Teas of the Week

Well into the fourth week of ’09 and the tea hits just keep on coming!

First of all, the Year Without Coffee is progressing brilliantly. My affection for tea, which was more a hope than a certainty a few weeks ago, has been cemented for all eternity. I have quickly come to love the ritual of preparing, seeping, and consuming my cup (or sometimes pot) of tea.

One critical factor in this journey has been the kind and quality of tea that I’ve been drinking. As I mentioned in my last TWiT post, Zhena had been a constant companion in the first weeks of The Year. This week, I faced my first empty tea tin, which was both sad – no tea! – and fantastic – buy new tea! I’m no expert and neither did I consult one, so my choices of new varie-teas was based on a) experience and b) package design.

I strolled into Whole Foods and headed for the tea section. I saw Zhena’s area and wanted to sample more of her delights, but decided that before I head further down that path, it’d be best to dip into some other alleys first. So, I got:

• Rishi White Peony organic loose leaf tea. I actually have some other Rishi black tea at work. But this white tea is absolutely wonderful. It is gentle and aromatic. If over-seeped, it does become pretty bitter. But properly done, it is delectable. The only issue I have is measuring two tablespoons accurately. Suggestions?
• Republic of Tea Holiday Chai comes in packets, like the Zhena’s chai. Oddly, the container says it’s caffeine free. Really? Regardless, because of my love of Chai in the morning, this has been my morning tea for the past week. It is gentler than Zhena’s, but just as flavorful and sweet. A real treat.

I’m totally sold on the tea thing. One aspect of drinking tea that I have quickly come to appreciate is that, totally unlike coffee, I feel free to make a cup of tea whenever I feel like it. There is no sense of mounting guilt through the day, or of concern that it might be too late to make some (bedtime tea!). And I really like having different teas during different parts of the day. To top it off, I feel good about having left behind some of the less desireable side affects my coffee habit induced.

Yay Tea.

Zhena's Gypsy Tea: King Chai or Italian Chamomile?

This Week, I did not drink any coffee. But, I did drink lotsa tea!

So far, The Year Without Coffee is on track. In fact, to my shock, I really haven’t missed coffee at all. Mainly, that comfort is thanks to these delicious teas I’ve been indulging in. Mainly, I’ve been making Chai tea with breakfast, and then another cup at the office during the day. A couple of nights, I’ve also topped the night off with an herbal tea. Tonight, I’m sipping the Zhena’s chamomile shown in the picture above. Earlier this week I also had some Yogi green tea and some Good Earth original spicy herbal tea.

Drinking tea is different in lots of subtle ways. It is much gentler on the palette, it eases into my body, rather than barging in the way coffee can. And it doesn’t feel quite so heavy inside. Right now, this experiment is on track. And it is giving me a solid excuse to explore some of the more exotic teas out there. For the moment, though, Zhena is my girlfriend.

• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup seeds, nuts, or other add-ins. (I use 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 3 tbsp flax seeds)
• 1/3 cup maple syrup or honey or agave nectar or a combination of them all
• 1 tbsp molasses
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1 tbsp nut butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• salt to taste (a pinch or two)

In a large bowl, mix the oats with your other add-ins . In a small saucepan heat the oil with the syrup or honey or agave nectar and molasses and add the vanilla, cinnamon, and salt with the nut butter. Heat until blended. Stir syrup mixture into the oats until everything is well coated. Spread mixture onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (something shallow with sides is good). Cook in 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes (or until nicely browned), stirring every 12 minutes to ensure even cooking. I find that this cooking time varies depending on the weather, so keep an eye on your granola if you are not a fan of too brown granola.

After it’s all cooled, you might want to add chopped dried fruit or raisins. We’ve used raisins and dried blueberries. I imagine you could add shredded coconut or other dried fruits.

I eat it with lots of fresh fruit and plain yogurt. The kidlet & partner enjoy it with soy milk.

The great thing about it is that the recipe is your hands and you can alter it to reflect your preferences. You can adjust the amount of sweetener and fats to cut calories. If you’re feeding a lot of people you can make more or vice versa. You can add different flavors depending on your preferences. And once you have the main constituents in your pantry, the cost per serving is fairly inexpensive. Happy eating!

(Photos later)

See photos here.

Whum, straight into the 8th day frizzle-frazzle. Ima tired. So durn tired, but I will write. What should I write about? Wade sez I should write about the ‘rhythm of the universe’. Herm. Instead I think I will write about why we spend so much time and effort to ensure that we eat an organic diet and why we try and support fair trade whenever available.

