today's tea... sunday, february 27, 2011

I totally just wrote 1022 as the date when I was titling this. I think tea wasn't even known to the west then--which is a very sad thought.

Anyway.

Today we have: Kwai Blossom Oolong.

I got it from one of the coffee shops in town, and I don't think they sell it anymore, which makes me sad because it's a nice one. Oolongs are never bitter in my experience, and this one has a nice golden-brown shade. The blossoms are very subtle-- just a little floralness in the background. When it was new, a teeny-tiny bit of fruitiness, but that seems to have passed The Way Of All Things.

The leaves have the characteristic look of oolong: super-crinkly when dry, big and not-quite-black when steeped. I usually use about a palmful of leaves for my favorite teapot, and these leaves open up a lot more than, say, the average black tea I have. Not as much as Panfired Green or Dragonwell, though.

It's a lovely, mellow oolong, good for frequent drinking. I think it makes me have to visit the bathroom more than the average tea, though, so maybe not for frequent drinking on road trips.

link: og_news: Doctor Who Experience opens

og_news: Doctor Who Experience opens

There are times when I really wish I lived in the UK. Well, you know, a lot of them, for a lot of different reasons, but this is the newest one: The Doctor Who Experience, where you get to kick your own Daleks.

today's tea... tuesdsay, february 22, 2011

...is Mystery Pu-Erh! I found it in a jar on the shelf, and I don't remember where I bought it. Maybe at the herb shop? Maybe at one of the hippie stores? Who knows! But it has that distinctive crinkly look of Pu-Erh, and Pu-Erh is supposed to be good for you, so there you go.

It totally lacks that old-shoe / musty head smell that most Pu-Erhs I've sniffed have. Doesn't even really smell like tea. When the water first hits it, it smells almost chemically, sort of acrid, but after it brews some, it makes a nice dark tea that smells like traditional black tea and good warm earth ready for planting. Up close, it smells... a little sweet, and warmer, like wool blankets.

The taste is... different from usual tea. It's mellow and dark, but not bitter, a little musty-- but that might be because it's old; since I don't remember where I got this, I don't remember what it tasted like when it was new. But not unpleasant, and the leaves showed no signs of being bad in any way, so I'm going to assume this is what it's supposed to taste like.

link: MoveOn.org Political Action: Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women

MoveOn.org Political Action: Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women

Generally, I try to keep politics off my blogs. I'm not all that involved or informed about them (I generally let like-minded people tell me when I need to be worried about something, rather than trying to find the time and the patience to sort through it on my own), and I don't like when people cram politics down the blogs I read. So I will keep this at a minimum, but I think it's something that's worthwhile.

Look at this list:

- "1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that couldmake it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said.Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing toeliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up)."

I mean, it's all written as part of a petition, so it's slanted toward alarmism, but even if these things aren't pointed, the very fact that they exist in such widespread profusion indicates a fundamental problem with the Republican mindset: women, old people and kids don't matter. Taking care of the society doesn't matter. Bolstering education and access and health don't matter. So what does matter?

This is... well, if I take the writerly stance and extrapolate it into a novel, this is easily the start of a social apocalypse. Next comes segregation of the rich in enclaves that eat up all the resources, then riots and highwaymen, then mass murders and cleansings. Children who grow up without knowing how things used to be will be easy pickings for extremists of all sorts. The well-educated and better informed leave the country and set up in more stable, socially-minded countries. Everything crumbles. How is this better? How is starting something like this justifiable? If this isn't the point of the things on that list, what is?

So sign the petition, and spark a counter movement that stops this crap before it gets out of hand and we're living in a lawless wasteland. Or even just a cruel place where the poor die off and no one gets any help from the government that was meant to protect them.

spring has probably sprung

Last year, about this time, all the leaves started coming up and the peach tree started putting out flowers. The bees came back and it was pollinated, and we even got a little pea-sized baby peach... and then we had several last-minute freezes and the first leaves and the little baby peach all froze off. I'm leery of putting out the new things for the garden because of this tendency... I can't remember if it happened the year before because we didn't have the peach tree yet (her name is Melba), and I was late starting the garden because of various crazy, so I didn't have to worry about February.

