Honeydew Mate

Smells like a nice dew filled sunny spring morning…in a cup!

The aroma of this tea was enough to sell me on it, I am a huge melon fan, ha some innuendo there! But seriously cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon, I freaking love them all so immediately after smelling this one I had to try it, now I am just upset I didn’t buy more.

Dry this tea has an amazing Honeydew smell, not only does it have the natural flavoring but it has actual melon pieces in it. There is a slight earthy smell from the rooibos and mate, but it is easily overpowered by the honeydew, which is fine by me.

I have been doing this one at a 5 minute steep time, it seems to be a happy medium for a great cup of tea, plus that gives it ample time to infuse the air in the room with a nice honeydew aroma. Being a mate and rooibos base it doesn’t have the full energy kick as a cup of a straight mate based tea would, I was drinking this last night at 11pm and I had no issues sleeping. From what I can tell this tea would be utterly amazing iced.

Let me begin by saying that I am aware maté is not recommended for pregnancy… however, today was just one of those days.

Long story, short(ened): I’ve been working on a poetry chapbook with a friend, she wrote the poems, I make the chapbook. We send in prototype + proposal by April 15th and wait to see if we get the funding to make an edition of 75. Seems simple enough, right? WRONG! First, it’s taken until last week for her poems to be edited and finalised. It’s hard to come up with layouts and such when you don’t know how long the poems will be or how they are to be structured (poetry can be tricky like that, with all it’s lack of conventional structure, punctuation, and whathaveyou). Luckily, she figured out the layout for me, I just had to come up with the artwork (I’m carving stamps), binding, paper, and printing. Unfortunately the paper we fell in love with—a Japanese paper that’s very tempermental—can’t be printed on using ink-jet or laser printers, so I’ve spent this past week wracking my brain as to how to “make it work” (in the words of Tim Gunn). I decided to go with vellum, instead of the Japanese paper, breaks my heart to surrender like that, but we have no choice. So, I waddled my 39-weeks-pregnant self—accompanied by my toddler daughter—over to the printing place and got everything sorted.

Today, I picked up the printed vellum and everything looks awesome! BUT my 2-year-old accomplice was getting whiny (nap-time, you see) so I decide that instead of waiting for the bus, we’d walk to the children’s library… 1.5 km in the Saskatchewan snow. Bad idea. Neither my body nor hers were up to the task, but I didn’t know when the next bus would be, so we did it anyways. We arrived, she played for 30 min, then it was time to catch the bus home… which meant more walking since our bus stop is a couple blocks from the library. And of course, my girl got tired and wanted to be carried, but have you ever tried carrying a 25 pd toddler when you’re 39 weeks preggo?? Not. Happening. So, I had to be harsh and make her walk, promising her we’d be on the bus soon (she loooooves the bus!).

If you’re reading this, then you can guess that we made it onto the bus okay and are now home, but maaaaaan. I. Feel. Exhausted. So, I’m drinking the jar of this that I had chilling in the fridge and hoping for the magical maté boost that it promises. The tea itself is delicious, reminding me of Luscious Watermelon, but obviously more of the honeydew persuasion. And it is excellent iced. Haven’t tried it hot and not sure I want to considering the thought of drinking hot melon tea makes me shudder.

So, here’s to the most exhausting day of this pregnancy ending on a slightly better note, to delicious iced melon-y tea, and to getting this chapbook prototype completed before baby #2 arrives! Oi.

This is good, but still… melon. I am glad Courtney sent me enough for a couple cups of this, but it’s not one I will need to order again, though.

It’s too bad, because I would love a lighter mate for to drink in the morning, and this one would be so perfect. Stupid melon.

Yeah, another tea I picked up today. The 2/$5 really sucked me in.

Anyways. I really dislike honeydew. I will eat around it in fruit salad, and leave the sad green blocks on my plate or in my bowl. So why did I pick this up? Because apparently when it’s hot I get sucked into all things melon. I even had a slice of watermelon today, when usually I pass. Weird.

The smell is definitely floral, ripe, honeydew melon. Dry it has more scent than when steeped. Tasting it, it’s floral, ripe melon. It’s rather sweet, and reminds me of those melon milk candies I find at the Asian market.

It’s, uhh, not my favourite. Mostly because I don’t like what it’s flavoured as. If it was cantaloupe, I’d be all over it. The background flavours work really well together with the melon. That being said, I will happily drink this one up. It’s another tea that will be excellent at work, as all it requires is hot water. I’ve already transferred most of the tea into iron-shut tea bags, ready to bring with me tomorrow. I won’t buy more, though. Why did it have to be honeydew?

Once again did this as an over night cold brew and it was absolutely delicious at lunch. Just plain and simple honey dew flavor! I am not a fan of the actual honey dew melon but for some reason love honey see flavored things. Weird I know but I highly recommend this as a summer iced tea pick up! You will not be let down.

Had this this morning, drank a huge cup in the ceramic gourd I bought at the same time.

My god, I wish I bought more than 100g of this! Absolutely delicious, and this is by far the best tasting mate I have ever had. I highly recommend this, I’m sure you will enjoy it!

Outside that, it’s smell is very bubblegum like, and it doesn’t actually taste like that. It’s a bit of an oddity, seems like my senses are fighting when I drink it! ;)

In short this will really kick you off and give you a nice energy boost, and who doesn’t need that early in the morning!

Enjoy!

I’m really not a huge David’s fan. I think I like their accessories more than their tea. This definitely has a melon taste to it. Green rooibos is much less obnoxious than red, so I approve on that choice although I’m still getting dry mouth. Adding sugar makes it taste a lot juicier. It is okay, but failing to impress. I fear that fantastic tea may be jading me to average tea!

This was a free sample from David’s and not one I would have bought – mate and melon are not my favourite tastes individually let alone together. However it was free….so nothing to lose. And what a pleasant surprise. This was light and breezy and thankfully lacked that earthy quality of mate. The melon comes through with just the right amount of sweetness and I enjoyed the aroma too. If I had more (and sadly I can’t get these teas delivered to the UK so only if I am sent them by friends can I drink Davids Tea) I would try it iced with a touch of fresh mint from the garden.

I got this as a sample, and was kind of excited to try it because I really love honeydew. Once it was steeping I was slapped in the face with a kind of gross fruit smell. Just really intense and kind of artificial smelling. When I finally tasted it, the flavor just seemed really artificial, and it made me feel a little bit sick.. Maybe it’s the hibiscus blossoms? Idk I’ll give it one more try when my allergies are better.

I was in my local David’s Tea a couple of days ago (I walk past it twice a day on my way to work – talk about temptation)and picked up a few of the new spring teas. I passed on this one that day as the hibiscus and fruit scared me off. It smelled really good, though, so I ended up going in yesterday and buying some anyway. I’m so weak.

I steeped it for about 20 min(I got in the shower and forgot about it), but it didn’t hurt it at all. I actually really enjoyed the taste, both warm and later when it cooled. I can really detect the melon in with the mate. I’m surprised how well they work together. The hibiscus is really subtle, too, not overly tart the way it can be sometimes. I also liked the fact that it doesn’t need any sweetener added.

Overall, a surprisingly good blend.