Teascapade

I have talked about tea a lot lately.

 

So let me give you some background.

 

Until my tea drinking binge last week, I haven't had much tea since I went to Hong Kong way back in August.

 

I was like tea-d out.  I had tea with every meal in Hong Kong.  Don't get me wrong, it was good tea.  But how much tea can a person take, with only small doses of Tsingtao inbetween?

 

Of course, I was doing this to try not to get food poisoning like all the other times I went out to Asia.  I figured tea + alcohol would work, since last time, my dad didn't get sick, but my mom and I did, but he had avoided cold drinks.  Other than beer.  I think the hot drinks + alcohol + yogurt did end up helping, but this is a tangent.

 

Back to the tea.  Tea morning, noon and night for a week and I came back to the States and didn't really want to have all that much to do with tea.

 

Fast-forward from August to May.

 

I am suffering from horrible allergies.  I've had allergies since I was like 2, and tried half the therapies out there including shots, but this season is killing me.  I thought I was coming down with a horrible sickness after last night's coughing fit, but this morning, the doctor assured me it was just a really, really, really bad case of allergies.  Another semi-tangent.

 

So last week I started drinking tea and lots of soup, because I had been out sick one day a little feverish and the like.  I needed to get better!  And even though I was feeling sick, I guess it's been a healthier "lifestyle" because of it, and I don't mind.  [Stop with the darn tangents!]

 

The only firm-supplied tea at work is plain Lipton.  I drank it for a WEEK.  I was getting pretty sick of it, but what was I going to do? I wasn't going to bring my only box of genmai-cha from home to work.

 

So when we took my grandmother out for Mothers Day, I went to the store to go look for some tea.  I ended up getting some genmai-cha but unfortunately, it's not individually sized bags and only pot sized bags, so I will probably have to go to Chinatown and pick up some Yamamotoyama at some point.  I love that stuff. [TOPIC.]

 

I also got half of my mother's collection that she no longer wanted, and bought some tea from Marshalls and Stop and Shop.

 

So now I have been trying all different teas, and of course, blogging about it here, because otherwise I will forget what I like and don't like!  Monday was this chai green tea made by Stash that I got from Stop and Shop and it was fragrant and smooth and mmmm.  Tuesday I was drinking this assam tea by Ashby's.  It wasn't too bad, but it wasn't chai.  But I don't really know what assam tea is.  Can someone who has been tolerant enough to make it this far down the post enlighten me?

 

That brings me to today.  I decided to start off with these bags of tea made by Twinings that my mom gave me, and picked out Lapsang Souchong tea.  What's in that? (Again, please, a patient person, please help.)  I haven't actually tried it yet, but was compelled to post because it smells just like these country bacon grits that I used to make when I was much younger.

 

And now, 40 minutes later... since this post has been sitting for 40 minutes... the tea's not bad, but the bacon flavor still confuses me.

 

Someone who knows something about tea please help!