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 [...]

Without a doubt, this past year has been one of the most unusual and memorable of my life, in no small part thanks to tea.  A year and a half ago, when I discovered that I would be leaving my working home (Citigroup) of almost 26 years at the end of December 2007, my feelings, [...]

I’m sitting in front of the fire with fuzzy socks on, waiting for my tea to brew, thinking about the first Edible Austin Tea Party this past weekend.
It was organized by Zhi Tea, one of the local tea vendors, as a benefit/community event, bringing together most of the tea vendors in Austin to show, sample, [...]

What happens to a good-intentioned company that sells herbal supplements & natural tisanes…and makes the grave mistake of claiming these products are healthy? The FDA sends US Marshals to raid the warehouse and seize thousands of dollars worth of company property and products, of course.
I recently read about the FDA’s seizure of $71,000 worth of [...]

Try this free-association exercise: If I say “Turkey” (as in the country, not the bird), what comes to mind? For most of you, I suspect the answer is “coffee”, as in Turkish coffee, that highly concentrated, highly caffeinated brew with a molasses-like consistency. That would have been my answer too, nearly 30 years [...]