Leftover Teas - What to do with them

Jini in her fabulous kitchen

A while ago, I travelled to Vancouver for a vacation and dropped in to see my friend Jini. She's been a friend since the 1980's. She has a business called, Jini's Ethic Gourmet.  I can recommend her cook book, "Ethnic Pleasures". She's a brilliant person and makes cooking look so easy. While visiting, I offered to look through her collection of teas. Like most of us, we end up with a huge collection over the years. We don't throw out the teas for any  number of reasons. Some of which are:
1) Its dry so tea will last forever.
2) My guests might want them.
3) It gives variety to serving beverages.
4) The kitchen would look empty without them.
5) I'm trying to use it up.


Now really. Do you want all that old tea hanging around. Bad feng shui !! Get rid of it. So, that's what I did with Jini's tea. I went through all her teas. I recommended that her herbal tea not be kept past 6 months if its unopened. Other black and green teas that were opened and had been around for a such a long long time, that you can't remember when you bought it, should be thrown out. They pick up odors and as they are organic material, they start to break down and crumble. You can keep the vacuum-sealed teas for up to 2 years. They lose their flavours and quality fairly fast after that. Unless pre-packaging has been handled very well by the manufacturer, you would not get much enjoyment out of them when you do decide to use them. Its best to start off with fresh teas and plan to consume them within 6 months. Mark the package when you buy it if it does not already have a Best-Until date on it. Rotate the storage of your tea so you consume the older ones first to finish them up. Re-package the teas that have been opened in a tight fitting lidded metal box. This will keep moisture, dust and odors from invading your prized tea. For delicate green teas, they can be stored in the refrigerator to prolong their freshness. However, be aware that unless wrapped well and used within a few months, the tea will take on other odors of the fridge especially through plastic wrap.

Use up at least 1 box before you buy more. If you like variety, go to a tea store and get several flavours in smaller qualities. You can even mix them together for a unique blend of your own. Herbal teas are easy to blend with other teas on hand. I use up old tea by mixing a herbal tea and a  green tea, such as Camomille and Jasmine Tea, or a Fruit or Berry tea with a black tea for a flavoured ice tea with a bit of  extra nutritional value.  Remember not to store flavoured teas too close to unflavoured teas or the flavours will be absorbed.

Tips for Left Over Tea

So, what can you do with old tea other than throw it out?

• Use for compost. Enrich the earth.
• I make a steeped cocktail of  organic green and black teas, sometimes re-using tea bags to make a delightful  fertilizer for watering your plants. Use this tea fertilizer once a week for flowering plants. My geraniums love it and blossom indoors throughout the winter. 
•  Deodorize  your feet with a soak  in a foot bath of green tea to. No, it won't stain your skin.
• Make a green tea bath for your skin. Soak a face cloth in warm green tea, place the tea-soaked cloth over your face and enjoy a few minutes refreshing your skin. The anti-oxidants and micro-nutrients soak into the skin for a youthful and radiant appearance. For the summer, dip a cloth in green tea, wring out slightly, roll up, place in a plastic bag and tuck in the refrigerator. Use the tea-soaked cloth on your face and back of neck to cool down. For pore cleansing and taming beard or shavers itch, use microwave to warm a green tea-soaked cloth. Blend green tea with fresh avocado for a super antioxidant facial pack. You can also add to hand cream.
• For leftover matcha, a finely ground Japanese green tea, cooking is a great way to use up the tea and to get its health benefits more immediately into your system. Add to cakes, cookies, muffins, egg whites for "green eggs and ham", power drinks and cakes. Add to soups, fresh-made noodles and perogies. The green-coloured tea blends in well with other green dishes. The taste is generally mild enough to camouflage in many recipes, especially is you use a little.
• For unflavoured black tea, use in soups, cooking beef meat, or in marinades. Its gives a brothy tannic taste.
• There are lots of recipes for using black tea, from flavoured nuts  using powdered chai tea, jams and jellies using flavoured teas,  to using as an ingredient in gourmet recipes like marbled quail eggs. Some of the nicest recipes use Earl Grey tea. The Bergamot oil flavour of Earl Grey adds a citrus expression to cookies and cakes, not to mention making delicious iced tea!

