Cereal Tea

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Cereal Tea

There is a new “tea” craze happening and believe it or not, it has to do with cereal milk. As many elementary schoolers have found and continued into adulthood, one of the best things about eating a sugary cereal is not the sugary cereal itself, but the milk after you finish it. It is often a different color and tastes like sugar, artificial flavoring and happiness. So restaurants like Momofuku Milk Bar are pulverizing cereal, putting it in tea bags, and steeping the cereal in hot milk. Thus creating all the artificial flavoring joy of cereal milk sans the actual cereal. Fans on the internet are even making manifestations of cereal milk themselves, bagging and crushing up cereal to make their own tasty treat for those not in New York City or Ontario.

While it cannot be condoned to cannibalize tea bags as some people are doing, it is definitely an interesting concept. Whose to say real tea couldn’t be mixed in with this cereal tea? A black tea could pair very well with Frosted Flakes and a fruity blend could bring Trix to the very next level. Especially using hot milk, these could be very rich teas indeed and definitely an interesting sugary thing to raise a cuppa to.

 

 

Tea Recipe: Make Black Tea Bread

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I am a fan of bread and I became even more fan when my friend shared a recipe with me called ‘Black tea bread’. What’s even more amazing is that it’s so easy to make. Here’s what’s needed:

  • 6 gr loose Earl Grey tea or a tea bag Mr. Grey
  • 125 gram butter
  • 300 ml water
  • 125g granulated sugar
  • 150 g sultanas or similar biscuits
  • 275g flour
  • 1 orange
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 tablespoon of baking powder

How to make tea bread?

Preheat the oven until it reaches 180 ⁰ C. Make sure you have a large pan and grease it with butter.

Steep 300 ml of loose black tea or Earl Grey tea bags. Let it steep for 5 minutes.

Grate the orange peel and put it aside. Then press the orange. Add 300 ml of steeped tea, 125 grams of butter, 125 grams of sugar, 150 grams sultanas/biscuits , the juice and zest of the orange in a pan. Bring it to boil and let it cook for 4 minutes on low heat. Afterwards, turn off the heat and leave it to cool.

Add the baking powder, 275 grams of self-rising flour, salt and mixed spice in a bowl and mix it well. Then add the cold tea mixture to it. Mix it thoroughly again and pour the resulting greased baking pan.

Put the pan in the middle of the oven and bake for about 60 minutes until the bread. After the 60 minutes has passed, take it out and let the bread cool for 10 minutes, while it is still in the pan. Then take out the bread and allow it to cool for at least another 10 minutes. Cut the bread into the desired thickness and serve!

Have a Superbowl Par-tea

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Have a Superbowl Par-Tea

Last year, through Visa’s “#MyFootballFantasy” campaign,

“Green Bay Packer fan Kelly wanted Clay Matthews to drop by for a tea party with her daughter Atti, and Visa made it happen. Clay joined Atti and her whole family for a pink balloon-, treats-, and boa-filled tea party, then they all hit the gym”.

That is a great fantasy not only for Atti, but for Superbowl Parties this year. As Ali Rosen writes in her Huffington Post Article, there’s no reason you can’t bring some tea party class to your Superbowl party. You can cheer on your favorite teams AND much on a delicious tea sandwich. One great recipe comes via thirstyfortea.com in the form of football shaped tea sandwiches:

Buffalo Chicken Tea Sandwiches

Makes about 12 tea sandwiches.

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts, roasted

1/4 cup light mayo

3 Tbsp buffalo dipping sauce (I used Frank’s)

1 large celery stick, diced into small cubes

2 Tbsp grated carrot

3 green onions, green parts only, sliced

fresh ground black pepper

light squeeze of lemon juice

2 Tbsp crumbled bleu cheese or grated parmesan cheese

1 loaf rye or whole wheat bread

extra mayo for piping

wheat grass (optional, on platter for serving)

Equipment:

food processor

football cookie cutter (mine was 2″ across and 3.5″ long)

spoon

#3 piping tip and piping bag (or just a small plastic sandwich bag)

Directions:

1.)  Remove skin and bones from chicken breasts.  Tear chicken into large chunks, and place in food processor.  Process chicken until it is processed into small bits, then place into large bowl.

2.)  Add mayo, buffalo sauce, celery, carrot, green onions, lemon juice, and black pepper to the ground chicken and mix in.  Add bleu or parmesan cheese and lightly mix in.

3.)  Cut out 24 footballs from rye bread using football cookie cutter.  For each slice of bread you should get 2 football bread pieces.

4.)  Using the same cookie cutter, place one piece of football-shaped bread into the cutter.  Spoon about 2 Tbsp of chicken filling atop the bread inside the cutter, then press down with back of a spoon, making sure to evenly pack the filling down.  Place another bread piece on top of the filling, then use your thumbs to press down lightly on the sandwich while pulling the cutter up and away from the sandwich with the rest of your fingers.  Repeat this process for all 12 sandwiches.

