I was sitting here chewing on a cookie I made like three months ago, which is a cross between hard tack and sour milk with rotten eggs, but as waste not want not, I was eating it and pondering London things like Twinings Teas.
They are expensive like most English things are except Altoids. Sort of like the Roo Licorice which showed up from Oz and is now 3 bucks a bag when it was 1 dollar for 12 pieces or something.
I am a tea snob, and do not write a great deal about my teas as it seems that things I purchase tend to not get restocked in stores or for some odd reason after I mention things I feel like I am poisoned, which is probably the case.
So I have been drinking this Twining Tea, which is hot and not like that Snapple horse wee or that Limbaugh Two if by Wee horse piss stuff, and it is Darjeeling or Indian tea.
Good Darjeeling is picked at the first bud or the second picking, and I know this as I have had this in a previous location and it was very good tea. My later bulk purchases as I make tea in a coffee pot to economize has been disappointing in exporters are passing off Darjeeling as third picking of the tea bush.
This Twinings is like that as it is really nothing to write home about. This is disturbing in it is expensive tea and the only reason TL picked it up, was it was the only Darjeeling tea there.
Lipton black and orange pekoe teas give my system a hard time at times, even though I do like that tea with lots of cream and honey in being too robust and tanin, but that is the point with tea and myself in tea is desert and not just laying there like plain white bread.
The reason I am writing this, is on an end cap years ago (an end cap is those display things in stores you are annoyed by) I picked up like 20 boxes of tea in little wooden sliding cases from some importer from Europe. I looked all over the internet for them, but could find no replacement for them and am upset about that, as each box of tea was 1 dollar.
The favorite was black current for my tastes, and all of the tea was Ceylon as this is where this product was turned out with slave labor in Sri Lanka. It is a wonderful concoction really and TL found a nice fruity tea last year which we partake of too which I will not mention as I do not want to get poisoned again.
Thing is Ceylon tea is about the nicest of teas in being like cheap beer without hops, as it is a weak tea. Do not bother me with green teas, as those things are disgusting to me in tasting like something that smells like the hind end of some animals digestive track.
If you like them, please drink them in volume and leave my teas on the shelves to be marked down to give away prices.
Oolong is of the gunpowder teas, meaning the dried leaves are not cut, but roll up and look like FFg gunpowder in the box. It is a quasi green tea and I will drink that as an alternative, but it ranks just below an Earl Grey which begins approaching the Lipton teas.
English Breakfast teas are about the same as Earl Grey so I do not see the bother of this, except it makes me yearn for an Orangarium which is what Thomas Jefferson had built to raise citrus. I would just try to raise tea, figs and other soft fruits, as I do love figs for some reason and growing my own tea would be a nice thing.
I do have a bag of goldenrod leaves I picked, which was sort of an interesting tea that I recall gave me diarrhea so I did not drink it again, but I still have it like my bag of catnip tea I picked. Picking your own tea and drying the leaves is amazing in how cheap it is.
I still would like some non poisonous cheap black current tea, as I like fruity things. I really like raspberry flavored coffees with cream too. That makes me quite disturbed in I have tried establisment coffees like at 7 11 and find green colored coffees that make one wince for being so strong not what coffee was meant to be.
Mom always put a raw egg in with her coffee grounds mixed up, and it mellows the flavor a great deal. I do not believe that drinking coffee should give one acid stomach. I had forgotten what coffee was as I make coffee and produce a mellow cup which does not make one cringe.
My lasting stash has been twice fired French roast, which I think I will leave as it is too pungent. If I had my preference coffee should have a hint of vanilla with a raspberry flavor, with a hint of sugar and some heavy cream.
As stated, my drinks are desert oriented and not for killing slugs in the garden.
Coffee does not have to be a nasty as it is produced in American industry.
This is not about coffee, but about how over rated English products are. Twinings is not producing a tea which is of quality and yet they are exporting this stuff as quality. That is a shame as people if they actually tasted a quality tea would never go back to it no more than Starbucks coffee.
There are things not more pleasant than entering a kitchen on a cold morning to the scent of coffee percolating on the stove. It is a lovely and inviting experience. The same is true with a lovely cup of tea before you, with wisps of steam coming from it as you pour in the cream and sugar.
The English snobs bother me in tea, in their recipes are 1 spoon for the pot and 1 for each person. In my little percolators I make a very strong tea without any bite, but that has a viscosity which feels on the tongue velvety smooth and heavier than water (that is the major fault of America coffee is they are all watery where real coffee percolated should have a heft to it in feeling like a 2% milk on the tongue.)
Where was I?
Yes with an English tea pot, I could make 20 cups of tea, where they only get 4 to 8. That is not economically satisfactory and steeped teas never have any richness of body in them, but are often weak as water.
I still would like an English coffee pot in the Wedgwood type I have a few pieces of as my family was ex poterized by those billionaires, along with appropriate cups, but for me I still prefer my tea in a Comet aluminum percolator, and drunk from a quart tin or Indian stainless steel cup.
Oh I found too as a child that Lipton tea which was left over, when poured on citrus seeds planted, sprouted them wonderfully well. More million dollar knowledge from the Lame Cherry.
See that is what is missing in the people with money. They have money and think that makes them sophisicates like Obama and the Mrs., when having money only amplifies the lack of taste as Rush Limbaugh has in huffing on cigars. Yes one can huff on mild mannered cigars at breakfast and the char sticks at 8 pm, but where is the food in all of this?
If I desire smoked fish or meat, I eat it as such with relish, and do not need my food all tasting like salmon no more than I care for dumping wine into everything leaving a ghastly wine flavor in my meat or veggies.
If I desire wine, I drink it. If I desire acidity, that is what lemon and Balsamic vinegar are for.
I will not start on Balsamic vinegars as I am a snob on them too and like tea make up one of the food groups.
People with money have no taste literally. They could not recognize a cookie baked with correct ingredients to a Thanksgiving turkey baked with chemicals.
TL amused me recently in we had been eating some economy type bacon in a production run, and I had a package of the market brand from a store and TL mentioned, "That bacon all I could taste was corn and was like cardboard".
As you require being informed, Starbucks coffee is bitter and through the roof caffeine. It is not what coffee was ever meant to be, and yet all those people buy brand names and think that is what coffee is supposed to taste like.
Starbucks has one purpose and that is legalized upper sales to people needing to keep awake in being run to death.
See you need me to set you straight on these things, so you stop looking foolish. You know nothing of quality with your millions of dollars and waste what you have on designer things which are horrid.
That should cover the high spots until some person with money donates the 350,000 I am taxed too much for time, and can not completely civilize you to the finer things of life.
You have no idea what water is even supposed to taste like. All such a pity in your BMW's and bottled waters sloshing about the pavement.
Twining tea is unacceptable for the price and yet my black current elephant dung tea was worth much more than 5 cents a bag.
I still think I would like to be Squire of Ceylon, but wonder what to do with the people. I think I would build them a nice island off Ceylon with an attached underground tunnel, so they could commute in case of typhoon where I could gather them all and keep them safe from the storm.
I would call it Cey Lanka, the child of Ceylon. Put it on the Andaman side though as I just do not trust those Indians.....
agtG