If you have other suggestions for using up old tea, I'd like to hear from you.

Madeleines for Autumn Tea



Lemon Madeleines

Madeleines. What could be better than fresh-baked lemon Madeleines for a Fall Tea. The furnace has been on for several weeks. There's already frost on the ground. Now the annual leaf rake-up starts. Who wouldn't welcome a warming cup of tea as a break from raking leaves. And why not invite your Mom to tea? I recently took along my Madeleines pan  to my mother's house so she could watch me whip up Madeleines. Her grandaughter's name is Madeleine. I wanted Mom to enjoy the namesake with hopefully better quality and freshness than Costco's yummies.

There are "secrets" to making good Madeleines. After pouring over many recipes, some good and others really not good at all, I decided there really is a lot of technique involved in these little wonders.  Baking does take practise. It takes analysis and correcting from mistakes to get the results you want.  I'm not formally trained in baking. No doubt if you are in a school or working in a food processing environment, you'd learn a lot. I've only baked a few batches. I know how to fluff them up and how to make them crispy on the outside and soft and pillowy on the inside. I am still working on how best to dust the outside lightly with icing sugar.

 

Displaying the Madeleines is also a challenge. First, I recommend that you don't pile them one on another as in the first photo or you lose the visual impact of  these scalloped-edged treats. Also, if serving without tongs, your guest's fingers might touch another cookie and (heaven-forbide) contaminate the display for others. I found a large round plate works well, an oval glass plate or a tiered plate even better. Separate the cookies out so guests can lift them by pinching the sides between the fingers. Its a dainty thing. Your fingers won't get sugar on them.

I have found that when you are serving tea, having the freshest best baked goods possible adds to the enjoyment of tea. Also, if your mother is at your table, she will know the difference and tell you with a scowling look, biting into a stale dry biscuit. " Dear," she would say,"Have you tried baking them with less time?" Sure, I thought about that. The lesson here is - don't serve anything at tea that your mother would disapprove of.

Try incorporating some leaves, pine cones late fall flowers into a table setting. Bring the outside in to harmonize the environment and to celebrate the season. I picked nastursium and marigolds from Mom's garden as a token of the season and to honour her work with the garden during the summer. We found a favorite vase that hadn't been used in a long time. Nostalgic perhaps, but our parents have been doing things year over year and understand the ways of tea. Doing tea using traditional methods is to honour them and our ancestors. I think back to my family who built houses in the late 1700's here in Ontario as Loyalists and pioneers. They settled the land and made families. They contributed to developing the land and were leaders in their community. They became educated and their offspring became judges, lawyers, accountants and business and community developers. They had tea. Mom still has the cutlery and the modest china they ate and drank from. I have teacups from both grandsmothers estates. Using them for tea, is an honoring of the past. Consider a Tea for Autumn and honour the family and your past. Make life special.

Summer 2011

The summer has been very hot and dry until now, early August. The ring of pansies photo was taken earlier before the season changed and tastes of drinking the spring's fresh green teas turned to sipping long iced teas. There haven't been too many days in the back yard. The humidex has been in the high 30's and even higher. Tea plants enjoy high humidity but are fussy about their soil, drainage and amount of rainfall. Still, new growing regions are found every year in countries such as Bolivia  and Argentina that are not the traditional countries one thinks of for tea plantations.

I have a thought that maybe these new tea countries will embrace traditional tea culture. Their tea industry orders equipment and labour from countries of  traditional tea producers.  Perhaps, tea art will be transplanted as well as the little tea cultivars. Perhaps their nations will find merit in producing tea as it is high in antioxidants and perhaps their populations will become healthier. Perhaps the world will find peace.

Winter Spice Tea - Customize Your Tea

The ever popular Chai Tea, a spice tea originating from India is perfect at this time of the year when cold winds and the  dampness of winter sinks into bones. A warming spice tea is perfect to enlighten your spirits and rekindle your body heat. There are recipes you can make on your own, using a black tea such as Assam, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamon, black pepper, anise, and other spices. Each recipe is determined by your own preferences.