5.)  Place about a 1/4 cup of mayo into a bag fitted with a #3 pastry tip.  Pipe one vertical line and three lines across in the center of each sandwich to resemble football stripes.  Place finished sandwiches atop cut wheat grass for a festive presentation and enjoy watching the game!

Your tea party level class doesn’t have to stop there- you can serve all kinds of tea alongside screaming fans in your living room. This isn’t to suggest you should have high tea in front of your flat screen, but to have fun with it. You can have a refreshing iced green tea, or your classic  Southern Sweet Tea. With the Superbowl widely known as a time where people throw back a couple of beers, you can make some really nice hard iced tea. Here, via Food Republic, is a Hard Sweet Tea Recipe:

Servings:1

Ingredients

2 ounces sweet tea vodka
1/2 ounce simple syrup
1/2 ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice
4 ounces fresh-brewed iced black tea
lemon wheel
Directions:

1. Shake all ingredients together with ice in a cocktail mixer.

2. Strain into a highball glass filled with ice cubes.

3. Garnish with a lemon wheel or mint sprig.

Whether you go for these recipes or not, implementing a little bit of tea into your Superbowl party could make it even more super. Or if you’re one of the non-partiers this superbowl, these are great recipes to make and eat while you watch the Puppy Bowl.

You Can Have Your Tea and Grow it Too

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You Can Have Your Tea, and Grow it Too

With more and more tea blends and infusions appearing on the market, some people are making their own tea gardens. According to this article, you don’t have to have acres of land to do it. As Sarah Wolfe reports,

“Tea gardens come in many forms, and don’t even need to be in the ground. Tang grows her herbs in a vertical garden hanging on a wall behind her restaurants, while other city dwellers cramped for space use pots and other containers. All you need is dirt, water and some seeds[...]Liversidge recommends easy-to-grow plants like mint, lavender or chamomile for beginners.If you’ve already got those growing, take a stab at other popular tea ingredients like coriander, lemon balm, rose hips, hibiscus and jasmine.Keep the plants in an area that gets at least six hours of sunlight each day, rotate them often and monitor moisture per directions on the seed packet.”

You can grow a lot of the ingredients to make your own herbal tea this way – in whether you put it in a pot or sprawling up a wall. After growing these herbs, make sure to harvest it in the correct way, as they are all unique. For example, chamomile needs to be cut at the base of their stems, not the top. Many of the herbs you would grow can be put in tea fresh, but drying them will certainly make them last longer and give you a better stock during wintertime.  No matter what, always make sure to store your ingredients in an airtight container.

While you can certainly grow the more herbal side of tea, or rather tisanes, in your personal tea garden, tea is much harder to grow. So for your Green Tea and Black Tea, you should probably leave it to professionals. Tea leaves aside, this is definitely an excellent way to personalize your tea, and who knows maybe you can make some of your own blends. Creativity in tea is always something to raise a cuppa to, so grow on tea aficionados or just buy your tea like rest of us.

KitTea to bring Cat Cafes to San Francisco

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Cat and Tea enthusiasts Courtney Hatt and David Braginsky are working to bring “cat cafe”s to San Francisco. Their aptly named business, KitTea, could be the first “cat cafe” to come to the United States.  Cat Cafes, as it turns out, are exactly what they sound like- cafes that serve tea and have cats around to interact with customers.  The KitTea website claims of their cafe that,

“Patrons will gain the therapeutic benefits spending time with cats (not to mention the entertaining aspects of playing with and observing the furry creatures!) while enjoying a healthy blend of exotic teas that are ecologically sourced from around the world”

Cat Cafes are popular throughout Europe and countries like Korea and Japan. Apparently you can order your favorite cup of tea and have quality time with a bunch of cats.  Hatt and Braginsky think that they can bring this business model to San Francisco.

KitTea to Bring Cat Cafes to San Francisco

Although it has been a concern that some of these Cat Cafes, called “Neko Cafes” in Japan, can be more harmful to cats than anticipated. There is the concern that the cats are over socialized and treated more as a commodity than an animal that needs love and care. KitTea, however, states that their primary concern is,

“ to provide its resident cats with a comfortable, healthy, and safe home where they are free to socialize with people or nap in a quiet, private “felines only” section. We plan to partner with a cat rescue to populate our cat family and manage adoptions. We’ll be limiting the number of people allowed in the kitty tea lounge at a time, keeping the space stress-free and more enjoyable for people and cats alike. For this reason, we will be using a reservation system”

When the business opens sometime this year, it certainly will be an interesting experiment for tea and cats alike. Many cat lovers certainly drink tea and it certainly is a niche that can be filled. Who knows? Maybe soon there will be cat cafes all across the country. Either way whether you take your comforting cup of tea with a fluffy friend nearby or not- this is certainly an endeavor to raise a cuppa to.

