Mother's Day is Golden

Hello TEA Friends!

I'm treating myself to an extravagantly leisurely (read: "lazy") afternoon today, sipping an equally luxurious cup of Yunnan Gold, with shorts on, feet up and windows wide open. For the past six months, most of my time has been spent aiding and abetting in wedding plans for my son and now daughter-in-law. Next feature story will be ALL about the nuptials (and, so as not to hold you in suspense, it was beautiful!), but this weekend is devoted to getting caught up with all things that have been set aside for awhile.

It's actually rather fitting that I'm going back a month to Mother's Day. Now that I'm both a mother and a mother-in-law, it seems most appropriate to take a short trip back to the day that honors all moms. In the midst of the wedding preparation flurry, my son, Matt (aka "best man"), phoned me the day before Mother's Day as I was helping my other son, Rob, (aka "groom"), cut brush and trim trees on our property up north (aka, site of the wedding reception and ceremony) to suggest we go out to tea on the following Sunday afternoon.

I suggested the Goldfish Tea Room in Royal Oak. It had been awhile since I last stopped in this tea room (see BTS blog story, March 2, 2008) and I was anxious to go back for a visit. Their tea is wonderful and I knew Matt, and my daughter, Rachel (aka, "bridesmaid" - - and, okay, okay, not more "aka"), who joined us, would find this a pretty hip place to hang out. And, indeed, they did.

We started with a pot of Yunnan gold and a plateful of delicious, assorted pastries. The serving system is as casual and comfortable at the furnishings. The tea room folks prepare your first pot and send you off with a tray and timer. When the minutes for steeping are up, you pull out the mesh basket with leaves and let it rest on a wooden tray, which has long, cut out grooves to allow for draining. After you've enjoyed your first pot, you can go back to the serve-yourself counter, select the appropriate hot water dispenser for your type tea and reuse your tea leaves. We were told we would get at least two or three pots, but I think we squeezed in a fourth as we were in the middle of a heavy discussion of best books-to-film adaptations (A & E's "Pride and Prejudice", anyone?).


Goldfish Tea Room is a great place to sample excellent teas and spend a relaxing hour or two. Again, Barb's TEA Shop gives this tea room two gloved thumbs up! Hope you treat yourself to a little R & R this weekend, too.


Yours in tea and friendship, Barb

London Afternoon Tea in an Unlikely Place

Afternoon tea at Starbucks?!! Surely, Barb's TEA Shop has not exhausted all tea room visits!

Well, in answer to these questions, it's "yes" and "no", respectively. But, tea snobs, hang in there (rest assured, we draw the line at tea time served at McDonald's drive-through) and please allow me to explain . . .

Last weekend, to celebrate my birthday, my daughter and I were going to have afternoon tea together. Because it was the day before Easter, I thought some tea rooms may be closed or booked. So, late Saturday morning, I called what looks to be a very urban, very hip tea room in Ferndale to see if they were open. Although, I was told they would be closing early (6:00 pm) because of the holiday, they were, indeed, open now. Rachel and I were looking forward to trying out this newer tea room and sharing some quality chat time.

We got ourselves ready and drove down Woodward and turned west on 9 Mile. We found a spot in the public parking lot (remember to bring quarters when patronizing Ferndale) and made our way to the front of Karma Tea and Tonics. Only one problem - the door was locked with a sign taped to it that read, "Will be back at 1:30". It was about twenty after one when we got there, so despite the brief let down, we decided to sit on a sidewalk bench and wait. Meanwhile, the meter was sucking down our quarters while we were doing nothing more than watching for a door to open.

Shortly after 1:30, we looked back at the darkened storefront and, discouraged, decided to hold out no further. There was no indication if we'd be waiting another two minutes or forty, so we cut our losses and jumped back in the car.

Moving north on Woodward, we thought we'd check another tea room on the way back home, but they had a sign posted on their door as well - they were closed for the holiday. No misleading message there, so we were left to consider our few remaining options.

