Tea of the Day: The Battle of the Oranges

Hey y'all.  So for New Year's Eve (by complete coincidence) my family and I will be having a competition between all three brands of orange flavors that I ended up with after Christmas.  We're all going to sit together, watch a movie, and rant about tea.  Marvelous!

A note about our judges.  One is me, of course, and the other is my dad.  Dad's a very regular sort of person, who doesn't like going out of his way to try weirdo things.  His favorite tea flavor is orange pekoe, which as tea folk know is a reference to when a leaf is picked, rather than a flavor.  I like trying new things, but I'm not necessarily the best at it. I don't have the most sophisticated palate, and unless a tea (or anything else) is very good or very bad, I'm not always likely to distinguish tastes without a frame of reference.

In other words, we're the best judges ever!

Dad will be drinking each tea with a packet of off-brand fake sugar, and I'll be drinking mine black, just for the record.

Tea of the Day: Chai and Mango Green

Hey y'all.  So I let my mom pick the next flavor from the Boston Tea Company box, and she picked chai.  I was a little nervous about this one, as the last chai I had wasn't that great.  Again, that was Republic of Tea.  That version was too spicy and not really flavorful enough.  It was like drinking a cup of hot pepper.

This chai, however, was nothing like that.  I had a bag of it at work, and even when the bag soaked for too long (y'know, work calls), the tea wasn't too strong.  It was really enjoyable.  Boston Tea Company is really shaping up to be a great brand.

Bentley's on the other hand, isn't proving to be much.  I had their mango green tea, and it was meh.  I could taste it before my mouth even reached the tea, and that's a problem.  The mango was sour, and for some reason the green tea...it tasted sort of separate from the mango.  It didn't blend, and was very bitter.  It leaves a dark aftertaste in my mouth.

I think that tea is going to find its way into Dad's cabinet.  He likes different fruit teas.

Tea of the Day: French Vanilla and Ginger Peach

Hey y'all.  So does anyone know why they call it French vanilla?  What's so French about it?  At the coffeeshop I used to work at, "French" vanilla meant adding a shot of hazelnut to the latte.  Huh.  Hazelnut's not bad.  Get it in your next latte when you get a chance.  Though I have no idea if that's in this tea.  Um....

*looks at package* Okay, Chinese and Indian black tea, and also vanilla flavoring.  No hazelnut.  And also no indication of what's so French about it, other than the name.  Note that this is from the Bentley's tea, and that the Boston Tea Company box didn't come with vanilla.  Which is fine with me, as that means I get more flavors.

Me and Aldaris (p26): Toby...Out of Danger?

Toby didn't know how long he'd been running.  He didn't know where he was running.  All he knew was that he was in some foreign country, probably in Asia, where he didn't know the language and hadn't a scrap of paper to legitimize his presence there.  He'd run for several minutes now from a crowd of Asians, and now was lost in the hilly countryside of what he could only guess was China.  Whoever it was after him, they'd given up the chase.  Thanks to his work out regimen, Toby was far more athletic than the five foot farmers on his tail.  Still, he dodged past trees and over many hills before he stopped running.

Now lost, Toby stopped with a gasp and sat on a stump next to a one lane dirt road.  He sat there getting his breath, almost able at his circumstances.

"Well..." Toby muttered between breaths.  "Charlie probably can't find us now.  We're all lost.  Heh, what an adventure this has turned out to be."

At this point, Toby soured.  Even his false cheer paled when he remembered Bethany and Statkus.  He'd gotten away, but surely they hadn't.  He didn't see what happened to Bethany, but he'd heard Statkus cry out as he fell.  Toby's stomach tightened.  Not only was he alone, but he'd abandoned the others he should have done something to help.  He hoped that they understood that he wanted to survive, but all the same, his conscious burned a hole in his chest.  What was done was done, though, and he was at the point where he had to decide for himself what to do next.

"I wish I'd asked Bethany more questions." Toby pulled himself off the stump.  The run had taken it out of him, but he was to restless to do nothing.  "She seemed like she knew what she was talking about.  Just this once, at least."

He chuckled as he remembered her personality analysis.  "Heh, some hero I am.  I don't think Raynor or Fenix would have run off like that."

