Happy Tea Tuesday and welcome to An Opportune Moment’s first ever giveaway! This post comes to you in 3 parts: Part the 1st I want to talk about customer service (Or, why I’m having a giveaway) By now, I think you’ve all heard about the fire that destroyed my apartment and most of my possessions, including my elaborate collection of teas and tea accoutrements. Someday, I will write a blog post that doesn’t link back to that event, but today is not that day! Anyway, I am a sporadic twitter user at best and, back in November, I happened to sign in and see that Plum Deluxe (a lovely lifestyle…
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It’s beginning to look a lot like…
Well, you know how the song goes. The tree is decorated, there’s snow on the ground, and it’s feeling pretty festive at The Beach House lately. This morning I even drank a cup of Winter Delight — the loose leaf black tea that Katie and I bought in Sarajevo last Fall. In order to best preserve their flavor, loose leaf teas should be stored at room temperature in an airtight container and kept away from light, heat, and moisture. I’m not as diligent about this as I ought to be, but I do own a number of tea tins, which are pretty as well as functional. I bought one decorated…
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First Flush Tea
This Tea Tuesday, I’m drinking First Flush Tea from Charleston Tea Plantation, and friends, it is everything a cup of black tea should be. What is First Flush tea? The “First Flush” is the first harvest of the year, which occurs in the spring when tea plants experience escalated growth following a winter dormancy. The term “First Flush” is most often used to refer to Darjeeling tea, which is grown in the Darjeeling District of the West Bengal region of India. In Darjeeling, tea is hand-picked four times a year, which results in four distinct flushes: First Flush happens in late April or early May Second Flush lasts from early…
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Charleston Tea Plantation!!! (The Most Exciting Tea Tuesday Yet)
Back in May, I took a road trip with two of my closest friends from college. Our trip started at my former apartment in DC, where Lisa was still living, and took us South to Miami and back. On the way, we stopped in Williamsburg, VA, where I learned that colonial history happened somewhere other than New England. Okay, theoretically, I knew this, but I live in Boston, so when I think colonial history, I think Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, the Boston Massacre, the burning of the Gaspee (slipped a little Rhode Island knowledge in there for you #homestatepride). We breezed through North Carolina (sorry NC, I loved you…
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Tea Tuesday: Chai Concentrate
My tea making adventures didn’t end when I left Hawai’i. Just because I can no longer collect leaves and herbs while wandering from my cabin to the kitchen doesn’t mean I can’t visit my local co-op, pick up some spices from the bulk section, and make my own tea blends. So! E and I made a chai concentrate, and you can too! Full disclosure, we loosely followed this recipe, which teaches you how to make chai concentrate as a homemade Christmas gift… (Christmas in July, maybe?) However, this beverage can be enjoyed year around — all you have to do, if you’re suffering from a summer heat wave, is serve…
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This Tea Tuesday, It’s Actually Ti Tuesday
I decided not to write a new post on Sunday because it was Father’s Day, and, if you don’t know why that matters, please see the previous blog entry. You don’t even have to read the post, you can just look at the title. I’m back today because it’s Tuesday, and on Tuesdays I drink tea. Well… I drink tea everyday, but I write about drinking tea on Tuesdays. Except this post isn’t about drinking tea. Oops. It’s about a different plant, which I encountered while living and working on an organic farm on Maui, called “ti.” And, yes, pronounced “tea.” So, it’s Ti Tuesday. (Ha!) And, for Ti Tuesday,…
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DAVID’s TEA is trendy and I am an old grump
Last week I was in Toronto at TBEX (the largest travel blogging conference in the world) and the #BlogHouse where I spent a lot of time talking to people about travel blogging. And tea. Every time I told someone about my blog, I would say, I write about travel — my personal travel narrative to be exact — and I also write about tea. Because TBEX is a travel blogging conference no one is impressed by how many countries I’ve visited or my chosen lifestyle, but everyone was surprised when I mentioned tea. And everyone had an opinion. My conversations with other bloggers went a lot like this: “You blog…
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Guest Post: Yerba Mate
(For Tea Tuesday this week, I asked my brother, Ian, to fill in while I’m traipsing about the Southeastern United States, and he agreed to write a guest post about his favorite tea-like drink: yerba mate. He’s a freelance journalist, and you can read more of his writing at www.iandoesprojects.com, where he is conducting and documenting “life projects” — finite and arbitrary experiments in doing.) Hi everybody, I’m Ian. You might remember me from that time I went to London and Edinburgh with Emma. I started drinking mate regularly when I studied abroad in Buenos Aires during my junior year of college. I like to say that it’s “a habit…
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Tea Tuesday: Fresh Ginger Tea
Tonight’s Tea Tuesday post was going to be about a chai concentrate E and I concocted. But that post will have to wait for another day because the mixture we made includes 8 bags of black tea, it’s 10:30 at night, and that’s a lot of caffeine before bed. Rather than leave you with no Tea Tuesday post, I’m sharing a cuppa that’s a bit more appropriate for this time of night. This unappetizing-looking beverage is fresh ginger tea. And it’s delicious, so back off. I’ve been feeling anxious (lots of work to finish before I leave for my road trip on Friday), and I’ve had a stomachache for most…
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Tea Tuesday: German Chamomile
See this plant? This is German Chamomile growing in the tea garden at Hana Farms, the organic farm I worked at in Hawai’i. This sad scraggly thing is also German Chamomile: This particular specimen is looking pathetic because I transplanted it to the garden bed in front of my cabin, and, at the time this photo was taken, it was still adjusting to its new home. The farm manager told me that when you transplant something, it helps to pick off any flowers so that the plant will focus on growing stronger roots instead of wasting energy on keeping its flowers from wilting. So, when I saw my German Chamomile…
