Just wondering here.

Personally, although I was aware of tea as a pleasant tasting beverage
most of my life, I only really got INTERESTED in tea about 4/5 years
ago. I do qigong (basic qigong, tai chi and zahn zuang) daily, and one
day I picked up a book on this subject written by Ken Cohen. He is
quite a tea enthusiast himself, & had devoted a chapter in his book to
tea and how it fit into a meditative, qigong framework.

I became intrigued by what he had written and soon found that he had
very much understated the case. Never looked back from there. Tea is
an ongoing interest, a hobby, a help to higher mind states, a healthier
body and just plain delicious too. Not to mention that the quest for
good teas take me into oriental markets and interesting shops as
well... I definately look forward to these "tea safaris" although they
result in sometimes mixed sucess<grin>.

I don't know many "real" people in my daily life who are tea fanciers,
although I can't say that I have gone out of my way to find any. I am
content enough to pursue this area as a private thing... much like my
qigong practice. Still, having found this group, I am curious about
what sparked the tea interest in others.

How about you?

Whytebyrd

whytebyrd wrote:
>....
>Still, having found this group, I am curious about
> what sparked the tea interest in others.
>
> How about you?

I became a fan of Douglas Adams when I read "Hitchhiker's Guide to The
Galaxy" a few years ago. I later read an essay he wrote about tea,
where he writes that most americans don't like tea, because they've
never experienced good tea. So, I went out and bought a box of black
tea bags, followed his recommendations in the essay, and made tea, and
have been hooked ever since.

I was thirsty.
I drank tea.
I liked it.

That's the short story.

I was thirsty again.
I drank another tea.
Wasn't as good as the first time.

I tried many other teas.
Some were very good,
Some were very bad.
I wondered why.

Never stopped sampling teas.
Never got a definitive answer.
And... I still get thirsty.

That's the long explanation.

It's that simple.

My father's family was from Russia, and he drank tea all the time. (Not
just every morning, but all day long.) But he didn't much care what
kind of tea it was, as long as it was hot and wet and brownish. (His
tea of choice was Swee-Touch-Nee, with lemon.) I recognized it as an
option, but not a favorite.

In college, I spent a summer in the UK, and discovered English tea. It
was nice, but way too much trouble to make a regular habit, when coffee
was easily available.

I got up to two or three pots of coffee a day. I stopped sleeping.
Eventually I made the connection, and on another trip to England stopped
at Harrod's and got some tea. Then I read House of Mirth (Edith
Wharton), which mentions in passing the superior tea of one of the
characters (a Russian caravan), and started recognizing that there was a
lot more to tea than just hot wet brownish stuff.

dmh

It was at a time in my life when I hired call girl after call girl every
night to pleasure me. Couldn't get enough. Then one very pretty young girl
afterward made me a cup of tea and it calmed me down and I was hooked.

English grandfather, Tea drinking family (Liptons), Tea partys with
granddaughters and friends, search for tea begins.

Kitty

A few years back I just had to do something to get rid of my coffee
flavored creamer and aspertame addiction. I started drinking plain
teas and complicated tisanes daily. Of couse, I've had the occasional
cup of Lipton's all my life. Toci
whytebyrd wrote:
> Just wondering here.
>
> Personally, although I was aware of tea as a pleasant tasting beverage
> most of my life, I only really got INTERESTED in tea about 4/5 years
> ago. I do qigong (basic qigong, tai chi and zahn zuang) daily, and one
> day I picked up a book on this subject written by Ken Cohen. He is
> quite a tea enthusiast himself, & had devoted a chapter in his book to
> tea and how it fit into a meditative, qigong framework.
>
> I became intrigued by what he had written and soon found that he had
> very much understated the case. Never looked back from there. Tea is
> an ongoing interest, a hobby, a help to higher mind states, a healthier
> body and just plain delicious too. Not to mention that the quest for
> good teas take me into oriental markets and interesting shops as
> well... I definately look forward to these "tea safaris" although they
> result in sometimes mixed sucess<grin>.
>
> I don't know many "real" people in my daily life who are tea fanciers,
> although I can't say that I have gone out of my way to find any. I am
> content enough to pursue this area as a private thing... much like my
> qigong practice. Still, having found this group, I am curious about
> what sparked the tea interest in others.
>
> How about you?
>
> Whytebyrd

Thanks, all... After reading these replys it just goes to show how
broad the appeal of tea is.

Besides the great tastes & aromas of tea, I'm getting quite interested
in tea in oriental literature and history/philosophy/culture. It's an
amazing area.

