Sadly, as is often the case in LA, the stress accrued in getting to an appointment counteracts the relaxation the appointment is designed to deliver. But despite the fact that it was Parents’ Weekend at UCLA and the campus was teeming with proud parents and their UCLA sons and daughters, the extra traffic and dearth [...]
Our early courtship was spent in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, a city rich in history and in beautiful places to have drinks. As well as being the place where our romance first kindled, Budapest was where we started developing from casual tea drinkers to budding students of the leaf. Traditionally a nation of coffee drinkers, [...]
Fall is my favorite time of year. Senses become stimulated and saturated with deeper, richer colors and flavors, and new sounds and fresher-feeling air begins to envelop us. Baking and braising feels new again: home and heart-warming breads, braised stews and meats, and colorful, spicy soups return to my repertoire. This homecoming prompts a return [...]
An interesting debate has been raging over the past few years among the tea literati – how do you define quality in tea?
The uninitiated might expect the definition to be something as simple as: “A quality tea is one that represents the ideals of its varietal and production style and offers superior taste and aroma.” [...]
Teapots, essentially variants on the ewer, seem first to have been manufactured at Jingdezhen, China’s porcelain center, circa 1426-1432. Stoneware teapots from the Yi-xing potteries were in production by 1500 and became the most expensive and desirable pottery for tea. They were developed for China’s kung-fu tea ritual, which also dates from this period of [...]
When we last visited Nepal, we discovered Shangri-la, an operation envisioned and built by three brothers that provides a sustainable local market for the green leaf grown by over 600 small stakeholders. Before Shangri-la existed, these farmers sold their leaf to more distant factories or even to third-party brokers at prices that were low compared [...]
It floored me a little when I actually thought about it. Eleven years of all things tea and I had yet to visit an actual garden. They remained just images and visions - pictures that I have pored over for what seems like decades. Those pristine gardens of Japan where Fuji shimmers in the foreground; [...]
No food can claim to be more basic to civilization than bread. Bread features prominently in almost all cultures across the world. So does tea. So naturally they go together in metaphor as well as in spirit. The two are most often paired together at tea-time and at breakfast, both meals that can be a delectable feast [...]
What movies and dramas come to mind when thinking about tea? Tea and Sympathy? Tea with Mussolini? Movies that are of the drama genre, right?
My cousin Andrea learned that I write posts for T Ching and recently sent me a copy of Tea Fight!, a 2008 movie first released in Japan. Andrea told me not [...]
Yoon Hee Kim is an oasis of calm as she steeps a beautiful Korean early spring green tea. With deft movements and the deepest focus, she is a dynamo, sourcing and blending tea, teaching the Korean tea ceremony, and in the process, paying homage to her family’s long history of involvement in the tea business. [...]