I shop regularly at a large grocery store which most people would say is international, but I'd say it ecclectic. There are wonderful products. Fruits and vegetables I've never seen before. Imagine seeing a persimmon, a kiwi, or a mango for the first time,or tasting a fresh date, first time ever! In the tea and coffee aisle, there are packages I can't read because the language is foreign to me. There, I found a package of Tea India Orange Pekoe tea bags, an Assam tea that brews to a strong malty tea. There was also an Tea India package of Cardamon Chai Tea, made from Assam tea and cardamon. When I opened the package at home, the aromatic cardamon filled the room. I knew there was something special here. Cardamon is also a digestive, something I should take regularly.

When I made the Cardamon Chai tea, I felt there was something missing, a taste profile. I just felt it was empty of flavour, other than the cardamon. On an impulse, I added a slightly crushed stick of cinnamon to provide a sweetness and to round out the tea. This is what I needed. Cinnamon is used to help lower blood sugar by slowing digestion and thus prevents a sudden rise in blood sugars after a meal. Cardamon is used to help with stomach issues such as gas, digestion, heartburn, and to alleviate kidney disorders, sexual dysfunctions, lowers cholestral, alleviates muscular spasms etc...... So now I had a customized Winter Spice Tea. I added milk and a sweetner.

I check the Tea India web site and noted  that this tea was recommended as "the ideal choice for calming your anxiety and soothing those nerves right after your mother in law’s phone call.". Poor mother-in-laws...they sure get a bad rap. Not all are meddling, are they?

And, the good news is that Tea India Cardamom Chai contains 185 mg of Flavonoid Antioxidants per serving. It seems the more spice, the more flavonoids. As for caffeine, in lab tests Tea India Chai teabags of approx. 2.3 gram tea bags contain 67 to 78 milligrams of caffeine.Coffee has double at about 120 milligrams of caffeine. Remember the effects of tea-caffine, your body reacts differently than coffee-caffine. Coffee gives you a quick perk and falls off just as quickly. I know, because I used to drink 9 cups a day. With tea, your system ramps up slowly and the effects are sustained longer. I know because now I drink a lot of tea! So, overall, spiced tea is healthy and a wonderful addition to your winter diet, especially after a morning of shovelling snow!




 



As I often suggest to clinets, add, your own flavours to enjoy the tea. I liked the convenience of a tea bag. It was a simple as steeping the tea with a small peice of cinamon stick. The result was just the right pick-up and sweetness to the tea to round out the cardamon.

Tea and Coffee Show, Toronto, Sept 26-27, 2010

Last weekend was the second occassion I had to attend The Tea and Coffee Show in Toronto and I can tell you its was a spectacular for me as the first time. In 2007, I  was a plucky gal and registered for this trade show, saying that I was looking into a tea shop start-up. I registered for the tea cupping session and frozen desserts. At that time there were not that many distributors in the trade show and it was easy to walk around between the sessions to have a look at the trade booths. I was lucky to get some free samples of tea from the vendors and to meet vendors I might do business with. They were eager to share information.

My first cupping experience was with Brendon, the Tea Guy. I tasted a tea that was so full of energy and life, I knew that I wanted to search exactly for that energy, for that communication between self and tea. Even Brendon admitted years later that he'd not found a tea similar to the one we tasted that day in 2007.

Waiting for the next session, I heard there was going to be a tea steep-off, a contest involving some new machinery called a tea press, used in the same way as a coffee expresso machine but crushing the whole tea  first. Seeing The Tea Guy, Brendon passing by, I asked for directions. However, he insisted that I attend as a guest judge at the steep-off of all things. Following his instructions, I went up to the judging panel and sat down next to a man. I asked who he was and I learned I was sitting next to Bill Kamula, one of the instructors at George Brown College in the  Tea Sommellier course. He looked at me and asked, "Who are you?" and I replied. "I'm your next student!" and indeed I was. I registered in the Tea Sommellier program only a few weeks later.

