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Steuarts Black Tea with Cinnamon

RT Cunningham — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:35:27 +0000

The last time I was at the Royal Subic store aboard the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, I was looking for teabag tea to use with my iced tea maker and had difficulty finding anything other than various green teas. I prefer black tea and I'm not sure why, but it's probably because that's what I grew up with. The Olongapo markets carry Lipton teas, but I was looking for something a little different and I found it.

Black Tea with Cinnamon

I had never heard of the Steuarts brand of tea, but I was willing to take a chance. Before I brewed my first pitcher with it, I looked it up on the net. I found the George Stuarts Product Page but strangely, this particular product wasn't shown.

This tea is part of the Ceylon tea collection sold by the George Stuart company, and a little research told me that Ceylon was one of the former names of the country of Sri Lanka. So now when I see a tea package of some kind that says "Ceylon", I'll know it comes from Sri Lanka.

The Taste Test

I wasn't disappointed. The cinnamon taste did not overwhelm the natural taste of black tea like the teas with lemon flavoring added (or any fruit for that matter). I like the natural flavor of black tea and that may be one of the reasons I don't like the tea you buy in jars and cans with fruit flavors added. The fruit flavors are all that I ever tasted with brands like Snapple and Arizona Iced Tea.

The cinnamon taste isn't strong and there's just enough there to tell you that it has cinnamon in it. My wife's aunt is staying with us on vacation and when I walked near her, she said she knew what kind of tea it was by the smell. I think she cheated and saw the box in the cabinet and tried to act like she knew something she didn't. Unless that lady has a super keen sense of smell, I don't think the cinnamon smell is strong enough for you to smell unless you have the cup at your lips.

I'll be looking for similar types of teabags the next time I'm out shopping for groceries, regardless of where. I kind of like having a variety of tastes and smells to go along with the natural taste and smell of black tea. I'll even deal with green tea if I find something suitable. The only requirement I have is that the added flavor doesn't overwhelm the natural flavor of tea.

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Using Our Hamilton Beach Iced Tea Maker

RT Cunningham — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:59:45 +0000

My wife brought a Hamilton Beach iced tea maker back with her in August of last year (when she only stayed for a month) and it sat on my kitchen counter, gathering dust, until she returned permanently a week ago today. I had an instant iced tea in a jar, also collecting dust, for at least two months. In fact, the moisture from humidity was absorbed each time it was opened and the last time I opened it, the powder was hard. I tossed it the same day my wife arrived.

Teabags

One of my sisters-in-law is living with her soon-to-be husband. He spent months (a couple of years, I think) as an overseas Filipino worker in Qatar. Each time he returned for vacation, he brought something back for me. The last time, he brought back a box of "Lipton Yellow Label" teabags which sat in a kitchen drawer until the day my wife returned.

My wife also brought three boxes of Luzianne teabags with her, so we have plenty of teabags to go through before we have to get some more. I've only been drinking one or two cups of coffee per day, in the early morning, since my wife arrived. I've been drinking brewed iced tea the rest of the time. I had actually forgotten how much better brewed iced tea tastes than instant iced tea. I'm sure I'm not the first to say there's a world of difference.

Brewing the Tea

The reservoir above the carafe can hold as many teabags as you see fit to use. I prefer to use five of the small ones or three of the large ones. The drip "switch" at the bottom can be set to mild, medium or strong. I really don't see the point, but I set it to strong. After the tea is finished brewing, and it shuts off just like an automatic drip coffee maker would, the tea is a dark, "golden" brown. That's the best description I can use, but it looks awesome considering it's actually black tea.

My wife was the first to make iced tea with the tea maker. She tried putting the ice in the carafe before brewing, but it melted by the time the brewing was completed. The second time, she added ice after the fact and that worked fine. It still melted quickly, so I told her to just forgo the ice and we could add ice to our glasses each time we filled them with tea. That's what we've been doing ever since.

Coffee or Tea?

I still need my coffee in the morning, when it's still cool outside and prefer it during the late evening once it cools down again. In between, I like to drink iced tea instead of plain water.

