American Tea Room

LOVE this. Chinese black tea and roses? Two of my very favorite things. Plain Chinese black tea is perfect. And I need something strong to balance out the 5 cups of coffee I drank yesterday while waiting for my biscuits and gravy. I managed to eat Chinese food and go to the cafe, and lots of beer, but no running.

Watched new Sherlock episode last night before bed, so couldn’t drink John Watson tea at the time, but while I very much want to daydream about Sherlock today, it’s hard to not think about Teen Wolf. Maybe by the end of the day I’ll come up with some truly awful Sherlock/TeWo crossover fic idea from hell. Maybe just werewolf!John, which is already a thing.

i chose this for breakfast because today is the return of Sherlock.
Sherlock lives! i’m so very looking forward to the new episode.
also Sherlock’s birthday is supposed to be this coming Monday i think.
so get ready for the months of fanfic blabber to follow!!
also i love lapsangs.

i like puerhs a lot, and i love coconut and chocolate, but something about this tea was a bit to chai for me?
i’m gonna definitely have it again and maybe add some milk and agave. i bet it will grow on me. it probably just wasn’t really what i was in the mood for is all.

first tea of the day, and i loved it. LOVED it.
simple and yet such a heartfelt warming tea. might have another pot right now.
i feel sensitive today and think i need it :)

tea log # 590. i’m totally gonna write and drink 10 more teas.
totally.
new year here i come!

even more of a side note,
i know you’re not supposed to ever talk about money, politics, or religion.
but steepster is such a kind and friendly and still kinda generic arena that maybe it’d be okay to share the fact that, as of right now, i am completely out of debt. no credit card. no student loans. no utilities due. no large looming costs on the horizon.
i may not have a car or a house or much savings, but along with the meaningful relationships and bonds in my life, plus my health and also art to experience, i now blissfully have a certain amount of freedom that having no debt can offer me in the coming year.
i feel insanely grateful. i mean, i worked really hard, but i still feel like it involves a certain amount of luck too.
(i work hard to be good, and i fail sometimes, and i also beat myself up too much, but i try to repair and fix it all whenever possible. my heart my heart.)
i just hope that i am deserving of this new development during the year to come.

interesting…. american tea room, what exactly are you doing? if i don’t miss my mark ifjuly is in a sassy mood and is deliberately choosing provocative samples to send my way, lol!!!

first, this did NOT look like an oolong to me…. green curls made me think think of another sinensis. second, it smelled very much like bakery coconut. meh. we would see.

what this blend is is GREEN!??!!!! a lightly roasted tasting green-esque tea, NOT a bakery coconut (the smell was lying) more like a green/fresh coconut! light but nutty. not overpowering…. the coconut has a round taste as opposed to the stabbing sharpness that any green fruit has the potential to have.

there is an indefinable floral that is very mild. as it cools, the coconut itself takes on the toasted flavour.

hmmmmm….. american tea room and ifjuly being sassy in a tree!!!

don’t know if i’d buy, but it caught my attention!

yesterday i went to dinner with two other tea drinkers. they are ladies who like white teas and green teas and rooibos more than me. so i did this awesome thing where i packed up all the pooibos (HAHAHA TYPO! i’m keepin it) and a a few greens i didn’t need anymore into my little tea share bags and gave them both samples and they loved them!
win win!!
they get new teas to try and enjoy for free, and i get to enjoy a brilliant beautiful cleaned out tea stash for the new year!!
i freakin love my tea stash now! so very beautiful.
i could close my eyes and pick almost any tea and drink something i’ll enjoy.
and that’s how things should be eh?
less rooibos in 2014.

the lemongrass saves this rooibos blend.

i do love this tea. this ATR blend was a game changer for me~ i had thought previously that i just wasn’t big on fruit teas? nope….. PEACH TEAS. apricot is a whole other story!

i love the depth in this one. i am persuaded that someone has brutalized an apricot on my behalf into my teacup =0)… and it makes me smile! (horrible, i know, but there it is).

so glad i finally have a full sample of this beauty!

hey, WOW! first off, thanks to ifjuly for the ninja tea delivery today! it was totally unexpected and wound up being very funny…. ifjuly, in an effort to protect the tea from the elements and ghastly weather, taped everything up to a point where my wrecked hand just wouldn’t do it, lmao!!! i wound up shredding the packaging because i wanted to know what was in there!!!!

the brilliant ifjuly taught me something new about my personal preferences (not something easily fit inside a parcel!) apricot in a tea is fine by me, but peach tends to come off as annoying! NOTE TO SELF!!!!!