On 30 Apr 2006 11:07:39 -0700, "whytebyrd" > wrote:

>Thanks, all... After reading these replys it just goes to show how
>broad the appeal of tea is.

I like the fact that people interested in teas usually has several
quite different teas, for different occasions. While most coffee
drinkers have only one brand, and don't relly want to try others.

Tea seems to encourage cultivation of ones enjoying it.


Lars
Stockholm

I forgot.

Jim

whytebyrd wrote:
> Just wondering here.

Lars > writes:

> On 30 Apr 2006 11:07:39 -0700, "whytebyrd" > wrote:
>
> >Thanks, all... After reading these replys it just goes to show how
> >broad the appeal of tea is.
>
> I like the fact that people interested in teas usually has several
> quite different teas, for different occasions. While most coffee
> drinkers have only one brand, and don't relly want to try others.

It's so much easier to get a wide range of flavors and aromas from
different teas than it is with coffees.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

> Still, having found this group, I am curious about
> what sparked the tea interest in others.

My interest started back in the late 60s early 70s when drinking
Celestial Seasonings tea was the "hip" thing to do in the wannabe hippy
crowd. I remember one blend called "Morning Thunder" where the box
said "This blend has the power of a thousand charging buffalos, so
when your get'em up won't, Morning Thunder will). After my hippy
phase, I joined the Navy and traveled to Italy where I migrated to
coffee concoctions (usually black espresso variants) for 2 decades. My
love for tea was rekindled when I made a trip to Holland one year, I
was traveling a lot back then installing factory automation software,
and I found good tea was easier to prepare than good coffee when doing
the Road Warrior thing. Then back in the mid 90s some eccentric
academic types in Chapel Hill recommended a cooked Pu'er mini-tuocha
and the rest is history......

Mike
http:/www.pu-erh.net

LOL. When I was a preteen in the mid-seventies, I wanted to be part of
the Asian tea culture, thanks to the sixth grade social studies unit on
Japan and the "Kung Fu" TV series. No, I did not steal this from Mark
Salzman's autobiography "Lost in Place," although I was surprised to
find someone with such similar experiences.

Anyway, I knew I needed something more exotic than Lipton, so I made my
mom buy me a package of Swee Touch Nee, the "aristocrat of teas." When
I was growing up, tea meant instant tea, and tea in tea bags was a *big
deal.* I still wasn't old enough to boil water on my own so it didn't
go very far... At this same time, my homeroom teacher was a big time
tea fancier and had bags of Twinings in such varieties as Lapsang
Souchong, Oolong, and darjeeling. I would occasionally filch these and
use the water from her electric kettle. She must have known; I was the
only student bizarre enough to do it, and this stuff was expensive and
simply didn't appear in mainstream supermarkets. So I'd like to give
her a shout out...

I still buy Swee Touch Nee when it's on sale and nothing better is
available.


David M. Harris wrote:
> My father's family was from Russia, and he drank tea all the time. (Not
> just every morning, but all day long.) But he didn't much care what
> kind of tea it was, as long as it was hot and wet and brownish. (His
> tea of choice was Swee-Touch-Nee, with lemon.) I recognized it as an
> option, but not a favorite.
>
>

On 2006-04-29, Nath Krismaratala > wrote:
> I was thirsty again.
> I drank another tea.
> Wasn't as good as the first time.

I'm still trying to figure out what I had in my first good tea. I'll
keep sampling until I find it again.

--
Lance Orner

On 1 May 2006 07:47:27 -0700, "Mike Petro" > wrote:

>I remember one blend called "Morning Thunder"

Aah, Morning Thunder! That is the tea that Jerry Seinfeld was
drinking, without knowing that it had caffein in it.

High octane stuff, I gather.


Lars
Stockholm

Morning Thunder is/was a blend of black tea and roasted yerba mate. At
the time, many people assumed that all Celestial Seasons teas were
caffeine-free and "herbal," as most were. It just so happened that both
ingredients of MT were *loaded* w/ caffeine.


