot water over them and let them rest. This tea is perfect as it is, without honey, cream or sugar to round it out. I would recommend this tea to any earl grey fanatics, or to those scared of trying a lavender tea for the first time. You can buy this tea here at Tea Sparrow's shop if you're interested! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Astra's Review: Oscar Wilde wrote plays, short stories, fairy tales, and most famously, his novella: The Picture of Dorian Gray. Sensual, sexual, and depraved, it matches the luscious flavour and enveloping scent of Lavender Cream tea. But to fully appreciate this book, it helps to have an understanding of the era in which it was written. Victorian England was morally uptight. While the British Empire appropriated culture from the many nations they’d invaded, they reframed imports to be ‘acceptable’ by British standards. On the surface Britain clung tightly to a moral high ground, while behind closed doors, mysticism was all the rage, along with the growing popularity of opium dens, the Kama Sutra, and hedonism. Enter Oscar Wilde, the poster boy for hedonism. In an age when sodomy (i.e. any male gay sexual act) was punishable by death, a sub-culture of dandies arose as a fashionable way to parade one’s sexual preferences without the police being able to arrest them. Wilde got away with a lot just by being a witty, gregarious, clever man. (He was so entertaining at parties that he inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to invent a certain eccentric detective with the mental acuity to solve any crime.) Originally published in a serialized format in 1890, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray still caused uproar for its depravity (despite his editor cutting 500 of the more salacious words out). There was so much press around it—along with Oscar’s vehement defence of his book in the papers—that it was swiftly picked up to be published in novel format. This edition included the author’s aphorism defending the right of art for art’s sake, and became a sort of literary manifesto. Wilde’s story about a pair of male friends (Basil Hallward, a painter, and Lord Henry “Harry” Wotton, a hedonist) who both fall in love with the same pubescent boy (Dorian) is one of love, lust, purity, pleasure, and corruption. Oscar Wilde was known for writing characters into his plays that got to speak his observances or thoughts. In Dorian Gray, it could be argued that he presents himself as both Basil and Harry, in a sort of Jekyll and Hyde of his own desires. You probably know the key elements: Dorian’s perfect beauty inspires Basil to create his one artistic masterpiece—a portrait. Dorian, flattered by Basil’s attentions, recognizes his own beauty for the first time in seeing how Basil has portrayed him and becomes obsessed with his own power over women and men. Harry Wotton’s scandalizing conversations during these painting sessions introduces innocent Dorian to the ‘ways of the world’, including drugs, sex, gambling, seduction, and the finest luxuries. Basil tries to prevent his perfect Adonis from being corrupted, and somehow, mystically, his painting takes every marring disfigurement of Dorian’s rapidly degenerated soul instead of the young man himself being tarnished by his actions. There is far more to this story, both in allegory and plot. The slippery slopes are as understandable as they are horrific; the fickleness of a young man drunk on his own invincibility is as realistic as it is heart-breaking. Though full of drama as everything spirals out of control, a modern audience is less likely to be scandalized because Wilde’s themes have become a regular feature in entertainment. So, sip at your luscious Lavender Cream Allow the scents and richness of the tea to wash over you as you turn the page. Give in to the pleasure of Wilde’s luscious writing, and unravel the philosophical questions the story poses. In our current culture of striving for LGBT acceptance, we need Oscar Wilde more than ever. |
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 |