More and more, I continue to see the old Mother Nature versus human reductionism controversy rear its ugly head. Tea certainly hasn’t escaped the scrutiny of the reductionists. It is no different than what has been happening with medicinal herbs since the onset of the pharmaceutical industry in the late 1920’s. I’ll give you my [...]

Sixteenth in a series on the teas of China.
Few periods in history have equaled the Ming in their obsession with flowers: most floral porcelain patterns trace their descent to this time, for instance, and flower paintings, embroidery, and even epics written on a single blossom illustrate the fascination.  It is not surprising that the Ming [...]

Some years ago, I introduced a co-worker to Earl Grey tea; she was so delighted with this addition to her bag of culinary knowledge, that she began referring to me as her “guru of gastronomy”. Via a friend of hers, who worked at a newly opened office park, she garnered an invitation for herself and [...]

For small business owners, it’s difficult to avoid thinking about the economy right now, no matter how fed up we all may be with news about unemployment, government bailouts, and the stock market.
For those in the retail business, this preoccupation with the economy might lately have turned into an obsession over sales. Many are worrying [...]

I’m drinking Darjeeling tea, and thinking about the cookies I baked this past week - not quite the cookie factory my mom and sister used to have going, but close.  It was fun, but it kind of made me sad, too, because I was thinking how much nicer it would have been if my dad [...]

My freezer is never without a bottle or two of chilling vodka.  I’m not a regular drinker, and it may take me a year or two to get through it, but being of Russian descent, it’s something (along with pickles and herring) I feel compelled to have around for whenever a celebration might arise. Since [...]

Fifteenth in a series on the teas of China.
Technically classified not as black but dark black tea, Pu-Er is China’s mystery tea.  It was already ancient when the troops of Kublai Khan spread the use of it from Yunnan throughout China.  The secret of its manufacture is as closely guarded today as it was under [...]

The Christmas Crunch is on.  All that shopping I did in October, before the headlines told me how truly poor I was, means nothing now that I am facing THE DREADED WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
Even with my new-found meditation techniques and my therapist’s mantra “simplify, simplify”, this is gonna be a 3-pot-day.  Three pots of tea, [...]

I have been a fan of Dr. Andrew Weil’s for many years.  In fact, I signed up for daily alerts from him.   I was delighted to get his recent email entitled “7 Ways to Prevent Cancer: Nutrition”.  As cancer seems to be ever increasing, I’m always interested in legitimate nutritional things I [...]

Ah, the scent of coffee in the morning.  It makes people want to stand and conquer empires, or at least, get up and go to work.  Much has been made of coffee’s smell, and a link certainly exists between the scent and the drink’s popularity.
But what about the smell of teas or tisanes?
Personally, there’s nothing [...]