What's going to be interesting, over the next month or so, is finding more teabags made with black tea. I've found some with green tea, but none with black tea, and I don't like green tea. I guess the search will go hand in hand with my search for a decent coffee maker.

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Coffee or Tea, Hot or Cold, But No Soda For Me

RT Cunningham — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:53:35 +0000

There are some things in life where I will accept no substitutes. Coffee and tea are two of these things.

This is the second of two articles I wrote for my main site. This one was originally published in April of 2008 and I've moved it here (with minor rewriting) because this site is about coffee and tea and the other is not. Keep in mind when it was written as I made references:

Recently, I was reminded by Claire (A little piece of me) that while some people like lemon in their tea, others do not. She, like me, does not like lemon in her tea. She needs "proper" tea, whatever the heck that means.

Tea, Cold or Hot

I've noticed, at least locally, that much more tea is sold with lemon added than without. In fact, I can rarely find instant tea that doesn't have the added lemon flavor. Yecch! At times, I have resorted to doing the tea bag drill and making my tea that way. I prefer iced tea, but when it doesn't feel like a sauna in my house, hot tea works just as well. The instant tea brand I always look for as unsweetened, without any added flavoring, is Nestea (a product of Nestlé. If I can't find any, I resort to buying the Lipton tea bags.

Local restaurants like to stick a slice of lemon in with the iced tea when it's served. The first thing I do is toss out the lemon before it ruins the flavor of the tea. I love the natural flavor of tea. I am guilty, however, of sweetening tea with sugar, but not too much. I don't want the sugar flavor overwhelming the tea flavor.

Black tea (an American all-time favorite), oolong tea, or green tea, it doesn't matter. They're all good to me. What a lot of people don't know is that all three are produced from the same plant. See "Tempest in a Teapot" for more information.

Coffee, Hot or Cold

Growing up, I was enticed into becoming a coffee drinker by the strong aroma wafting from the coffee pot percolating in the kitchen. I can remember my mother putting coffee grounds into the pot, letting it perk for however long it took, and then people sitting around the dining room table drinking it. Back in those days, the coffee pots were tempered glass and it took more than just a few minutes for the coffee to be ready. Nowadays, we have automatic drip coffee as well as instant coffee.

I prefer instant coffee, but not just any instant coffee. It has to be either the Folgers or the Nescafé (another product of Nestlé) brands. Other coffee brands just don't seem to taste right to me.

While I was in the military and stationed in Japan in the eighties, I had to settle for iced coffee, usually arriving as a can from a vending machine. When Starbucks started marketing cold coffee, it was already old news to me, so I didn't get suckered into buying it all the time.

When I was young, non-dairy creamers like Cremora and Coffee-Mate (still another Nestlé product) didn't exist (well, they did, but I never saw them). It's a good thing they didn't because partially hydrogenated oils are bad for you. Everyone that didn't drink it black used evaporated milk from a can. I drink coffee with sugar only these days.

Carbonated Beverages

It doesn't matter what you call them. In some places they're called soda. In other places they're called pop. In yet other places they're called soda pop. I can't drink any of them. When I was much younger, I drank soda because it was convenient. The vending machines were everywhere. It didn't matter which brand I preferred because it changed from month to month. As I got older, I realized that soda (while not knowing how bad it really is for you) just didn't do the trick in quenching my thirst.

A couple of months ago, I found myself drinking a soda because it was the only thing available at the time. We were out of bottled water and I was thirsty. I poured the soda over ice cubes and it still didn't water it down enough to tame my thirst. I ended up driving 11 miles to buy bottled water. Don't get me started on the tap water. The tap water where I was at was worse than the water you find in swimming pools, it had so much chlorine in it.

What Are Your Favorite Drinks?

Aside from alcoholic beverages, what do you like to drink? Coffee, tea, soda, other kinds of drinks or just water? Can you tell me why? If you're a beer-aholic (someone who drinks beer for the taste, not the alcohol), can you tell me why you prefer it over anything else?