Our grocery bills are large. We spend a significant portion of our income to ensure that we eat organically.  We feel better and enjoy our food more when the food in our pantry and refrigerator (our building blocks) is organic. Yes, we pay a premium, but we also strive to eat in season and locally as a way of keeping costs reasonable. We also try to avoid processed food to keep our costs down. Making granola has almost completely eliminated our “need” for cereals. Making bread has become joy and our lovely assortment of soups keeps us going.

Over the years we have moved towards a more organic diet. In the last ten years we have switched from an almost completely conventional diet to a mostly organic diet. The changes were small. First it was fruit then vegetables then meats. At first we shopped at the Henry’s and Trader Joe’s around the corner from our duplex in PB. When we could, we’d buy the organic version. Then Whole Foods opened up and we moved into the area. One of us would stop by on way home from work to grab the necessities and we’d always choose organic. Over the course of years we noticed that ‘ordinary’ food, which once tasted good, no longer had the same oomph. In addition, we’d started feeling better. When someone had bad news for us, we felt elastic like ‘well, that’s not too good, but I’m sure I’ll figure my way outta this’.  Of course, some of this could be attributed to maturity, but our intuition was also telling us that since we were eating higher quality food, the fundamentals of our life were more wholesome and healthy and less saturated with poisons like pesticides.

Since then we’ve become more and more aware about the need to eat locally and sustainably as well as organically.  There is always more to know. We’ve become suporters of our local farmer’s market and have come to appreciate the remarkable flavor of a locally grown, in-season peach. O. M. G! Never again will I be able to eat an out-of-season peach. Tis like comparing the sun and the moon! For us, we have found that the effort and money to ensure the ellimination of chemicals from our food stream has had a benefit beyond dollars and cents and that reason we are committed to keeping it so.

Today I pulled out my remaining tomato plant and the eggplant bush in preparation for this year’s winter garden. Last year’s garden was a great success and we hope to replicate that success this year. Today I applied a whole bunch of finished compost, which has a redolent muskiness. It’s funny because when I first put it in the raised bed you can still see bits of eggshell, small clumps of old tea bags, and bits of hair as we compost all our old haircuts. In about a week when I start putting in my seedlings much of this will have mixed in with the old dirt, but the eggshells will not completely break down until we come back in the spring with our next batch of compost.

This year we will plant chard, carrots, broccoli, kale, beets, lots of lettuce, parsnips, mustard greens, collards, some winter beans and peas and a few different types of flowers. We loved having the garden last winter and the wonderful ease of walking out the front door to pick something fresh for dinner never got old. Most of the work is in getting the plants in the ground and helping them get established. Once that’s done ’tis just a matter of weeding and waiting. Probably after the New Year we’ll be able to start harvesting some tender greens in perfect time for the wee one’s first birthday.

This year has gone by and part of the reason for that is having a new babe in the house. I was never a baby person til I had kids and this new baby has simply pushed me over the edge. I now go gaga for babies (especially when I’m ovulating). Bringing the second baby home was a new experience because the fear and anxiety that I experienced after the kidlet was born never manifested this time around, so I actually got to enjoy the experience of bringing baby home.  Twas a very special time, plus I got to take a little bit more time off from work since my boss was out of the country for while. Having two has been tough but great for me and I’ve been enjoying it. The past nine and a half months have been marked by new growth for every person in this household.

Right now we have a number of things going on, some of which I’ll update you on in the weeks to come. For now I’ll leave you with this recipe that has quickly become a favourite. Enjoy!

Vegan Pesto

• 2/3 cup toasted nuts (we use 1/3 C pumpkin seeds and 1/3 walnuts)
• 2/3 cup olive oil (you can use less or more depending on your preference. we like our pesto a little dry, so we usually estimate to get the right consistency)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast (this is in place of the parmesan. don’t worry you won’t miss it.)
• lots of basil ( i use at least two handfuls, probably equivalent to at least two bunches)
• 2 tsp of your favourite spices (we use a garlic and herb blend, but any savory blend that you like should taste fine)
• fresh ground pepper to taste

Toast nuts and seeds on cookie sheet at 400 F til brown (approx. 8 minutes). Add all  ingredients to blender and blend until preferred consistency is reached. voila!

• In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
• 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
• 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
• 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
• >60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
• >60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
• >60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

So there you have it, an avalanche of destruction in a single can. Imagine drinking this day after day, week after week. Stick to water, real juice from fresh squeezed fruit, and tea without sweetener.

From Healthbolt, via Martin Luther

So in this land of natural coolness, fog, and pristine water, I get really annoyed when I see people drinking out of disposable water bottles. I cannot avoid pondering the selfish and thoughtless waste of resources that that overpriced container of shitty water represents. From the oil used to make the bottle, for the fuel used by the shipping company to drive the full bottles from some bottling plant -  one heated and cooled with fossil fuel – to the likelihood that that bottle will end up either in a landfill or as part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, to the very likely possibility that the water in said bottle contains more contaminants than your local water faucet, it all just reeks of waste and boorishness.

