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I brought my sample of this into work as well; and an empty timolino (I was too rushed/horribly panicked to make my regular two timolinos of tea). When I was on break, I took advantage of the shiny, new electric kettle that my manager bought specifically for me and made this in my timolino at work.

I then drank it on the walk home.

I think this was better this time around; while I lost the flavour of the raspberry pretty much altogether, the Pu’Erh base was much more tolerable. It did taste oily, just really earthy/muddy so that was a trade off I was more than ok with. I don’t mind strongly earthy teas (which seems to be Pu’Erhs thing) – but I have a big issue with when it feels/tastes like I’m drinking an oil slick (and sadly that also seems to be a Pu’Erh thing). The orange was very rind like, but it worked overall.

So yes, I better cup! I could be right about saying this is the sort of tea that is an acquired taste and grows on you the more you have it…

I have one more cup left at work, maybe I’ll finish it off tomorrow.

I brought the whole pouch of this one to work with me so that, in addition to working on sipping down some less enjoyable teas, I could also enjoy the odd delicious cup of heavenly, liquid waffle goodness because that’s what this is; the orgasms of Angels whisked into batter which was then turned into hot, freshly baked waffles. Except tea – not waffles. But yeah… Don’t even judge my metaphor.

I mean, c’mon – who doesn’t want to drink angel orgasms? Crazy people, that’s who!

But in addition to having a STUNNING cup of this blend, I also passed the pouch around to my coworkers on till so they could see the loose leaf (none of them knew what loose leaf tea was) and smell the leaf. I plan to convert all the cashiers to tea drinkers! And with a Butiki tea as their (pending) first cup of loose leaf, this is going to be as cliche as it sounds like taking candy from a baby. SO easy.

I think tomorrow I’m going to bring in my Irish Cream Cheesecake and work on sipping that down at work too…

I just want to start my tasting note by letting everyone who was concerned know that today at work went pretty ok. I am thankful to still be employed.

It was a very shaky start, and I definitely got yelled at a little bit, but my manager Kyla was overall very reasonable and understood that what happened with closing was an amalgamation of a lot of things going wrong because of a lot of people, and not solely my or Hazel’s fault. She also helped to show us what had gone wrong, so that it wont in the future.

And then she left for the day; and left me/Morningstar in charge. Thank God that when we closed for the day all the cash/tills added up PERFECTLY; that definitely makes me feel better and I’m sure it will also help to reassure Kyla too.

Tomorrow I’m coming in three hours early, and I will be in charge of the store for the entire day; opening until closing. Please cross your fingers for me that all goes well like it did today. My manager wont be in the store at all tomorrow; so everything is on me. I definitely feel like, out of all the keyholders, I’m the one who is receiving the most responsibility, and I’m not really sure how I feel about that.

Anyway – this was my daily cold brew (20 hours). At first I thought it was great; cold brewing it definitely tamed the tart apple/hibiscus cider thing the hot version has going on, and the Pumpkin was a lot more noticeable – which is good because it’s kind of the most advertised component of this blend.

However, the more I drank the more it started to taste… Scummy? I don’t know – just really weird. Like some underlying flavour in the cold brew was building up gradually on my tongue to the point where it became just too much. Ultimately, I dumped the last third of this. I don’t have time for shitty tea.

In a timolino.

Just like with Cinnamon Bun/Monkey Bread, I felt the need to rescue this from the closet because it’s also often forgotten about when it doesn’t deserve that. It’s a really great blend!

This thermos worth was light on the mint and heavy on the fudgey vanilla chocolate – but it worked and was indulgent and I really enjoyed.it. Mental note to really appreciate my older Della Terra blends a lot more!

In a timolino.

I felt the need to dredge up some forgotten Della Terra black blends, and this made the cut because it’s been ages since I had it and I tend to consciously forget about it in favor of other blends, which is especially sad because this is really good – as evidenced by tonight’s cup of it.

It was all doughy, sugary cinnamon’ buns/spice cake and thick, glazey icing. Mmm! I really, really need to have this more often; especially since I have around 100g of it. Why do I forget about you, delicious tea!? Is it because you’re cinnamon/borderline chai and that’s a flavour I don’t love? Probably – but you’re not really a true chai anyway and you’re just so sweet.

Arghhh!

I don’t want to dwell on all the horrible cash mistake from this evening too much; instead I’d really like to review the rest of teas from the day like I’d normally do. I know that I’m going to have to “face the music” tomorrow enough as is…

So my tin of this is in the staff room right now with my tea set up; and I’m trying to slowly work towards finishing it off. When I got in today my manager Kyla had bought an electric kettle for her and I to use and that made me VERY excited. So on break tonight, I made some of this up.

