Let's Talk about Tea

i love tea. love love love tea. all teas, really. my favorites are bold teas, nice black teas with some real body. spicy teas are good, like chai or cinnamon. green teas are just lovely, and i adore matchas and genmaicha (which is green tea flavored with brown rice). fruity herbal teas aren't my typical favorite, but i still purchase and enjoy them (especially for a summer iced tea - super refreshing!). and if there is a glass of iced sweet tea nearby, just know it won't last long around me. (there's nothing i can eat at mcdonalds - it's a gluten hell - but i will go out of my way for a large sweet tea with extra ice).

so it doesn't come as too much of a surprise that i just about lost my cool when Teavana opened nearby. (i even applied for a job. i never even got a call. it makes me feel better to just assume i was overqualified, whatever.) i have tried lots of teas from tazo, from teavana, from trader joe's...my tea shelf in my pantry is overwhelming. my tea has the entire top shelf off my pantry. then fate intervened and i ran out of earl grey. there are few teas that i keep on hand at all times. one of them is earl grey. it's my fallback when i want tea and don't want anything fancy, or when i feel sick and nothing else sounds good. the local teavana happens to be near pf changs, where we happened to be picking up takeout this weekend. so i trotted off to teavana and invited myself right on in just before they locked up for the night. "earl grey!" i proclaimed. the sweet girl behind the counter (who looked like she had been there all day, and still managed to smile at me) convinced me to smell the earl grey creme. the earl grey creme is flavored with creamy vanilla, and offsets the typical strong bergamont flavor. then the sweet girl said she liked it more than traditional earl grey.

i walked out with earl grey creme on sunday evening. it is now tuesday evening and we are nearly out of the two ounce purchase. i've had vanilla earl grey in teabags from the supermarket, and it was fine but not impressive. the earl grey creme basically made me weep with joy. it's still strongly flavored with the bergamont and strong black tea. it's missing hints of lavender, but makes up for it with the vanilla. it doesn't taste like they dumped vanilla extract in, but it is gentle and lovely. i could see it being a nice in-between for people who want to like earl grey, but find it too strong. the vanilla mellows it slightly.

traditionally, earl grey can be taken with lemon or sugar and cream. i went the sugar and cream route (i don't see this one being very good with lemon). i can't get enough. it's like drinking comfort and dessert. i will be purchasing quite a lot more in the next couple days. skyler might have my hide if i run out. i wouldn't blame him. it's that good.

(do you like my mug? it was a christmas gift from my folks a couple of years ago, right before i moved out of texas for the first time to nebraska. it says "texas, it just feels right.")