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Sipdown no. 23 of 2020 (no. 618 total). A sample.

It’s with a wistfulness that I sip down the American Tea Room samples I have left.

I rated this one particularly high, and yes, it deserves it. Yunnan is likely to be my favorite black tea forever — the richness, the maltiness, and here, the sweetness that reminds me of molasses. I was very sad when ATR went away.

And I’m sad that this is gone.

But the really important question is — did anyone ever find a substitute for Brioche? I still have a sample of that I really should sip down but if there’s no substitute I don’t know if I can bring myself to do it any time soon.

I went back to this last night because for two nights in a row, I cooked with turmeric and it seemed (whether this was placebo effect or not, hard to say) to really make my knees feel better.

One of the side effects of the pandemic and associated shutdowns is that I’ve discovered I don’t hate cooking. I actually like it, as long as I have all the ingredients I need. Not having the ingredients stresses me, as does going to the grocery store. Long story, but as an only child I spent a lot of time in grocery stores alone while my parents did the weekly shopping. I would go to the toy aisle (they had those back then) or the pet aisle and pretend I had a dog, and make a mental list of all the things I’d get for the dog. I never got a dog, but in an ironic twist, we just put down a deposit on a basenji puppy!

As an aside, having the ingredients makes me think of one of my recent Netflix love affairs, Midnight Diner. Really lovely little series.

Anyway, I hate the grocery store. I was pretty excited back in the 90s when Web Van came along, and I thought it was a gamechanger, but like a lot of tech startups it failed and nothing really came along to replace it until Instacart. Which is my new best friend. Yesterday I had them deliver a can of coconut milk, a can of tomato sauce, some cilantro, and a tin of baking cocoa (not for the recipe below, for no. 2’s mug cake obsession). It doesn’t get better than that.

Which allowed me to make this:

https://www.skinnytaste.com/indian-shrimp-curry/

The day before, I made this:

https://www.skinnytaste.com/turmeric-roasted-chicken-and-sweet-potatoes/

So right. Turmeric overload. I love Skinnytaste in case it isn’t obvious — really tasty recipes that aren’t highly caloric but are filling. The only thing I love more is Home Chef, which I credit for my new found love of cooking — thanks, Home Chef, for measuring everything for me and packinging up all I need, with clear, easy to follow instructions. And for not being delivery flakes and having recipes that taste healthy and nothing else, like Sunbasket, or that taste great but all taste the same, like Blue Apron. OK, that last comment might be unfair because my son was the one who picked the recipes for Blue Apron — he wanted to learn how to cook, but every recipe he picked was Chinese or Thai and after a while I associated Blue Apron with the flavor of soy sauce. End digression.

Start another digression. What is so hard about pronouncing turmeric? TUR-MER-ic. There’s a commercial that drives me nuts by pronouncing it tu-MER-ic. No R, accent on the second syllable. What?

In any case, I thought I would continue in the turmeric vein. My knees feel a lot bettter, but I still don’t love the taste of this blend, which given my love for all things Samovar pains me to admit. It’s not terribly flavorful except for a licorice note that sort of masquerades as mint. The citrus isn’t overly noticeable with age or luck of the spoon, but the turmeric is, and on its own, it’s not my favorite flavor. I feel the same way about cumin. It’s good with other things, but on its own, not so much.

Sipdown no. 22 of 2020 (no. 617 total). A sample.

This was another casualty of the combination project. I am going back to samples to sip down so that I can combine sample boxes. Only two left now, which is great progress.

I actually didn’t have enough of this to brew western style, which is what the situation called for, so I added some from a Harney sample (which is now very much within its own sipdown range).

I gotta say, I do love green oolongs. An excellent dark oolong is awesome, but the green ones are like being surrounded by soothing flowers. They make my mental state better just to smell them.

Brewed western, I didn’t notice the dairy quite so much, which is fine because I don’t love milkiness in oolongs. The slight butteriness was just the right amount.

Sipdown no. 21 of 2020 (no. 616 total).

Funny, I was thinking about chestnut stands in NYC again when I went to write this note, and I see I mentioned them in my original note.

