Blooming Tea - Tuesday 4/7/2009

I bought a couple of blooming teas a while back, and finally got around to trying one of them. See? It starts out as a little bundle of tea leaves all tied up in a ball.


It's about an inch in diameter.



You add water that's not quite boiling and watch it start to unfold and slowly sink.



View from above.


Almost unfurled.


Hmm. Interesting. It's not as brightly colored as the picture on the jar it came out of led me to believe. Kind of a neat thing, partly to see the full tea leaves.

Flavor : minimal. I kind of wonder if these things don't sit in the shop for a long time, since they're $3.00 each or 2 for $5.00. Of course, I went for the deal and did the two-fer, and I'll give the other one a go.

p.s. It looks really disgusting when you take it out of the water. Like...on a level with road kill that has been knocked into a water-filled ditch and then retrieved. Don't look!

Across Town - Monday 2/23/3009

The other building at the corner of Hollywood & Highland. It has gargoyles.

I have to make a special trip to get good shots of those. Maybe with the right lens, from the balcony of the shopping mall across the street. These photos were all taken with my Samsung cell phone camera.

The Academy Awards show was done about a half a block from here last night.


Barrels of olives at Monsieur Marcel, Farmer's Market at 3rd & Fairfax.


Samples of the teas I bought at the tea shop in the Farmer's Market, on Braveheart's windowsill. I'm leaving them for The Doc to try. A Keemun, a Yunnan and a Lapsong Suchong.


Hanging out in the kitchen while Braveheart takes The Doc to the airport under sad circumstances. After years of staying here after our bi-weekly writer's group meetings, I am very comfortable.

As you can see.

Tea and Saturdays - Saturday 1/31/2009

I do love a pot of tea on a weekend morning.

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf's loose Chai is one of my favorites. There are lots of recognizable bits of spice in it, like whole green cardamom and anise seeds. I usually use two teaspoons of this and one of CB&TL's English Breakfast tea in my three-cup pot because I like a strong tea-ish brew.

Perfect companion to my Chapter 2 lessons in using Elements 7.

Figs and Tea - Friday 8/29/2008

I told my friend Toronto that along with not having to deal with holiday weekend traffic, an advantage of working at home today is that I feasted on figs and tea.

Her response?: "Where are you, Casablanca?"

Now that would make the day perfect. My ceiling fan was made of painted white plywood rather than reeds and I opted for air conditioning against the heat.

But the figs, oh my dears, the figs. Perfection in a fruit. What more does one need? It's all I ate all day.

How is it that I was unaware of the fresh fig until I was 35 years old and my brother had a tree in his Echo Park yard?

A newton is nice, but it doesn't hold a candle to the real thing, this fruit that feeds wasps and reveals secrets rivaling the most sparkling geode.

Figs and Russian Samovar tea that my mother sent me in the mail from exotic northern Indiana. Today I had a happy palate.

The New Hearth - Tuesday 3/18/2008

Almost everyone stops by on their way out of the coffee house. Niceties are exchanged.

I like seeing people straggle in before light. They have more time to talk to the baristas at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at this hour.

They have really excellent loose leaf teas here. I'm particularly enamored of the Chai.

I mix 2 teaspoons of CB&TL Chai with 1 teaspoon of English Breakfast in my three-cup pot on weekends.

If you like green tea, try the Gen Mai Cha...green tea with puffed toasted rice. It's a great afternoon pick-me-up instead of a snack.

The Big Valentine's Day Photo Shoot - Thursday 2/14/2008

My idea of a Valentine's Day sentiment.

Let's pause for a moment. Let's enjoy the sweetness of the day, any day, not just the one that's been chosen for us. Let's get to know each other better. What have you been up to? Tell me.




Then again. On the other hand. There might be some money to be made here. Here's my new line of parrot-centric greeting cards.

This one says, without ambiguity. I'm cute. I love you. What more do you need?




This one's moody and uncertain. I might love you. I would like to love you. I think.

Do you love me first?



I've had a change of heart. It was fun while it lasted. The party's over, babe.