Rachel suggested Starbucks. She had been to one near campus lately and knew they had enhanced their tea and food offerings. We were guaranteed they would be open and what they may lack in tea room ambiance and other delicate accoutrement's, they would make up in surety.

We swung by the familiar Starbucks sign and, seeing cars in the parking lot, and no sign posted on the door, we ventured in. I requested a London Fog Tea Latte made with Tazo tea. To borrow from Starbuck's own description, it's a black tea "with citrusy Italian Bergamot and a hint of lavender. Sweetened with vanilla syrup and topped with steamed milk and velvety foam".

I must say, not too bad at all. Accompanied by a Starbucks scone and my college sophomore across the table, I had a very enjoyable afternoon tea. Not exactly London or Ferndale, but convenient and quite tasty. And, you have my word, if Barb's TEA Shop's next tea time visit is to White Castle, I will voluntarily retire my tea etiquette consultant status.

Yours in tea (no matter where!) and friendship,

Barb

Create Your Own "Stimulant Package" at the Office

Hello TEA Friends,

These days, many companies, including the one I work for, are looking at ways to cut costs. One of the more insignificant perks on the chopping block is the familiar and taken-for-granted coffee station. You know, the standard commercial pots and generic prepackaged coffee and tea bags that have been around since we moved to an industrialized nation (and, sadly, often tasted like they had been around that long, too).

Faced with a challenge, many folks are getting creative and resourceful in filling this now unmet need for caffeine. In the office I work in, some of our java brethren launched a "coffee club" last year, just before the official plug-pulling of the company-sponsored supplies. Each week someone was responsible for bringing in a new package of grounds - the only condition: it had to be better than the generic fare that was already there. Few found this difficult to meet.

Borrowing from this great idea, my friend, co-worker and fellow tea enthusiast, Christine D. , suggested we start our own club, but, with (how anti-climatic!) tea. Knowing we'd seen others with the recognizable string-and-paper- tab dangling from their cups, we figured there were at least a few like us who might want to start an exchange.

One office e-mail later, we had almost a dozen members the first day, and one third are gents. Cost of entry is a box of your favorite tea. Of course, being practical and a friend to Facilities, we have to stick to teabags, but we take comfort in knowing over 90 per cent of England's tea drinkers use them daily. If it's good enough for our friends across the pond, it's certainly sufficient for us to take back to our cubes.

We've had a great variety brought in, including herbal, fruity, green and black teas. It's interesting to see the different personalities and what tea they bring: one member brought in Tazo"Passion" and another brought in Tazo "Calm" (I'll let you decide who you want to sit near in the next staff meeting).

We continue to grow in numbers and we're finding with with the variety of tea and enthusiam we bring to the table, we're a pretty good team. As we all know, there's no "I" in team, but there is "tea".

If your office hasn't started a stimulant package yet, we highly recommend it. And, when you do, we'd love to hear about it.

Bringing in the New Year with a Bit of the Bubbly

Hello TEA Friends!

I know, it isn't exactly the "New Year", but the "bubbly" I'm referring to isn't the effervescent, golden-hued adult beverage, either. No, the drink I rang in the second month of 2009, was the trendy curiosity that I've been anxious to try ever since I heard about it a few year's back - bubble tea!

Bubble tea is an unlikely combination of black tea, fruit juices, milk and "pearls", the little tapioca drops that fall to the bottom of the glass likes rows of miniature cannon balls. It's an interesting, if not necessarily appetizing, look, to be sure.

As you might suspect, this drink is more popular with the "younger set" and by that, I mean college kids. My college sophomore daughter, knowing that I'm always up for a new tea experience, suggested we visit "Bubble Island" in East Lansing a few weeks ago and I couldn't wait to go.

Bubble Island is a growing franchise on college campuses and this particular "tea room" has resided on Grand River, hub of the local campus retail strip, since 2004.

I ordered, I believe, a passion fruit drink, and Rachel having sampled bubble tea before, opted for her drinks "sans" pearls. I think that may be my choice in the future as well. The drink was sweet and tasty, but the gummy bear spheres that slid up my straw when I wasn't paying attention, were chewy, and by my fourth slurp, a bit annoying.

