Christmas Traditions, New and Old

As I sit here and sip a cup of one of our Christmasy-spiced teas, I reflect on the importance of Christmas traditions: of keeping long-time traditions, and of establishing new ones.  This season has been a study in the mingling of both, for us, in many respects, dear Giraffe.

The joy of experiencing our first granddaughter's Christmas has enhanced our anticipation of this year's Christmas, to be sure.  Certainly a time for New Traditions.  Still, Giraffe, we found ourselves overwhelmed by all the hustle and bustle of Life In General as well as of The Holidays, and suddenly we found ourselves embarking on our journey to our daughter's and son-in-law's and 7-month-old first grandchild's house (instead of "To Grandmother's house we go!", Grandma & Grandpa went to grandbaby's house!) without having engaged in a single long-time tradition of our own.  We didn't send out a single Christmas card, we didn't decorate house or yard, we didn't bake and deliver baked goods . . . nothing.  Our Christmas Spirit was not diminished in the least, but we did miss the old traditions.

Of course, Christmas is more than the outer trappings.  We have basked in our daughter's and son-in-law's celebration of their little family's first Christmas with their first child.  Somehow the mix of circumstances comingling to produce this year's Christmas season made it all the more fitting that one long-time tradition we engaged in today was watching the 1966 animated "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".  Wherein the Grinch, while he may not have learned the religious origin of Christmas, learned the True Meaning of Christmas when:  

[Christmas] *came*! Somehow or other, it came just the same. ... He puzzled and puzzed 'til his puzzler was sore. And then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.  Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.  What happened then?  Well in Whoville they say that the Grinch's small heart grew THREE sizes that day.  The true meaning of Christmas came through, and the Grinch found the strength of *ten* Grinches, plus two! .  .   . Welcome Christmas,  bring your cheer.  Cheer to all Whos both far and near.  Christmas Day is in our grasp as long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas Day will always be, just as long as we have we.  Welcome Christmas while we stand heart to heart and hand to hand.


Meanwhile, as we watched this special program, we sat near the French doors with windows looking out to their back yard, with dense forest stretching beyond view.  This made me think wistfully of a wouldn't-it-be-nice tradtion:

Last year I discovered Jennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilt books. I came in on the series well into it when I checked out from the library the audiobook of one titled The Christmas Quilt.  The story was in large part flashbacks to the chief character Sylvia's youth and early adult-hood.  One Christmas in this past, Sylvia, her sister, and her sister-in-law were alone in the huge Elm Creek manor house with their widowed father because all the men had enlisted to go fight in World War II.  They tried to carry out as many of The Family's long-tme traditions as they could, including finding the perfect Christmas tree in the huge forest on their property.  The ladies did indeed find the perfect tree, but it was most likely too big for them to cut down and transport back to the house, plus a nest visible high up made them fear some wildlife might still use the tree.  The tree was visible from the house, so the ladies decided to decorate the tree in situ:


They went back to the house for the apples, popcorn garlands, and strings of cranberries and nuts, which they wrapped around the Frazier fir by tossing one end of the strings into the highest branches they could reach and unwinding as they walked around the tree.  With bits of twine, they tied apples by their stems to the ends of branches, ...  Sylvia sent Agnes back to the house for cookie cutters, which they used to carve stars and circles from packed snow, frosted shapes they arranged on the boughs like ornaments. . . .


Then on Christmas Day, after church and presents and reading aloud letters from the men away at war, Sylvia's father called her to the window to "look at this":


As she watched, she detected movement, and suddenly a doe and fawn emerged from the woods and carefully picked their way through the crust that had fored on top of the snow.  They approached the Christmas tree, and the doe stretched out her head to nibble a popcorn garland.  Her fawn cautiously bit into an apple.  Sylvia's smile broadened as a flurry of motion heralded the arrival of a flock of chickadees.  Soon other birds joined in the feast, and squirrels as well, busily harvesting the popcorn, fruits, and nuts from the Christmas tree.


Thus, a new tradition was born for that family that would continue across many generations.