the dry blend is bright and colourful. it has a lovely deep smell of dry stewed apricots. i’ve never had saffron, so i can’t say how it affects the blend, but there is an element in this tea that is unfamiliar but not unpleasant.

light, sweet, smooth, deeply apricot….. i haven’t had an abundance of good experiences with american tea room— this improves my opinion!!

thank you so much, ifjuly!

wow what?!??!!?
i might actually like this rose tea!
good job ATR. something about this tea is a bit more of an earthy rose perhaps. or could be the black base. either way, i might consider it my favorite rose tea so far. (don’t be mislead though, cuz in honesty rose teas really aren’t my thing. not my preference.)

i drank this last night too. the last day of 2013.
getting individual cups in my belly so i can start the new year with 600 teas tasted. this tea was # 597.

a fine enough caramel tea. simple.
not really a strong flavor at all. and not very sweet.
i bet it would benefit from some agave and milk.

Backlog. At some point I’ll log teas the same day I drink them!
Had this with breakfast the other morning, and it’s still so, so good! Yummy, chocolatey, amazing. Finished off my sample from MissB, now it’s on my wishlist!

Thank you MissB! This was just as delicious as everyone makes it sound, and I am totally loving it!

Bright citrusy rooibos, I will miss you! (160)
And someday, eventually, I’ll make an order for American Tea Room.

I’m watching Supernatural 4×15 right now and, OMG. These brothers.

These brothers need to stop lying to each other. I get the impression that this will be a constant for the entire show.

This was another tea from Sil! I think I agree with her that while it’s a very nice lemon rooibos, it’s not quite as nice as the one from Della Terra!

I’m happy to have tried it though. :)

This tea is just perfect

So before I go to bed, and while I’m wating to see if TK will actually stay in bed or if she’s just gonna get up and bolt out of her room at mach 9, I like to stand by my tea cupboard and pick out a tea for tomorrow. Something nice that I’m not drinking for a sipdown, but because it’s a real treat that I love. It’s a nice calming ritual.

That is, until you forget what tea it is the very next day! I spent about half my bus commute trying to remember what tea I had brought with me and trying to visualize where I’d grabbed it from etc. No idea. But then I looked at it and saw the almond chips and KNEW, just KNEW it was Brioche.

What a treat. Yes, I love this tea. And I appreciate everyone who has sent me a sample of this one! Miss B, VariaTEA, Sil and possibly others?

This was a quick and obvious sipdown as I get so excited about this tea that I MUST HAVE IT immediately. I’ll miss it, but it’s one less baggy floating around my collection, making it untidy. :P

(file that under weird reasons to drink a specific tea)
Thanks again MissB for surprising me with this!

MissB surprised me with a few cups of this one, so I knew I had to have a cup today. Sadly I over steeped it and it was a little too strong (but still good). American Tea Room has a sale on now where you get 2oz of Brioche for free if you spend $30 but aside from Brioche there’s not much else there that’s tempted me yet. And I’m not spending $40 (w/shipping) on “free” tea. :P I"M NOT FALLING FOR THAT AGAIN.

Also, I have a well stocked cupboard.

This is gone and sorely missed!
Back to my shopping list for you!

Oh, Thank you BrewTeallySweet for the surprise sample! This has been on my shopping list for ages and now I’ve finally got a cup to try!

It smells like, OMG. Like…. just OMG.

(Sorry. That’s probably the best that my brain can do today)

But this tea deserves better I suppose. It tastes like fresh pastry from the oven, warm and gooey and sprinkled with cinnamon and other spices. There’s a touch of almond too and while I’m usually not excited about nuts, this just works perfectly.

I understand what the fuss is now.

Ummm, so I’ve been very derby lately. This is from sil but it is apparently also the same one that MissB sent me recently. I sucked that down mega…I was in a mood and needed consoling and this did it. But I didn’t realize when I asked for it that it was the same sil was sending. I also sorta forgot that she was sending any. This is not as bad as handing my tumbler to ShayneBear yesterday to have him sniff the contents, saying it was the Nutmeg Cream from Butiki, only to realize after he left that I had filled my tumbler with water before refilling with more NC from my Timolino. So yeah, I handed him water to sniff, which of course didn’t smell like anything, really, just faintly of the NC.

Go me!

Anyway, made this this morning as I promised a friend I’d help her with some work today (arranged one of my days off this week for today) and I had to be at her place at 6am. Ouch. Not fun on a day off. But I was done helping her at 2:30 and then she took me to Noodle Box for lunch since Coras was closed by the time we got there. So this was my tea today.

And like last time, though I apparently neglected to make a note, I loved it. It is soooo good. I may need to order some. Cinnamon and almond…how can it be bad?

Yeah…it can’t