Lars wrote:
> On 1 May 2006 07:47:27 -0700, "Mike Petro" > wrote:
>
> >I remember one blend called "Morning Thunder"
>
> Aah, Morning Thunder! That is the tea that Jerry Seinfeld was
> drinking, without knowing that it had caffein in it.
>
> High octane stuff, I gather.
>
>
> Lars
> Stockholm

My earliest tea buying venture was "good fortune" tea in a box by
bigelow. I loved it. I never see it anywhere maybe not made anymore but
that wasa long time ago and had reverted to coffee as a "grown-up" Mama
made us herbal teas when we were sick. A few years ago my hubby went
to find a box of tea for me when I was sick, I asked for good fortune
or jasmine. I got a box of Tazo with different flavors. A friend at
work had a bag that had chinese oolong mixed with jasminehat a friend
sent to her from California. You know the little rolled up oolongs,
and I started my quest. I looked everywhere then had to search the
internet, and the rest is history. I wonder is good fortune is still
around?
My good fortune is the internet cause it has provided me a place to get
the best teas I can in an area that is sorely lacking in good tea.
Jenn

"Lewis Perin" > wrote in message
news
> Lars > writes:
>
> > On 30 Apr 2006 11:07:39 -0700, "whytebyrd" > wrote:
> >
> > >Thanks, all... After reading these replys it just goes to show how
> > >broad the appeal of tea is.
> >
> > I like the fact that people interested in teas usually has several
> > quite different teas, for different occasions. While most coffee
> > drinkers have only one brand, and don't relly want to try others.
>
> It's so much easier to get a wide range of flavors and aromas from
> different teas than it is with coffees.
>
> /Lew

That said, my wife is a big coffee fan, so for Christmas last year I bought
her a few pounds of green coffee beans from various estates around the world
and modified a hot air popcorn popper so we could roast them ourselves.
It's amazing how much better coffee tastes when one uses good beans, freshly
roasted and ground - you can pick up all kinds of interesting flavors:
chocolate, nuts, earthy notes, wood. I'm not abandoning tea by any means,
and I agree that the range of flavors and styles with tea is astonishing,
but roasting my own coffee has given me a new appreciation of just how good
coffee can be, properly treated.

Dean

Hi Jenn,

Good fortune tea is still available in the grocery store from Bigelow.
I have a few bags left and just saw last night that they have
redesigned the box to look more like twinnings new boxes, all one
color. Look in the tea section of your supermarket and you should
find it easily.

As an aside, Walmart doesn't have as large a tea section as your other
local supermarkets might, so try those if Walmart doesn't carry it.

Kitty

On Wed, 03 May 2006 13:25:17 GMT, "DPM" > wrote:

>modified a hot air popcorn popper so we could roast them ourselves.

Did you build your own because you really wanted to, or because there
are no "family size" roasters to buy?

Some years ago I used to roast tea. Just put it in a pot and heat
on the stove for a few minutes before brewing I think it was some
large leave Japanese tea. Course stuff with twigs in it. Good though!



Lars
Stockholm

"Lars" > wrote in message
...
> On Wed, 03 May 2006 13:25:17 GMT, "DPM" > wrote:
>
> >modified a hot air popcorn popper so we could roast them ourselves.
>
> Did you build your own because you really wanted to, or because there
> are no "family size" roasters to buy?
>
Small roasters are certainly available, but they're fairly expensive
(US$75-100). My unmodified popper cost $15. I modified it 1) to save
money; 2) because I'm an engineer by trade and considered it a challenge; 3)
because I was not sure we would think the results worth the effort and
wanted to minimize the initial outlay.

Dean

well, i start trying tea because my mother use to have tea from time to
time, although at home everyone takes coffee, in fact spain is coffee
drinker, there are 'cafeterias' or bars where having a coffee
everywhere. in fact i begun to take coffee because is one of those
things you are suppose to do, but never liked completely, and i tried
all the possible combinations. i like very much the smell, the morning
freshly made smell of coffee is quite warm, and then the taste is
another thing, although here we also use to have a dense coffee, as
italians and portugueses

but also my mother use to make her own mix, i have the memory of going
with her to the market, and there bought several packs of coffee beans
and mix them in 75%, 25% ['natural' and 'torrefacto', like natural
roasting and a stronger one] and then make the grinding and packing in
the moment. afterwards this shop was closed, there was not another
place to grind the coffee that way, so she begun to do the same at home
with a small grinder have been always at home, since i remember, i know
it's not the same wide variety of different teas, but it's not as
simple as it could seem go to the cafe and ask for a coffee. i'm now
remembering a shop to buy coffee in beans in the very center of madrid
and the coffee smell spreading all along the street... don't rememeber
the name, in preciados or carmen street...

but it's true that is not usual to find places in which you can ask for
a particular coffee... maybe is something related with an industry or
just likes and dislikes... first time i went to england and go into a
food shop, i searched among other things plain yogurt, and i couldn't
find it, there were flavoured yogurts in all inimaginable varieties,
but not plain, not sugared, not diet yogurt. it was astonishing.

regards from madrid,
bonifacio barrio hijosa
http://worldoftea.webcindario.com/
.... site in progress