Maddy playing purses with mommy.
Happy Father's day to all you daddies out there! I hope you have a wonderful day! I offered to let Matt do whatever he wanted today and he's decided to put together his new computer and bring back up our P drive. I also offered to have whatever he wanted for dinner (eating out, ordering in or me making it) and he wants chili mac! While it may not be good for us, at least it's good for the budget and easy for me! Thanks hon!
I realize I haven't talked tea that much lately. As a teaholic, I've been falling down on the job. But honestly, I've been bored with tea lately. It's not that I haven't liked it or been drinking it, but my stash is down to the 'bare bones' so there hasn't been much variety to talk about. (Although I was pretty excited to find more Stash Green Chai tea since I do love that one so much.)
So this morning I gathered up all my tea and took inventory. Here's what I ended up with:
-40 bags of Stash Chai Green Tea
-18 bags of Stash Decaf Chai Black Tea
-20 bags of Celestial Seasons Sugar Plum Spice Herbal Tea
-10 bags of Republic of Tea Panda Berry Herbal Tea
-5 loose servings of Gloria Jeans Cinnamon Spice Tea
-7.5 oz tin of Ahmad English Afternoon loose tea
-3.5 oz Gloria Jeans Gunpowder Green Tea
-large bag and large box of 'China Tea' Green Tea from our chinese neighbors
Ok, so that's STILL a lot of tea. Just counting the tea bags, I still have enough tea for 44 days of tea (at 2 cups a day). Now add in my loose tea and I'm sure I have enough tea for at least a 1/2 year, probably closer to a year.
However, I'm not too sure about the large bag and box of green tea (same brand) from my neighbors. I've had a couple cups of the green tea but I've found it quite bitter (not all green tea is like this) so I may need to experiment a bit and see if I can get it to be more palatable. If I can't though, I'm calling it a loss and tossing it.
But overall, I am excited at how much tea I've used up and how I have NOT been purchasing it. Sure, I have enough tea to last me about another year, but it's NOTHING compared to the amount of tea I used to own. I would say I've culled my stash down to about 1/5 what I used to have by drinking it.
I see this as two different purchases: herbal/decaf and caffeinated. So once one kind is used up, I'll be able to purchase that kind without feeling that I'm just adding to my horde of teas. Of course, the herbal will go first considering most of it is bagged so it's easy to see how much I have left and know that really, I have about 48 tea servings of herbal tea left. That will most likely last me about a month, probably less.
I've also made my second batch of sun tea of the season. Today I threw about 15 panda berry tea bags in with two cold brew lipton sun tea bags and let it steep for about 3 hours outside on the deck. It is really delicious. I find the panda berry tea to be a bit too fruity for me on it's own, but add in a bit of black tea and it's a very nice combination. The sun brings out different flavors in my sun tea as well. I like using herbal tea bags with just a couple caffeinated tea bags because that allows me to drink sun tea into the evening hours and also allows me to get a big cold glass of it without getting jittery from the caffeine. But it still gives me the black tea flavor, too.
Next time I do sun tea I'm contemplating making a very VERY strong batch of my decaf black chai and after it cools mixing it with milk and splenda, trying my hand at a iced chai latte. But I think, really, I'm better off making regular strong iced tea and boiling the water for the chai so that way it doesn't need to steep as long (only 5 minutes with boiling water) a sun tea (3 hours) risking the chance it could be bitter after that long. Whatever the case, with milk and splenda, it will taste great chilled.
If this turns out well enough, I'd consider trying the same thing with my green chai tea as well. But I'd most definitely have to do a iced tea thing with that, since green tea has more of a likelihood than black tea to become bitter.
Those are my tea thoughts for the day.
Tea of the day: Gloria Jeans Cinnamon Spiced tea, Panda Berry Black Sun tea
WO of the day: Nothing, but I did organize my workout material and search for my balance ball pump, which, alas is still MIA. My ball is deflating a bit, so I really do need to find it!