I think the rose is dead. I'm going out at some point this week to lop off the branches that are definitely not alive anymore, and to see if I can find any livingness in the main stem and roots. If it is alive, I'll feed it tea and powdered milk and see if I can get it to flower this year. If not... well. I don't know. I'll be sad. And I guess I'll get a new rose bush and start over. The green rose I got to go with it last year never even sprouted, so I guess they're together in the Way of All Things.

I need to get to the Seed Vault (see: the huge collection of jars in my closet) and pick up the tomatoes and peppers and herbs I want to grow this year. Several of them won't be viable much longer, so I may as well plant a bunch of them.

I need to get new dirt, since the rains this winter washed away most of my bucket of reserved dirt, and it's probably mostly not good anymore, anyway.

I need to go through the seed catalogues and see what's neat and new that I can afford.

But later. I don't have time today.

today's tea... monday, february 21, 2011

+

Japanese Wild Cherry + Rooibos Tropica, both from Teavana ages ago. 

It occurs to me that 'ages ago' comes up a lot in my tea descriptions. I should go through and get rid of all the old tea, make note of what it was, and replace it. Except that old tea is still good enough to drink, and I've put a lot of money into it over the years. And I keep them all in glass containers in a dark corner of the house...

Anyway.

This is a fruity and floral tea. It seemed appropriate since we're suddenly is spring up in here. It does require a filter-- I have a cute little over-glass one that H brought back from China for me-- because the fruit floats and the rooibos doesn't ever settle. The addition of actual tea and the flavors of the cherry, cherry blossom and whatever is in the Tropica covers up the weird olivy-ness that I always seem to get from un-flavored rooibos, and you get the benefits of red tea and black tea. Yum.

and just like that, it's spring

I don't know if it'll last, but when I came out of the house this morning to go to work, it was spring. A classic Lobby on the Lawn* sort of day. The sky was clear, the air was warm, the flowering plum across the street from the school was in full bloom, dropping pretty white flower-petals like snow. When I got to work, the shrubs I lock my bike up next to were covered in little white flowers that smell like roses, and the place was practically humming with bees. I haven't seen a bee downtown in months, and now there's a million in one place. The buds on the mulberries are opening up into little baby leaves. The peach tree is budding. If my rose comes back, winter's done!

link: Letterboxing North America - Getting Started

Letterboxing North America - Getting Started

Another fun-looking hobby I probably don't have time for-- like Geocacheing, but with home-made signature stamps.

Also here: http://www.atlasquest.com/

link: Machination: A Game of Evil Genius by Signal Flare Games — Kickstarter

Machination: A Game of Evil Genius by Signal Flare Games — Kickstarter

Kickstarter is an amazing thing, and I think I really want to fund a little of this game. It sounds really cool, it comes from people whose work I like, and it's being part of croudsourcing in a good way.

I made soup today

It wasn't really anything like the Minorcan Clam Chowder recipe I based it on, but it was good, and it went like this:
3 sandwich-sized bags of frozen turkey broth from the Thanksgiving turkey
1 can of Italian-style chopped tomatoes
1 can of red beans and their sauce / juice
1 can of baby potatoes, chopped
about a cup each of frozen peas and frozen corn
2 big scoops of Sofrito
a palmfull of fried garlic (the kind in the jar from the asian market)
maybe two palmfulls of fried onions (also from the asian market)
some thyme, red pepper, oregano, salt, pepper
2 bay leaves
a teaspoon or so of sugar

Cook all this until it's boiling
Throw in enough chicken for everyone who's eating-- I just dropped the chicken breasts in whole and let the poach
Throw in a third cup or two of rice
Let the whole thing simmer until the rice gets that split look that rice in soup is supposed to have
Nom nom.


I'd like to add more veggies next time, and probably some fat of some sort-- cream or butter in at the end of the cooking. Maybe some cheese. But it was good like this, and a keeper as far as half-thought-out recipes go. Not bad for a house with basically no food in it.