(I am composing this on my new Toshiba Thrive tablet with wireless keyboard.  Not exactly a new tradition, per se, but definitely something I'm trying to get used to.  I bring this up mostly because of difficulty navigating through text w/o amouse to correct typos spotted lines ago and to highlight text to set off as quotes {couldn't get that to work!}, and so on, especially with directional keys occasionally just freezing up on me and I have yet to figure out what finally gets them working again when they do so!  So as I'm composing, I am fervently hoping this post will look okay and be readable!  Hoping you, my dear Giraffe, and the rest of our readers, will bear with me in this Transition to New Technology!)

I recall that last year, when I read that, I longed to live somewhere that we could institute just such a tradition.  But no forests in our back yard!  Today, however, I suddenly recalled when I came here to help out the new parents when their first child, our first grandchild, was born:  the first morning I was here, having let the parents and newborn sleep in, I moved a chair by the French doors so I could read in the sunlight & not turn on lights in the living room, set the book on the chair and went to the kitchen to get my tea.  When I returned to the chair---I froze in place, transfixed by the sight of two deer nibbling on vegetation at the edge of the woods, nearly into the grass of their backyard!  I stood still for fear of movement spooking them and watched until they ambled away into the woods.  Now that I remember the tradition in The Christmas Quilt, I wonder if our granddaughter might come to have a similar Christmas Tradition as she grows up.

Whatever anyone else's Christmas Traditions are, old and new, ---and to me the sentiment includes whatever holidays & accompanying traditions anyone observes this time of year, whether Christmas or Hannukah or Solstice or Kwanzaa, or any other Observance that I'm not aware of--- I hope that All experience Peace and Joy today. 

Moderately Crunchy . . . Who Knew?

It must have been the combination of today's luscious Fresh From the Farms delivery and our recent visit to our daughter and her husband and our grand-daughter!, that reminded me of learning the phrase and of how delighted I was to realize that it applies to us--both to us personally and to KTeas!

Our daughter and her husband proclaimed themselves "moderately crunchy".  We had to have the term "crunchy", in this context, explained to us.  ::sheepishly shrugs:: 

I also looked it up on The Online Slang Dictionary and was fascinated to see the first two definitions given as "exhausted" and "embarrassed ... 'having put one's foot in one's mouth'." ... In addition to the fact that we've never heard the term used in those contexts, it's ironic, considering the current usage appears to be the much more positive, healthy meaning.

The Online Slang Dictionary precedes its third definition of "crunchy" as "hippie-esque" before presenting the definition:

"all-natural"  Refers to the crunch of granola, which (as goes the stereotype) hippies are likely to eat.

A certain amount of embarrassed amusement results, because I'm pretty sure, dear Giraffe, that it's our generation, maybe more our parents' but including ours, being referred to by the whole "hippie-esque" label, yet we had to learn what the term meant from our kids, the next generation.

At any rate, the reason they call themselves "moderately crunchy" is that they choose to cook and live "green-ish", meaning they are not radical about what they eat and how they live.  They consider eating as well as they can and going all-natural to be a process, and a gradual one at that.  They're not tossing everything out of their house and starting from scratch eating only 100% organic local foods and wearing only 100% organic clothing, and so on.  That just wouldn't be practical, but they are moving in that direction, with an ongoing quest to use less plastic and frequenting the local Farmer's Market and getting locally-produced beef when they can, as well as using fewer chemically-laden cleaners and doing more cleaning with vinegar and baking soda and so on.  Whether they ever reach the 100% mark down the line remains to be seen, but their small changes in the here-and-now are definitely making improvements in their lives.

We certainly understand the "moderately" outlook.  It's the same we have always embraced: Baby Steps.  The fact that it may not be practical or feasible for us to wipe clean the slate and start all over at the 100% mark does NOT mean that baby steps in the direction are of no value!

We realized, then, that we are Moderately Crunchy, ourselves, even though we didn't know it!  In fact, we may have planted the seeds for this Moderately Crunchy mentality over the years, what with using real butter instead of the chemical brew that is margarine and using local honey in our tea when we could find it.  I admit, we tended to avoid the Natural Food stores that began to crop up because they were so expensive and we just couldn't do it while the kids were still at home.  Now, however, we are working at becoming (there's that gradual-process thinking, again) more of Locavores:  we use locally-produced raw milk, I bake our scone and biscuit mixes with locally-produced raw buttermilk, and we were thrilled to discover the Fresh From the Farms delivery service so that we could reap the benefits of local farms around us and in turn help support them and the local economy. 

