Sarah didn't want a gift for her birthday--instead she wanted to go to lunch and then go tea shopping. We had a great lunch at Liam's in U Village where I had the curry mussels. (I highly recommend them. They are an appetizer but I get them for my main course.)
After lunch, we headed to Teavana, which is now owned by Starbucks. There is a giant Teavana store next to the U Village Starbucks. I normally buy my tea at Queen Mary which is in my neighborhood, but I am happy to shop other places. I suppose in some ways shopping at Teavana is shopping locally since Starbucks is based in Seattle. I digress.
My friend Sarah and her husband are both coffee drinkers, like most Americans. I turn in a hyperactive chipmunk when I drink too much caffeine. Once I went to breakfast with my friend Diane. The restaurant didn't have decaf, so I ordered a regular mocha. I talk a little fast in general. Fill me with caffeine and I am bouncing off the walls. Most people think I am making up how hyper I get when I drink caffeine. At the end of the meal, Diane was convinced.
"I will never let you regular coffee again," she said.
Once I had a miserable case of the flu and I went to Seven Roasters Cafe and got a regular mocha. I went home, and started cleaning the kitchen and dancing around. "This is the best cold ever!" I thought. Then the caffeine wore off and I was back in bed.
When Sarah comes to my house, we drink tea. I have a massive selection because I like to drink a different kind of tea everyday. I buy loose leaf tea since there is a much bigger selection available and most tea shops sell loose leaf tea. When I go to Sarah's house, she has a small selection, which is to be expected since she and her husband both drink coffee.
"I want to get some loose tea so you don't have to drink tea in a bag when you come to my house," she said. Aww. That was nice. "Show me what kind of accessories I should get." So I did. I showed her the different kinds of tea pots and mugs with strainers for loose tea. Then we came upon the Teavana Perfectea Maker.
I own one of these and I rarely use it. I used my Forlife tea mugs with matching strainers every day. The Perfectea Maker looks cool in the store when they show you the demonstration. It is plastic and you fill it with tea and hot water then put it on top of a mug and the tea pours in through a hole in the bottom. I used it when I first got it, but then it was hard to clean so I stopped using it. One of the little plastic legs broke off which makes it lopsided. If you bump the bottom of the tea maker while there is tea in it, it will pee tea all over the place. You can tell when a glass mug is full, but not an opaque one. I've overfilled ceramic mugs and have had tea all over my counters. In short, I am not a fan.
"Don't get this tea maker. You are better off with a good strainer," I said. Chet, the salesboy, continued to show Sarah how supercool this tea maker was. Ugh.
"But I like it!" Sarah said. "I am going to get it." Okay, fine, I thought. It is her 50th birthday, she can get it if she wants. I won't argue. I guess I succumbed to the sales pitch, too. Teavana needs to sell the accessories so they can see the loose leaf tea. It is vicious circle of tea hell, unless you are already a tea drinker. I thought about giving her my Perfectea Maker, but then thought no. Mine is a little broken, and Sarah should get a new one if she really wants on.
This morning, my husband came home from work and brought in some tea that was given to him by a colleague who is from China. This colleague recently returned from a visit, and brought Jack some fancy tea. "This is the tea they give dignitaries when they visit China," Jack told me. Inside the package was a picture of Vladimir Putin receiving this tea from Chinese officials.
And of all my tea accessories, this is what best could accommodate these very large, exotic leaves gifted to us from China:
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