(Image sources: The "What's in Your Pot?" Swap and Well of Illusions!)

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Various Uses of Green Tea for Dieting and Health

RT Cunningham — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 15:10:04 +0000

Personally, I really can't tell the difference the taste of green tea as opposed to black tea or any other kind of tea. I've had a little experience, not good, with using green tea for dieting. I'll relate my experience along with other details about green tea.

Green Tea for Dieting

A few years ago, I'd say at least eight, I was introduced to something called "Chinese weight loss tea". One of my wife's friends had lost a bit of weight by drinking it and explained to me how it works. She gave me a small cardboard box, colored green, covered with Chinese writing and with the words "diet tea" on one solitary flap.

This green tea came in teabags, not as tea leaves as depicted in the small picture I provided, and it was intended as a hot drink. Since I like hot tea almost as much as I like hot coffee, I tried it for a day. I knew it was supposed to act like a mild laxative, but I could not stay out of the bathroom after drinking it. At least, not until I was completely void of everything in my system.

That was the first and last time I ever messed with anything with the words "diet tea" on it.

Green Tea Detoxification Recipes

I've been reading various articles about green tea being used as the basic ingredient for detoxification. Various forms of "detox tea" can be used to detoxify your liver and your skin. I'm sure there are other detoxifying organs involved, but I haven't read about them yet. Of course, it takes more than green tea by itself to do the job intended.

Most of the detox teas that I've read about don't even include green tea, so it seems to be a bit of a misnomer to me, even if it is a legitimate use of the word "tea".

Green Tea and Old People

While traveling in the orient at various times in my life, I noticed the old folks tended to drink hot, green tea at least a day. I don't know if it contributed to their longevity (I met a Japanese man of over a hundred years old who could get around better than my 75 year-old mother and my 73 year-old mother-in-law), but why take chances?

If something as simple as having a hot cup of green tea every day could increase your lifespan and allow you to live a healthier life at the same time, wouldn't it be worth it to include it as part of your daily diet?

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The Many Kinds of Tea

RT Cunningham — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:23:07 +0000

Unlike coffee, the many kinds of tea are not produced from multiple species. The different varieties of tea come from one plant, the camellia sinensis. I'm not talking about teas (like herbal tea) which do not come from the tea plant; I'm specifically talking about the varieties made from the tea plant.

Tea is Classified by the Producing Technique

The traditional tea consumed by most Americans is black tea. It's the same plant used for green tea, so green tea isn't any healthier for you than black tea in its original form. Here are the classifications:

White tea: Un-Wilted and unoxidized
Yellow tea: Un-wilted and unoxidized but allowed to yellow
Green tea: Wilted and unoxidized
Oolong: Wilted, bruised, and partially oxidized
Black tea: Wilted, crushed, and fully oxidized
Post-fermented tea: Green Tea that has been allowed to ferment/compost

What about Red Tea?

When my family moved to Hawaii in the 70s, and I was a teenager, my parents planted a unique hedgerow. It was a repeating row in an order than included Tea, Red Tea and Bird of Paradise. The tea plant was the tea plant I'm talking about. The red tea plant is something else. Although it looks like the regular tea plant, it's not red version of it. Frankly, I don't know what it was.

How Tea is Consumed

I've always known about tea being consumed either cold (iced) or hot. The British like it hot, while most Americans like it iced. Unlike coffee, again, tea isn't used in candies and cakes and the leaves aren't eaten with chocolate.

Local Tea Varieties

I'm unaware of any tea that's grown locally. If I look at some of the packaging, I'd probably find out that some of what I think is imported is actually made in the Philippines.

I usually buy the instant NESTEA, without sugar or lemon flavoring added. I like to taste the tea, not the additives. Yes, I add sugar, but how much I add depends on how strong I make it. I like it iced and lightly sweetened, not heavily sweetened like the US southerners.

Unfortunately for me, most Filipinos like the added lemon, so the plain NESTEA is always hard to find.

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