But you know, we're not radical about it, even though we do wish to keep taking those baby steps and continuing the process.  I seek Real Food recipes like those found on Nourished Kitchen and in Tosca Reno's Eat-Clean Diet.  I was tickled pink to be reminded of cooking meat and veggies in foil pouches, a method I

once used quite frequently with excellent results but for some reason fell away from, in a newly-discovered blog: Mrs. Skinny Fat.  However, when I prepared the "real" Salisbury Steak recipe I found on Nourished Kitchen this week, well, it required grass-fed beef and homemade beefstock.  We don't yet know where to get grass-fed beef locally and I don't have homemade beef stock.  But I didn't let that stop me from making the recipe.  I just used ground beef and beef stock I could buy at the nearby grocery store.  It was still a whole-food meal, traditionally cooked, not store-bought packaged and processed.  Albeit . . . with taking about twice as long to prepare the dish as the recipe told me it would take (so I'm not all that accomplished, as much as I always loved to cook; life got hectic and I got out of practice; I'm trying to remedy that now: baby steps), I steamed the veggies in the microwave.  I know I read on Nourished Kitchen that she doesn't use a microwave, and I've heard much of late about the evils of microwaving our food, and I am moving more toward "real cooking" again, but sometimes I'll heat up leftovers or prepare sidedishes in the microwave because it allows me to multi-task and do other things in my still-far-too-hectic life.

What's more, using Fresh From the Farms does help us be more locavores and more "crunchy", as in all-natural, but it doesn't mean we've gone all organic.  That's not because we're against Organic, quite the contrary. But as Fresh From the Farms states on their website: their emphasis is on using local farms, not necessarily organic, though they may use organic practices.

And therein lies the connection of "moderately crunchy" to KTeas as well as to us, personally.  For one thing, we don't limit ourselves to only 100% Certified Organic teas.  We do have some, even though we cannot yet say that on our private label, as I explained in the earlier sip-and-speak "Organic or Not Organic, That Is the Question ... well, Not Entirely".  However, not being 100% Certified Organic does not automatically make a tea or tisane poor-quality or not worthwhile. 

In addition, we were already familiar with the whole distinction between Certified Organic and Using Organic Practices from learning about the Sourcing of our teas.  As I also explained in the Organic or Not Organic post, we learned that not only in the tea industry but also in others such as the wine industry, often the growers use organic practices but are a small operation and don't have the manpower or the time, or the money for fees, for that matter, to go through the Organic Certification process.  Or, as one of our local honey suppliers explained to us, sometimes the strict letter of the FDA requirements to be able to say your product is Organic do not allow smaller companies to say they're Organic on their label even though they are, because, in the apiary's case, their property is not big enough to guarantee that their bees may not go into a field where organic practices are not followed, so some portion of the honey produced may not be 100% Organic in origin.  These honey producers emphasize the benefits of Raw Honey, which means that the footprint of the honey is from comb, through a filtering system, straight to the bottle, unlike the larger honey distributors which gather honey from a large number of beekeepers--and that can mean both domestic and foreign--and combine those honeys, then pasteurize/boil them in order to keep a consistent color and flavor.  Sounds nice, and all of the honey may have originated organically, but bear in mind that boiling removes the enzymes, microscopic particles of pollen and propolis and essentially renders the honey different in flavor and not as beneficial as raw, local honey.  None of this is to say that Organic is undesirable, only that it is perhaps not the be-all and end-all.

Likewise, some of the plantations where the teas we carry are grown may not be Certified Organic, by U.S. standards, at least--in some cases they meet European requirements to be Certified Organic, but the U.S. does not simply accept that and stamp it Organic, and sometimes those operations don't see the need to pay extra to be Certified by U.S.standards as well.  For the most part, they engage in organic practices even if they are not Certified Organic.  Or, they may be practicing Sustainable Agriculture  and be reclaiming land that was not cultivated organically for a long time.  Both the Morawaka Estate in Sri Lanka and the Glenburn Estates in India

(--::chuckling at myself: I actually typed "our Morawaka Estate" and "our Glenburn Estates" because we've developed such a strong relationship with the folks from each at the World Tea Expo and through correspondence between Expos, and when we talk about their teas we say "our Glenburn tea" or "our Morawaka Ceylons"---but while they may consider us and their distributors to be "part of the family" and vice versa, I mustn't sound like I'm claiming any ownership of the estates themselves!!--)

produce teas under such circumstances.  For example, Glenburn is not third-party Certified Organic, but their production process is part of the HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) program and their tea factories undergo regular annual audits by BSI.