My original note is pretty accurate in other respects as well except that these last few spoons were more chocolate than chestnut. And paper? Hmm. Yeah, I see what I meant — it’s a sort of very light woodiness that is reminiscent of paper.

What bugs me is that I wish that this was more of what I thought it was going to be. Nuttier, more distinctly chestnut. Part of this may be mental. I was incorrectly translating marron to hazelnut in my head. But it isn’t all mental.

While I’m often a fan of subtlety in tea, I wanted this one to be MORE.

Sipdown no. 20 of 2020. I intend to get to 21 to break the 20 curse.

I put the last of this into the fridge as a cold brew.

I think I was getting to this point last summer, but I think it is time for me to acknowledge that I don’t love pu-er.

I really like the idea of it, and I know that a lot of people consider it to be the only tea worth drinking. But it is hard for me to fit into my lifestyle.

I have been off of work since the Monday before Christmas. I’m having a full two weeks off during a pandemic. And I still seem to be running from thing to thing.

I run from exercise to meditation to cleaning out the kitchen cabinets, to cooking dinner, to… whatever is next. Even when I am trying to practice mindfulness, I mostly have to bring myself back from thinking about, in the immortal words of President Bartlet on West Wing, what’s next?

I feel like doing justice to puer takes more time and patience than I have. In looking at the samples I have left to sip down, I’m daunted by the puer ones and when I’ll have time to do them justice.

I might as well accept it. The tea I enjoy most is the tea I don’t need to spend a lot of time making. There. I said it.

Sipdown no. 19 of 2020 (no. 614 total). A sample.

I drank too much tea yesterday. It was a re-entry thing. I went overboard.

Today I didn’t drink as much. I had the last of the Mariage Freres Bolero and this.

I think the Bolero overshadowed my experience of this. That or it didn’t age well. In looking back at my original note, I see I was quite taken with this. But today it was borderline nondescript.

Definitely the Bolero.

Sipdown no. 18 of 2020 (no. 613 total). A sample.

Another sipdown from yesterday. It was yummy. It has that note that I associate with Yunnan black that is almost chewy in its richness and smoothness.

Looking back at my original note on this, I mentioned that I drank it western style despite the name. I did that again for the sipdown. Oh well.

Sipdown no. 17 of 2020 (no. 612 total). A sample.

Yet another 90 rated tea, I see. The fact that I happened to pick it was entirely random. I swear.

I sipped it down yesterday because I was making space. I combined a couple of sample boxes and to do that I needed to consume a couple of errant samples.

Looking back at my original note, I found this to be smoother than a lot of second flush darjeelings, and that was my experience of it this time around as well. It’s definitely one of my favorite second flush darjeelings — I see I have it on my wishlist.

Some day I will be out of lockdown. But I expect that to happen before I get out of tea lockdown, at this rate.

Sipdown no. 16 of 2020 (no. 611 total).

Another highly rated tea in my collection, and one that I am sorry to see go.

For most of its life in my cupboard, it was an add on to other things. I used it a lot for the “extra black tea” in the stovetop chai recipe. Now I wish I’d appreciated it more on its own.

I sipped it down yesterday. I had just a tiny bit left in the tin, and now I can repurpose the tin for something else. Not sure what yet.

It was a nice follow on to the Nilgiri from Teas Etc. that I also sipped down recently. The Yunnan in the blend was, of course, a plus for me. More detail in my original note, but in general it aged well.

Au revoir, mon ami!

Sipdown no.15 of 2020 (no. 610 total).

I thought I might be able to get in a few more sipdowns before the new year. I drank this one yesterday morning and again this morning.

Normally, I sip down saving the best for later — and I just noticed that this was one I rated 90. It deserves the rating, though I really tasted the apricot and cornflower more this time around. I didn’t really get mango, but that could just be luck of the spoon. It does have that lovely French thing going on.

So how did I end up drinking this one “out of order”? Because I am not observing the order. I’m just going with what seems to call to me at the time.

It’s sort of freeing. How have I been such a tea control freak all of this time?