The winning tea drink in 2007 was made by Margot  who won with her Spice Pumpkin Chai Latte. Even Jennifer Bain, the Food Editor from the Toronto Star and fellow judge was overwhelmed with the deliciousness of this hot tea drink and devoted more than a full page to the Show in 2007. Margot B. not only won the competition that year, she also won the Tea Cocktails at the Show this year. She is a great competitor and has certainly established the bar (no pun intended) on drinks in the house with her Banana Creme.

There were many other highlights including the amazing Gyokuro tea prepared by three representatives of the Japanese Tea Exporters' Association. I sat with my Sommellier colleagues listening to Canada's best known tea sommellier, Karen Hartwick from Strattford's Tea Leaves speak about business start-up. I love her passion for tea. She has so much to offer and I am so eager to learn. In fact, I asked Karen  for a photo. We both grinned and found out later that we were both Librans.

Once again I got free samples of tea and this time, I was able to introduce myself to the vendors as a Certified Tea Sommellier. On my way out from the trade show, I met Bill Kamula coming in. I am grateful for his teachings. See you next time everyone!

How to Use Up Old Tea

No doubt you have wondered what to do with old tea. Here's a tip: Mix it with other teas to enjoy new flavours and health benefits.

I have a mixed berry tea from Germany, maybe Poland that's mostly colour. There are blackberries, black chokecherry, elderberry, rowan (that's sarsaparilla), black currant leaf, hibiscuss and "flavour". Well, I can't expect much from a package that doesn't identify where its from. Also, I had some white tea hanging about for the past year. It was tied up into little bows and had visual interest but was low quality.

I got out my favorite glass tea pot and put a warming ring on the burner as I knew this would be a long steep to coax the flavour out of the dried fruits.  I poured boiling water over an ample portion of the berries, about 1/3 c. to 8 oz. water and a small handful (about 2 tablespoons) of the white tea. I didn't want to use any tea that would turn bitter with a long steep.

 A long steep is at least 5 minutes or longer.  It is important to give the tea time to steep, keeping it warm in the meantime.The berries have to absorb the water then release their flavours.  I prepared a serving tray and rhubarb-bran muffin. The sour berries and sour rhubarb would require a balancing sweetness. I picked a home-made peach jam to also add some complimentary colour.  I could easily have made an ice tea as an alternative. Other times, I have soaked the berry tea in warm water for 10 minutes before adding in hot water and tossing in the white tea at the end of the steep. This keeps any bitterness from taking over the pot.If you have any leftover strawberries blueberries, apple, orange pieces, add them in as well.  This tea needs a good helping of sweetener.

The result was a beautiful burgundy-coloured tea with high antioxidants, great for saturating colour in the 1st chakra  and giving you an energy boost. You could also have made a dessert jelly by adding some unflavoured gelatin or agar agar for setting.  This tea was perfect for warming up a damp day and waiting for the clouds to clear.

Bodum Tea Press

I decided it was time to get a Bodum press. My everyday work calls me into long meetings that have no breaks and there is no time between meetings to sit back and relax with a cuppa. It was time to put away the tea pot at work and get something simpler for my work style.

This travel press can be used for tea or coffee. I prefer to see the tea and the tea leaves expanding as they dance with the water. Using a Mason jar just isn't my style. The transparent Bodum shows the leaf and, you can slip a photo or an inspiring message between the two walls by unscrewing the bottom. The lid has a pouring spout but is not drip proof, so keep your canister upright.

To celebrate, I took a big tin of David's Mao Jian, an all purpose green tea with a bit of refinement without being exotic or bitter after a long steep at the bottom of the Bodum.  It had just the right amount of unami/vegetative taste and low astringency. I had the Mao Jian after a bitter salad greens and sharp dressing  and was content that I could still taste the tea through the garlic, oregano and feta cheese flavours. I don't recommend Mao Jian with Kohlrabi. Such a strange taste! I'll do a comparison with another Mao Jian later on. For now, I am superbly relaxed and am going to crash and have a nap before the next tea time! I love weekends!