Of course, just a couple of years ago I, too, was frequently consuming water from a plastic bottle. And of course there are occasions when it really is a good way to get yourself water. But for the corporate shindigs, or the college student or working mother who grabs one from the fridge, I have no patience. Need to carry water with you? How about a reusable container?

It is true that each individual act of conservation by not using disposable plastic water bottles is in itself trivial. But with $10 billion spent on it yearly in the US alone, we need every single one of those trivial acts.

I know that drinking water out of 60-year-old water pipes can seem like an unhealthy prospect. But for those of us who care about our health, doesn’t it make more sense to by a good quality water filter for your home than to add to global warming, just for a glass of tasty water?

Though it has been a conscious decision to shop at these other, um, shops, I made no specific decision to avoid Safeway. It was just a consequence. So, having decided that I’d like a 6 pack of spud lite, I pulled the Benzo into to the Webster Safeway, one of those rarest of places in San Francisco where you encounter a plethora of extra, empty parking spots. Spooky.

Upon entering, and knowing the layout of this store from prior experience, I headed straight fer the cold beverage aisle. Found me an on-sale brand of fermented barley and hops, and turned back to the front of the giant store, to a checkout line.

It was there that I began to take note of the radically different experience I was encountering. That particular cross-section of fitness, celeb, home-making, and tabloid magazines; that cold fluorescent lighting, reflected back upon the cheap white/speckled linoleum; candy and gum. Then, placing my beer on the checkout belt, the ad-infused food separator caught my eye, along with all of the rubber-trimmed formica surfaces. As I made it to the front of the line, I looked up and saw that there were about a dozen other aisles, replete with similar checkers and baggers, all fitted in the corporate blue polo shirts under brown aprons, all looking about the same age and weight, wearing similar hair styles and of among a particular range of ethnic backgrounds.

It was a shocking moment. I quickly recalled the oddly selected group of products that face you at a Trader Joe’s checkout line, or the batch of weirdos working at Whole Foods on any given day; the gentle lighting, the presence of human beings among the food aisles, and the general sense of humanity that my (now) regular grocery shops offer, and was stricken by the antiseptic, off-putting, and basically android style of these grand grocery stores.

It was an odd experience – mostly because stores like Safeway were all I knew for most of my life. I actually remember the first time I walked into a Whole Foods (in San Diego) and being blown away by the beautiful concrete floors, the natural color palette, and a general sense of luxury. Or a long-ago first visit to Trader Joe’s, when I thought to myself, “what a weird store”. Today, the story has changed, and it is the old style which I find odd, and WF and TJ’s that I am accustomed to.

I have. I attempted to open a package of zucchini, a plastic plate shrunk wrapped with celophane: I stabbed through a tense area of the plastic wrap with my index finger, and then, WHAM! CRASH! BURN!!! AARGH!

The momentum of my hand hand penetrated the saran with great ease, then continued its trajectory into the skin and then the meat of an unsuspecting zucchini (formerly hermetically sealed). The thrust of my index finger was stopped only after diggin in to a sufficient amount of impact-resistant zucchini meat. The angle of entry had sent the left edge of my right index fingernail headfirst into to that veggie. This is not a good idea, as the ‘z’ is just soft enough to let a bit of itself become lodged in that netherspace between nail and flesh before impeding additional progress. It burned. It hurt.

I did my best to dig the zuchmeat from the crevasse. But the injury had happened, and z-meat or none, my poor finger and associated fingernail have been quite sensitive ever since (this happened last Wednesday).

Next time I buy veggies from Trader Joe, I will be piercing the packaging with a knife. My finger isn’t cut out for this type of work.

But the flight itself was painless, I watched about an hour of Inside Man, which appears to be pretty good so far, then landed at Seatac. I took an airport-to-downtown shuttle for $8.50, and on the ride we were treated to panoramic views of downtown seattle, a city that has an incrediby scenic and (from what I have seen so far) charming dowtown.

I’m staying at the Fairmont, just a few blocks from the Pike’s Market, and as my room was not ready, Moula and I decided to kill some time with a stroll down here (Pike’s) and score us some clam chowder. It ees goot. To my left, at the moment, is a glorious view of Puget Sound, blue as blue could be, a slightly hazy horizon with a backdrop of small mountains. The sun is shining in, there is a buzz of tourists walking among the public shops and restaurants, and Moula is sitting here on the table, just to the right of me as I type.