De-stress with Lavender Tea

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Life can be really stressful. Whether you’re a student trying desperately to keep up with course work that seems impossible, a mother trying to juggle multiple lives, a business professional trying to meet tough deadlines- stress can take a major toll. That can manifest in insomnia, unhealthy eating habits, and general fatigue that could even exacerbate the stress you already have. The good news is that while life has a lot of stress, tea exists. Through all the chaos, at the end of the day a nice steaming cup of tea can make it all better. One tea that does that in particular is Lavender Tea.

De-Stress with Lavender Tea

Even imagining the scent alone, evokes feelings of calm, not even thinking about the tea. In fact, Lavender tea is known in its calming effects to encourage rest and fight insomnia. It also helps with the nervous system and dealing with indigestion. It helps to relieve that anxiety and stress that so many feel. It can even help with those stress induced migraines. There are even claims that external use of this tea can help with cuts and sores. With all of these benefits, one can certainly de-stress with Lavender Tea. Especially with these cold January nights, it might be nice to have a cup of Lavender and take a break from stress. Just steep it in your favorite mug, add a little honey, maybe pop in a great movie and you’re off to the land of calm and serenity – at least for a little while.

 

This is How Tea Cups are Made in India

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I discovered this lovely video that will be very entertaining to watch. It’s a short film about tea cup makers in Kumartuli in Calcutta, India. The maker shot the video using a Canon 5D Mk II and GoPro Hero. Check it out below!

What I love about this video is that it has a fast pace and nice music that goes with it.

 

Starbucks Opening Teavana ‘Tea Bar’ in New York

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Starbucks, the global coffee giant is opening it’s first tea bar in New York, according to the Huffington Post. To industry insiders this doesn’t come at a surprise, as the company successfully managed to commercialize the coffee culture worldwide, it’s now planning to do the same with tea. In addition, this is a logical step after the company acquired about 300 Teavana shops.

The Seattle-based company says Teavana Fine Teas + Teavana Tea Bar will serve sweets and other foods including flatbreads and salads ranging in price from about $3 to $15. Drinks will include novelties such as a Spiced Mandarin Oolong tea, according to a preliminary menu. Huffington Post

starbucks teavana tea bar

There is absolutely no doubt that a company like Starbucks has the management talent and marketing skills in the beverage industry to pull it off and make Teavana expand rapidly. However, years of experience in the coffee industry could at the same time results in blind spots that Starbucks is not able to recognize in the tea industry.

What I find even more interesting is whether Teavana will successfully enter traditional tea markets such as Japan and China. One reason why they won’t succeed is the fact that there is almost no Starbucks coffee shop in Italy, the traditional coffee country. Will the Chinese and Japanese accept commercialized tea?

Tata Beverages getting India healthier with Ambassador Kareena Kapoor

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According to DNAindia, Tata Beverages has added a new selection of green tea to their variety with the infamous Bollywood actress, Kareena Kapoor. The leading beverage company released six different kinds of green tea to India targeting citizens to help them grasp the concept of a healthy living style! According to DNA India:

           The campaign has a catchy tag, “Inside waala snaan’ which explains the positives of making green tea an innate part of daily lives of Indians by cleansing toxic waste from the body.

Tata Beverages, Maker of Tetley Tea among other famous brands has begun a “get healthy” spree throughout all of India. The company has re-introduced six flavors of green tea to sell to the people of India to show them how a healthy lifestyle is completed.

Actress Kareena Kapoor has agreed to be the Ambassador of this campaign; as she follows a strict healthy lifestyle and is always on the lookout for new things to try out to keep her amazing figure. Tata believed since she is quite popular with most everyone, it would boost their sales dramatically.

Indians are mainly black tea drinkers; and Green Tea is an acquired habit for becoming more ‘fit’. Since green tea is mostly consumed for the healthy lifestyle and weight loss journey, Vikas Grover, VP of Marketing, believes along with this new release of drinks will come more consciousness from citizens about what they are consuming and how active they are becoming.

So, along with the newly released six different flavors, I think this commercial can be very effective for attracting consumers to purchase the product, and overall fully increase their health to a new level. Tata Beverages used a quite a bit of different marketing strategies in this campaign, such as:

  • Bandwagon: Convincing consumers they will all become fit like their friends if they drink this tea.
  • Endorsements:  They used a top Bollywood Celebrity for heightening sales.

These are just a few, among others that are well used in the ads. What do you think? Will this commercial be successful in the new launch of the products? Would you purchase this brand of tea? How effective were the strategies included in the commercial?