Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Tea Granny Guide - Updated with Pictures

These days, the West Coast's unrelenting cold and darkness has me consuming more and more tea. Tea, my SAD lamp and my rubber-soled slippers get me through the darkness that is January in Victoria. I thought I would share a few of my favourite tea-related things that have been making me smile this month:

1. My beloved Bodum Assam tea press. It sits next to me every day, while I'm sitting at my computer under the fluorescent lighting of my home office.


2. My newly beloved Bodum double-walled tumbler, a set of which Chris gave me for Christmas. These cups are huge (more latte-sized than teacup-sized), which is fine by me when I'm drinking Earl Grey by the pot, and it warms my hands without burning them. (Bonus: it looks like you're drinking iced tea, because you're drinking your tea out of a tumbler, which then tricks your brain into thinking that it's summertime.)


3. All those teas that I got from Murchies while Lynnie was visiting, which have been on regular rotation for the month so far: Green Mango (one of their new ones), Murchies Afternoon, and Earl Grey. (Their Earl Grey is the best I've ever had. Poor Ky and Lyn got to hear the lady at the shop and I have a long and animated conversation about the glories of their Earl Grey tea.)


4. Making the aforementioned Earl Grey tea and then bringing some to Chris in his new Memories of the Future mug (from Wil Wheaton's CafePress store), while announcing the words on the side of the mug: "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." It makes Chris giddy, because he can pretend he's Jean-Luc Picard, and that cheers me up.


These things are keeping me sane, along with the fact that I'm reading Oliver Twist whenever I sit under my SAD lamp. (It's another way of tricking my brain: during my undergrad I only read Victorian novels during the summer. Oliver Twist + SAD lamp = my brain thinks it's summer outside.)

6 comments:

prairie nymph said...

we sell these really pretty loose leaf tea glass things (glass with etched flowers and silver accents) for travel and i always think of you when dusting the display.
have you ever tried those blossoming tea flowers?

Queen of West Procrastination said...

I have a few of them, and they are so lovely. (For some reason, I always find myself waiting for a special occasion to use one of them, however. I need to have a blossoming tea tomorrow.)

C said...

See? another reason why you need to move to ontario! it may be cold and snowy, but we had sunshine during the daylight hours! So weird to wear a parka and sunglasses. miss you!

Queen of West Procrastination said...

But that would have me even further from my family! Saskatchewan has more sunlight hours than Ontario, and I'm used to the dry cold.

Marc Vandersluys said...

Lovely post.

One thing: I'm pretty sure Twinings Earl Grey is the best of the Earl Grey's. I've never tasted anything like it.

Otherwise, lovely post.

Carry on.

Queen of West Procrastination said...

Marc: I completely agree that Twinings Earl Grey is fantastic (I bought a giant bag of it to keep in my office at school). However, Murchies has bumped me up an Earl Grey bracket.

(I don't know what I'm going to do whenever we move away from the West Coast.)