O Frabjous Day! - Wednesday 12/26/2007

Callooh! Callay! She chortled in her joy.

One of the happy outcomes of my gallbladder surgery earlier this year is that I can now drink coffee again whenever I want!

I will never throw over my beloved teas, but it's wonderful to be able to say "yes!" when Hydra asks if I'd like a cuppa joe, java, mud, devil's brew.

I mean, coffee houses have been an important part of my life since I first found The Blue Mountain Coffee Company in Fort Wayne, IN during my first year of college. Hydra and I started sharing a table and the rest is history. I even worked there for four years. Coffee houses and diners are my second home, anywhere in the world.

As perfect as a pot of tea is as a writing companion, it's just wrong to sink a Hershey's Mint Truffle Kiss into an estate grown Assam or a winey Keemun.

But it is damn fine in Starbuck's Christmas Blend.

Christmas/Birthday Tea - Thursday 12/20/2007

Yeah, it would have been nice if I'd thought to take a photograph of this before I and my coworkers descended upon it like hyenas on voles.

Wow, was the food at The T Room in Montrose great! Most of us ordered the traditional tea and you could substitute other sandwiches from the menu. Mmm. The Lingonberry Chicken was surprisingly good. Watercress & cucumber may have been my favorite, with the Olivade coming in a close second.

Big pots of tea--we ordered the Noel blend and the Russian blend--on the table. Happiness. We celebrated Christmas and Momalisa's birthday. Food was wonderful, service was slow for our party of eight. It took about 20 minutes before they even brought us the tea, which came when the sandwiches and scones were ready.

My only food complaint was the fruitcake style candied fruit in the scones. I mean, yuck.

Everyone rose above the ominous fact that this is our last meal together for the foreseeable future. We will be working on kind of an on-call basis in January, a day or two a week maybe. I don't want to write about it.



The top of the Christmas tree, which everyone encouraged me to get a shot of... Scarily over-decorated for my taste.


Weens exhibits the classic tea room decorum one would expect of a lady. We're so proud!

[Hey, she reads this blog. She knew the risk she was taking!]




Looking up Honolulu Avenue from outside the T Room. Didn't get any good pix of the outside of the T Room. It's not terribly photogenic.


Weens pointed out this angel down the street, in front of an art gallery.

We went back to the office and opened our Secret Santa gifts from each other, and our gifts from the owners. Lovely cashmere scarves, all different colors. So soft and lovely.

I'm sleeping in mine.

Tea from Thailand - Tuesday 12/11/2007

A friend from 43Things sent me some tea from Thailand! I sent her flavored black teas and some mulling spices. The ones she sent are all herbal and very interesting.

This one's safflower tea. Interesting, huh? Kind of like a chamomile, but a nicer color, I think.

I thought it was a good idea to check out what exactly might happen to me when I sampled this. Here's what I found out online at Herb Palace:

• antiseptic
• abortifacient
• expectorant
• induces sweating
• inhibits tumors
• purgative
• pneumonic (helpful to the lungs)
• stimulates menstruation

Hmm, I won't be drinking the whole cup.

Pretty...Shiny... Parroty! - Thursday 11/15/2007

So this morning I took this photograph of one of my teacups to post over at 43Things, to show how well a recommendation for cup cleaning had worked. It was grungy and stained--not shiny at all--from being used at work and not really cleaned properly for weeks.

A little baking soda and dish soap made into a paste worked great at polishing it up without damaging the lusterware surface. Sweet!


But you know, things like paying too much attention to a teacup don't go unnoticed in a house with a well-adjusted African Grey. The first shot, in which he walked up and stuck his beak into the lens of the camera, didn't come out at all.

He finds it hard to believe that there's really nothing in this cup.

Meanwhile, today's my first layoff day. They have this program in California for people like me. You can be laid off part time and receive unemployment benefits for those days. So each of us at my place of employment will be laid off 1-2 days a week until the 21st of December. Then we have to use our comp and vacation days until returning to work on January 7th, if there is work to return to by then.

I have a goal over on 43Things to "Survive the WGA Strike." Which of course, I will. I have no fear of actually perishing. For me, surviving it in good health means staying productive.