Tea of the Day: Pomegranate

Hey y'all.  In the effort to both update more often and exercise my need to rant, I'm going to talk about my Christmas presents from my sister and her boyfriend: two tea kits.  One is just a sample of a bunch of teas, and the other is a more fancy bit that comes in a wooden box.  It's super cute, and even has little metal handles.  It sort of looks like a cigar box.

So I'll be doing tea reviews of what I got.  Are you here to read that stuff?  I dunno.  Maybe you'll be willing to try new things after reading it.  After all, tea is pretty amazing.

The thing about these kits is that they're not meant to be gifted together; there's a couple of repeat teas in them.  For example, I have two kinds of pomegranate.  The box version, by The Boston Tea Company, is a Chinese green tea with pomegranate.  The kit version has both Chinese and Indian black tea, by Bentley's.

What surprised me about the black tea is that the pomegranate was more obvious, despite the fact black tea leaves more of a "stain" of flavor.  Unfortunately, there was a bit too much pomegranate for my taste.  The trouble with fruit flavor in teas is that it can be very easily overwhelming if you leave the bag in for anything longer than two minutes.  And then of course risk not getting the full tea flavor.

On the other side of that, the Boston Tea Company's pomegranate didn't have enough flavor.  Sure, it was flavored enough so that you could tell what fruit it was, but just barely.  Someone who didn't know it was pomegranate might not be able to point it out.  I let the bag soak in the tea at least five minutes, so clearly it didn't quite have enough flavor.

To be honest, BTC wins this round.  I'm not a huge fan of feeling like my mouth is full of what feels like un-sugared Kool-Aid -- I don't ever sweeten my tea, and I don't think that would help if the fruit flavoring is too strong.  My dad found the Bentley's to be really good, so perhaps it's just a matter of opinion.

So which do you prefer?  Too much flavor or too little?

Updates, huh?

Hey y'all.  Sorry I haven't updated in a bit.  I am working on another Me and Aldaris post, and I have two more Trek movies to review, but it's the Christmas season, and there's being a little mini addition to the family yesterday.  Or so I'll use as an excuse.  To be fair, this blog has always been a bit more about my rabid ranting than actually putting out something people want to read.  Though of course I try on that front.

In any case, I will be doing some writing here, but my main priorities in life include school and writing something that's actually publishable and can earn me a bit of cash.  Writing for free is fun, and I seem to be better at it, but eventually what I do has to make me money.  There's that whole thing about eating, and all.

In any case, there will be some writing here soon.  I'm about halfway or so done with the Me and Aldaris post, and I always enjoy ranting about Trek or whatnot, so I'll finish that mini series.  I also have a blog about questions I want to ask normal people that I can finish up.  As far as other things, like my personality environment type stuff, I don't really have any plans to continue that in the future, unless specifically requested.  Nothing is quite so inspiring as a request.

For now, comment feedback, positive or negative.  Or just say the first thing that comes to your head.  Peanut butter pineapple pie.  ....Ew.

Nitpickery -- Star Trek: Generations

Alright, the first of the Next Gen Star Trek movies…which I am for some reason tackling third to last, but whatever.  In any case, this movie apparently only got made because Gene Roddenberry died, and Gene did not want the two generations of Star Trek to ever merge.  Honestly, the idea might have worked, if most of the original cast weren’t so old.  DeForest Kelley couldn't get the insurance required to appear on film, and that knocked him out of the cast.  Leonard Nimoy was offered the director's chair, and quite frankly, I think he could have done a good job.  However, he had problems with the script and didn't have time to fix them.  So he passed.  Apparently he passed on acting in it too.

I don't know why Nichelle Nichols wasn't in it, but George Takei refused to do the part if it meant that he would have to serve for Kirk again.  He claimed Sulu worked too hard to get a demotion, even a temporary one.  I don't know about Sulu, but Takei certainly worked hard.  He's been begging for captaincy since Star Trek 2.  Thing is, the movie makers cast a girl as his daughter, so he could at least have made a cameo to see his daughter on her first job on a spaceship.

So that left Scotty and Chekov to appear in the movie that was supposed to merge Original Series and Next Generation.  It's at this point that the filmmakers really should have rewritten the movie.  After all, if you have only three of the actors, and a three that don't really make sense together, then why bother?  Just take Kirk to the future and be done with it.  Or don't bring Kirk in at all.  Or, since Vulcans live long, have future Spock meet past Kirk and they can hang out.

Or just, y'know, make a Next Gen movie.