Unfortunately I got distracted by Kyla teaching me how to work the safe; and this oversteeped so I only had a few sips worth. I couldn’t handle the bitterness of it; but at least it ate up SOME leaf…

I also met a guy named Eric today; we had a fun time talking about comic books and he seemed really goofy, and the kind of guy I could really get along with. More than anything, he really reminded me of my old guy friends from highschool that I haven’t seen since moving to Saskatoon.

What was really cool about him is that he’s a tea drinker! He had a stainless steal Timolino with him today, although he was being blasphemous and he had coffee in it. I told him I’d try to respect him anyway ;)

I’m really distraught right now, and just absolutely panicking and freaking out. I really thought the day would be alright; I had all good teas with me, and was well rested (by my standards), I had on my lucky earrings… This were supposed to go well.

However they didn’t. I mean, they really didn’t.

I should have known things were going to go poorly when I showed up and the first thing they had me do was simultaneously train four first time cash handlers on till all while they were consistently ringing in customers and dealing with MASSIVE hoards of people because it was the “grand opening” and we were really, really busy.

And then, it should have been an even bigger sign when they replaced those four new people with four MORE new people and insisted they just use the same tills as the previous four, without checking float balances or doing any of the proper cashing out procedures. It was a horrible, horrible mess. But I figured my manager would at least be staying to cash out with me and Hazel, because we’d never cashed out on our own before – and this is a completely new store so we don’t know all the store mechanics yet.

But nope, she went home at 5:30 leaving Hazel and I a supposed ’nother four and a half hours to run the store on our own. And of course, when it came time to close literally EVERYTHING that could have gone wrong with the tills/money DID go wrong. Three out of four tills were over/short; one by four dollars, one by thirty dollars, and one by just over one hundred dollars. And of course there was NO record of who used the till when or when/how the money could have gone missing. And we just COULD NOT find the money.

Then nothing else would balance, and we got horribly behind on the paperwork and everything became one bug clusterfuck. When we called the manager, she basically (in the most “coldy angry” voice told us to leave it and just go home). We left work after midnight; more than two hours after we were supposed to. We had NO support system and we so out of our leagues. Fuck fuck fuck.

I’m like 95% sure than when I come in tomorrow I wont have a job anymore. And you know what, if I was her I’d fire me too. Everything is/was fucked up – and we should have handled things MUCH better. I’m not supposed to start tomorrow until 1:30PM, but I’m going in at 7AM (fully not expecting/wanting to get paid) so I can, if nothing else, face Kyla head on and, hopefully show her that I am serious about working here and that I want to learn what did go wrong so that is NEVER does again.

My only solace is knowing that I’ve at least earned enough money to pay for April’s rent. So that buys me a little more time to find another job…

But hey, this cold brew was nice! So there’s fucking that…

Fuck.

Matcha buzz before work? Hell fucking yes.

I made this as matcha soda; but instead of my usual 1/2 tsp. of matcha I opted for a full 1 tsp. and skipped the pinch of sugar. Extra buzz and extra flavour can only be good, right? Turns out that’s correct; I’m feeling much more alert, and on top of that I think this is actually tasting better; more “cola” like – though still a little off. And by off, I’m mostly meaning grassy.

Also, I couldn’t resist: I took a “work selfie” today to “commemorate” my sorta first day working. Technically it’s the first day/grand opening of my new store, so that kind of counts right?

https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/t1.0-9/10155074_10202267130093605_1080906179_n.jpg

I’m wearing my lucky Swiss Cheese earrings!

Thought I was done with tea for the evening, but low and behold the clock ticks “3AM” and I wake up with an insatiable thirst for this tea! At least it’s bagged, so it made for a really easy to make/no effort cup, because I was so tired I doubt I could have measured anything.

But anyway; super cravings for this one! And then, once I have it, I’m sorta really let down by the flavour. This is my sleep addled brain talking, mind you, but it just tasted like “red”. The brain and body are weird sometimes, guys…

Apparently I was in a Pina Colada mood today; this was the second pineapple/coconut tea of the day, and it immediately followed Cancer from Nina’s Paris.

I actually had this pulled out of the cupboard for cold brewing, and DT’s Midsummer Night’s Dream picked out as a hot tea – but somehow the two ended up getting flipped, so I enjoyed this one tonight and will enjoy a mason jar sized amount of Midsummer Night’s Dream tomorrow at work. Spearmint is probably more refreshing for a work shift anyway.

This is so thick and lovely! It was definitely much better than Cancer sorry Nina’s. Also, I “indulged” a bit and ate a whole bunch of the sugar hearts, coconut shreds, and candied pineapple straight from the tin while this was brewing. Oops. Scribbles sent me a small package of this to “refill” my tin though, so I don’t feel that guilty, heh…