On my layoff days I need to, minimally:

--write for at least an hour (not including blogging)
--do a little something for the house (cleaning, laundry, yardwork, grocery shopping)
--exercise

This doesn't mean that I won't write more, or devote time to writing-related business like sending out submissions, or read. But one of the advantages of living is beginning to understand yourself. I know that, given my personality, I will beat myself up if I don't feel I've done something every day.

Today's WGA Strike video, Who Are They Lying To? points out that the big media companies are either lying to their investors or to the writers. Isn't that interesting?

The Whole Sugar Debate - Sunday 9/2/2007

There is no way I am going to live without sweet in my life. A cup of good black tea from China or India, dosed with a little milk and sugar is like a touchstone for me. It's something I've enjoyed since I was a kid. It provides a pick-up in the morning, a break in the afternoon.

I almost always brew tea before I start writing. The time it takes separates me from the rest of my routine and the smell and taste works like one of Pavlov's bells.

I've just decided to stop with the Splenda. I don't know. What's worse, some sort of mystery chemical or actual sugar? I usually drink 3-5 cups of tea a day, with a teaspoon of sugar in each. This seems like a lot, but I guess it's about a quarter of what a person gets in a Coke Classic.

So...I'm going back to sugar. Turbinado sugar, just to give myself some feeling that I'm at least trying. Used to be I'd use real sugar only in the premium teas I brew from loose leaf mostly on weekends, and Splenda in the restaurant service tea I get at diners.

Blueberry Teacup - Monday 7/2/2007

Yeah, I know.

I don't need another tea cup. And I don't go out trolling for them. But this one was on sale at the Antiques Asylum in Palmdale, where Hydra and I went over the weekend in search of something very special that I'll have to reveal later.

Here are my reasons (rationalizations?) for buying it:

1) It is a different shape from any of my others, slightly bowed in around the center of the bowl.

2) Blueberries were my favorite thing to pick as a kid, because you don't have to get on your knees like you do for strawberries, and a good blueberry bog has fabulous black muck dirt that gets between your toes, and they taste amazing.

3) These blueberreis look like they could have been drawn by my sister, Pegerty.

4) It was on sale for $3.00. This is a great deal. I have paid as much as $25 for a particularly wonderful vintage teacup (that one is pale white lusterware with tiny handpainted blue birds flying across its surface).

Summer Solstice

I practiced my Summer Solstice commitment observation over a demitasse of fresh sage tea. Outside.

I write best when I can conjure that same feeling I get from being in a place of great natural beauty. Dropping the barriers that arise between my self and the other people, flora and fauna on the planet.

Why sage tea? Because when I first started practicing little rituals of intention around my writing (after attending the Art of the Wild conference in Squaw Valley), I found that sage smudges give me headaches. But there's something about the earthy scent of sage that works for me.

If you want to try sage tea, pour freshly boiled water over 4-5 small leaves in 4-6 ounces of water. If you don't have small leaves, you can use 1-2 large leaves. It helps to cut into each leaf a few times angling toward the center stem but not cutting all the way through to release the oils inside.

Bountiousness! - Thursday 3/8/2007

Jenks may be vying for My New Best Friend status. She arrived today with an armload of loose teas... for me!

The Oolong. The Ooooooooolong.

Fellow tea freaks, back me up on this. The full tender leaves. The rich color. This is a thing of beauty.

Thank you thank you thank you, Jenks.

Home to Roost - Sunday 1/28/2007

We realized a few days ago that because we took down the Christmas tree early, we didn't put away all the other Christmas decorations. So on Sunday most of the rest went into boxes (found another thing since then!) and the chickens were returned to their place atop the toaster oven.

They are a sugar and creamer set. Yeah, I have a thing about tea things, and creamer sets.

If anyone knows anyone with one of those nice white porcelain Starbucks creamer sets that came out a couple of years ago that they aren't using, let me know. I'll buy it. I broke the lid to mine a few weeks ago, and it's the one that fits on my tray with the teapot and a cup and saucer.