Bubble tea originated in Taiwan in the 1980's and began as a fun treat for the little ones. It made it's way to California where it proliferated like Starbucks, with a bubble tea outlet on every corner. Today, it's found a welcoming home on college campuses and continues to be a popular drink with the same folks who are tutoring us on Facebook.

And in that vein, I sometimes feel for my kids - their culture and fads get invaded by us baby boomers like our entitlement generation has approached so many other things. We invade their music, their movies, their TV shows and, yes, even Facebook, as our territories leaving them little to claim as their own. In this instance, however, I surrender to you this bubble tea. It belongs to those with a "refined sugar palate". I still prefer my tea in a china cup and my pearls around my neck, but, thirty years ago, I would have given this a mood ring-adorned thumbs up!

Yours in TEA and friendship,

Barb

New TEA Video from Barb's TEA Shop!

Hello TEA Friends,

Happy New Year from Barb's TEA Shop! We are looking forward to another exciting year of tea events with you. To kick off 2009, we created a new BTS video with the talented folks at M-1 Studios of Royal Oak.

So, please put the kettle on, take a tea break with us and enjoy our new video.

We'll look forward to sharing another cup of tea with you real soon!

Barb

Holiday Boun-tea Anything But Routine

Hello TEA Friends!



I am trying to prolong this unusually sunny winter Saturday afternoon by having a second cup of Marriage Freres Darjeeling Princeton which notes on the label, "finest daytime Darjeeling". Even though the sun is starting to set, I'm going to use all resources available to extend the last weekend of my holiday vacation before the alarm gets reset Sunday night for the routine 5:30 Monday morning wake-up call.


This year, I saved up enough vacation time to take over a week and half off between Christmas and New Year's Day and it was the best mix of holiday hustle and extreme relaxation that I could have ever anticipated. We saw more family, engaged in more sporting activities, watched more movies, ate more home baked goodies and took more naps than should be legally allowed for anyone over four weeks old.

We launched our holiday extravaganza with the now traditional Christmas Tree Tour, where we make a few stops to my aunt's and a few of my brothers' homes (the latter of who join us at our final destination) to enjoy their decorations, some season's goodies and a cup or two of Christmas cheer. Last stop is our home, where we dine on pizza and eggnog before the yuletide treasure bath. Gift exchange culminates in a family board game my son Rob and his fiance, Karyn, created last year. It's a hilarious hybrid of Candy Land and Festivus, where the airing of family goofiness can earn you points. The winner gets first choice from the gift trove of dollar store collectibles, bookstore gift cards and lottery tickets.

The vacation fun continued Christmas Day at Rob and Karyn's. They hosted their first holiday brunch for both families and we had as much fun as we did on Thanksgiving - even without the tournament card playing!

Then we enforced mental shut-down for a few days at Pemberly Pines, with the exception of one side trip to the wineries in Traverse City. Here we met up with Karyn's family and friends to conduct some "research" for the upcoming wedding. After that, we did nothing more than read books, watch DVD's (including the original A & E's Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth!) and nap. Although, we did venture out into cross country skiing with "new" skis Chris obtained through Craig's list. We all took shifts in sharing the two sets of skis and boots and burned off some of the Paula Dean's chocolate mint brownies and walnut chocolate chip cookies we brought up for noshing.

It wasn't lost on me that the history channel was running the story of the seven deadly sins throughout my holiday break. Seems like every time I flipped channels, I'd hit "gluttony" and "sloth" - usually while I was sitting in one of our recliners, feet up, eating one of Paul Deen's brownies. But, I knew my days of indulgences were temporary, and so enjoyed it all knowing the discipline of the usual routine was just around the corner.

So, like Bing, I'm Counting My Blessings: family, togetherness, good friends, tea and non-tea related gifts and the good fortune to return to a schedule that makes an almost two week vacation possible.

Yours in tea and friendship,


Barb