Garden Sampler

I’m trying to create a new tea for the Spinach Chive, but it keeps bringing me to that “kettle was left on” page. Argh!

Anyways, I got this as a sample from the NYC Coffee and Tea Festival. I was really intrigued and hopeful about this since I do love soup and the idea of having soup whenever I want sounds pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I don’t much like this. There’s a reason why I rarely cook with dried herbs. They don’t taste good to me. The concoction here actually does taste like a soup made from bouillon cubes, but it also has that bitter medicinal quality dried herbs have.

Anyway, I definitely taste the chive. The spinach is a milder flavor. I think I would be pretty interesting to use in cooking, maybe. But I wouldn’t drink it straight. Maybe good as a base for a potato soup?

Thanks, Nicole_Martin for a packet of the Spinach Chive Flavor!

Good Golly Miss Molly this was salty! I felt like I was drinking soup created with too much bouillon. And I like salty things, but this was just a bit too much after the first couple of ounces. If I have this again, I will have a very small cup of it at one time.

I LOVE spinach. It’s my second favorite veggie next to potatoes, so I was excited to have a spinach tea. This was heavy on the chives and onion, so the spinach and green tea was kind of lost to those flavors. At one point the chives were so strong my eyes actually watered! -And yet I kept drinking it…

This makes a nice soup broth (though I would add some more spinach and maybe some rice to it), but as a tea? I dunno.

So far we have only tried the Broccoli Cilantro and the Beet Cabbage- but I am seriously surprised that it was more pleasant than I expected. Further reading explains that the beet has cloves in it and the broccoli garlic so it feels a bit more like a soup from the expanded flavors circulating your tongue. I did notice that the garlic stuck a little- if you are headed to speak with people heads up! Savory is key here- but not bad.

I’m trying the spinach chive right now. This is more broth than tea, and of course I’m sure I could just as easily make some broth without paying the hefty fee. Sometimes on cold days, I like to make a kettle of green stuff and drink the broth throughout the day.

It’s not bad, but do the extra ingredients add anything? In addition to the obvious, this one has dried lime, dill, onion, decaf green tea, coriander, turmeric, and garlic. Mostly, it tastes chive-y, with a note that reminds me a little of a sour cream chive baked potato. Perhaps the lime adds a brightness/sourness that contributes to that.

I’m certainly enjoying drinking it; a broth made from scratch would be better and cheaper, but is a little harder to carry around in your pocket.

I would drink again. I’m not sure if I’d pay as much as they want for the privilege.

This is a review for the Spinach Chive. I received it as a sample at the Coffee and Tea Festival. It has a variety of dried organic vegetables and decaffinated green tea. The instructions recommend you steep the tea bag in boiling water (covered with a lid) for about 10 minutes, then for ultimate flavor, gently squeeze the bag to extract more liquid. As for the taste, it was…interesting. Of course, you went into it thinking that it would taste strange, due to the spinach, chive, garlic, and the other vegetable-based ingredients. But it wasn’t bad! I like to think of this as a vegetable-based tisane. Even though there is green tea in this blend, it’s not a predominant note. Dry, it smells like spinach and a blend of Italian spices. In the cup, you can smell the spinach and chives. And taste—well, spinach water with a hint of garlic on the finish. I wouldn’t write this off entirely. I can totally see the benefits of a savory tea as a cooking mechanism. Feeling sick but can’t be arsed to get veggies into your system? Want to cook some veggie broth but you don’t want purchase a carton of vegetable stock or buy bullion? Then get this! This would be a good enhancement to any savory dishes you are cooking in your kitchen.

My very health-conscious and very kind coworker gave me three different Numi Savory Teas, saying that she was excited about what a healthy new kind of tea this is. I was certainly skeptical about the very idea of savory teas, but the Spinach Chive blend is actually hitting the spot for me this morning. It smells like a lovely soup, and i thought i’d be tempted to put salt in it and think of it as a broth, but it’s actually quite nice to sip without anything added to it. It isn’t nearly as weird as some of the chamomile blends i’ve tried, and i’m really looking forward to trying the other two flavors i was given.