I was surprised just how much water is saved if you switch from coffee to tea. According to GOOD, drinking one cup of tea instead of one cup of coffee can save 28 gallons of water!
I can only guess that takes into account all the water to grow the tea and coffee beans needed for one cup, as well as the water that goes into the production of the final product.
Here’s a little movie from GOOD that shows all the ways you can cut down on your water consumption throughout the day.
Recently I went to the Urban Tea Merchant in West Vancouver. I’ve been here before but this time was a bit different. In a good way. They’ve standardized on one tea brand, The Ô Dor. While I will miss one of the other brands they used to carry, MARIAGE FRÈRES, I can get it at other places and The Ô Dor will give them a run for their money, if not beat them at their own game. It was probably a really smart move.
At the end of my lunch (which was delicious by the way), one of their lovely tea merchants, Reza, gave me a tour of some of their teas to introduce me to The Ô Dor. He was incredibly knowledgable about all the teas and the brand. He told me that the founder, Guillame Leleu, is one of the youngest people (26 when he founded the tea house) to pass the tea taster certification with as high of marks as he recieved.
I left with three teas to take home and sample:
And there was one tea that I keep thinking about and am kicking myself for not getting while I was there – Milky Oolong. It’s a super rare mistake of a find. According to the story that was told to me, they were experimenting with the fermentation processes and decided to put it through the process one more time. And what they got was this devine tea that smells exactly like caramel, with tastes of vanilla and “milk with softness of voluptuous cream”. At $86/100 g, I’ll be getting just enough for 1 pot of tea next time.
One thing that they do that sounds like fun are the tea leaf readings every Monday night – but unfortunately I can’t get over there during the week.
I make it sound like The Urban Tea Merchant is hours away from me, but going across the Lions Gate Bridge is a bit of a commitment from Cambie Village. But luckily I won’t have to travel too far come November – they’re opening a location on Alberni St in Downtown Vancouver. And it’s only a few block from where I work. I’m sure I’ll be in there weekly, but I’ll have to hide the receipts from my lunch hour sojourns.
Conclusion: Check out The Urban Tea Merchant and the Milky Oolong.
The first creation of The Ô Dor, Tea of the Wolf. This tea has now become a favorite masterpiece for all. Flavours of chocolate and hazelnut with blended black teas from China and Ceylon. Considered by many as a perfectly natural anti-depressant, this warm source of stress-relief, summer and winter, will seduce the ladies as it will the gentlemen.
I’ve been searching for the perfect tea cup. Everytime I’m I stumble upon a tea cup I have to check to see if its the elusive perfect tea cup. For me it has to have a
Given that the Western world has been making tea cups for a few hundred years, you’d think I would have found one by now. But I haven’t. So what’s your favorite tea cup – and why?
Artist Lucy Knisley has shared her chai tea recipe in the best way she knows how – a cartoon! I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks tasty.
It’s been said that the geeks shall inherit the earth, but I wasn’t expecting them to take over the tea market. CNet has reported that uber geek Chris Pirillo and Mighty Leaf Tea have teamed up to create a tea aimed at the brand loyal geek market. If you doubt their brand loyalty, just take a look at the Apple fans. According to CNet:
Pirillo has partnered with Might Leaf Tea Company to invent Geekalicious, a signature tea that bears his likeness. It’s a genmaicha-like tea, and like most genmaicha, it has rice puffs that combine with the other natural tea flavors to give it a refreshing character.
I haven’t had a chance yet to taste test this mighty little venture, but it sounds like it might be a refreshing pick-me up that will perk you up just enough so you can complete 100 lines of code without the jitteriness of coffee.
If you’re a tea addict like me, and using loose leaf tea isn’t always convenient, you probably go through a lot of tea bags in a week. If I have at least 3 cups a day, that comes to 1,095 tea bags a year and about 1.6 kilos of tea! That’s a lot of tea taking up the landfill if everyone’s drinking that much. In honor of Earth Day (belated), here are some suggestions on how to reuse your tea bags instead of just throwing them in the trash.
"mr. tea" by steev-o
How do you reuse your tea bags?
Tags: tea, commercial
A friend and I managed to taste test a few of Starbucks new tea lattes. Here are their discriptions from the Starbucks site:
Overall, they’re good but sweet. And the infusions can be sickly sweet once you get to the bottom of the cup if you don’t keep stiring it while you’re drinking it. So if you don’t like your drinks too sweet, ask for it without syrup.
Right now, my favorite is the Vanilla Rooibos Latte. The London Fog is good too (so glad they went with the traditional name rather than the Earl Grey Misto that they were testing here in Vancouver.) I order my teas half sweet or with no syrup at all. The rooibos tea has enough sweetness itself for me and doesn’t need the extra syrup. You also have to be super careful how you order the teas because they can pack a calorie punch. (You can calculate the calories for each on the Starbuck site or by following the links above.) So for me it’s a tall, non-fat, no syrup, Vanilla Rooibos Latte.
Tags: tea
Today India got one step closer to having tea e-auctions nationwide.
Bidding adieu to the 147-year-old manual tea auctions in South India, electronic auctioning of tea was formally inaugurated here today by Union minister of state for Commerce and Power, Jairam Ramesh, who said by January 31 next year the new system would be fully in place.
The first online auctions were launched by the Calcutta Tea Traders Association in November 2008. Ramesh also said that the web-based auctions will be in place for the whole country by September 2009.
This is a big change for how the tea industry in India operates. It might help India take back its title as largest tea producer in the world. With the online system, registered buyers and sellers can connect no matter where they’re located. And there’s hope that it will attract new tea sellers that currently don’t sell through the auction systems. So that might mean new tea for us.
E-Auction for Tea inaugurated at Kochi
Pan-India online tea auctions by Sept
Photo source
Tags: tea, auctions, technology