So it turns out that we, ourselves, and KTeas are all Moderately Crunchy.  Who knew?     

Shoulda Taken a Picture!

I see so many tweets and blogs and statuses (statusi?) in which folks share a wonderful eating experience, whether their focus is the food itself, the venue, the companionship, the occasion, or some combination thereof, often accompanied by photographs of the repast.  Why didn't I, aka The Photo Fairy, think of taking a picture of the birthday dinner prepared for my husband this evening?  (Today is not his Bday, but this was the best day closest to the-day-of to do something celebratory.)

I cannot claim to be a Foodie, my dear Giraffe, but in the course of speaking of many things, speaking Of Life and Tea, I find myself wanting to share about this very simple yet rather special meal, and I do wish I had a photo of it to post.

Sundays have become Pasta Night for us, for no discernible reason.  Recently, we began making our own sauce using the tomatoes we get in our weekly delivery from Fresh From the Farms.  Due to this day's proximity to hubby's birthday, I wanted to make this pasta sauce a little more ... well, just More than previous sauces.  And in that regard, it may have been a simple meal but it wasn't entirely easy or quick, because a lot of chopping & prepping went into it.  (Perhaps I should take this as a cue to finally join the modern age of kitchenry and get a Food Processor!)

Early in the day I diced several tomatoes and put them in a huge pot.  We really need an intermediate-sized pot.  The largest saucepan we have, I believe it's 3 quarts, is perfect for making just-the-right amount of pasta for the two of us, so I didn't want to use that for the pasta sauce.  The next size we have is the huge stockpot which I believe is 8 quarts, with a pasta insert to automatically drain when the pasta is done by removing from the boiling water, and a steamer basket insert for the pasta insert . . . but we simply don't need that much pasta.  Certainly we could still use that pot for the quantity pasta we would use, but we wouldn't want to use that much water to prepare our quantity of pasta.  So instead I use that pot for the homemade pasta sauce even though it's overkill.  At least I need fill it only as far as the sauce requires, and not have to put excess water in to reach the pasta basket.  I am still rather new to this homemade pasta-sauce making, so I'm not good at judging how much sauce I'll get from dicing up how many tomatoes.  So I just chop and dice and cut and scrape the cutting board into the pot, and see what comes of it.  Today I think I have enough sauce left over to serve over newly-cooked pasta for lunch for the entire week!

I set the tomatoes to cooking on a very low setting on the stove this morning, and went on about laundry and working on Sipping Notes newsletter and so on.  Went to the store in the afternoon to pick up some ground beef, having decided that would make a nice change of pace.  Even though we had a can of tomato paste at home to add to the sauce for thickening, I also picked up at the store a can of paste with basil, garlic, and oregano to help spice up the sauce.

Back home, I browned the ground beef, rinsed it even though I got 96% lean, and added it to the sauce with the spiced tomato paste.  I chopped and diced and sliced and cut some more, to cut up green peppers, some for the sauce and some for salad, and a yellow squash, both from Fresh From the Farms.  I then sauteed the yellow squash, adding various seasonings such as thyme and rosemary, a pinch--just a pinch--of chipotle chili powder, and ground some black pepper onto it before adding the skillet-full to the sauce.  Next I sauteed the green peppers, and then---how's this for strange?: I put about a teaspoon-and-a-half of Dove Chocolate Discoveries' Aztec-Spice Sipping Chocolate into the skillet and sauteed that for a moment or two, then added that to the sauce!

The sauce was then left alone to continue simmering while I worked on the salad.  The base of the salad was the bibb lettuce from our Fresh From the Farms delivery.  I added the green bell pepper I mentioned above. I diced up a cucumber from FFtF as well.  I normally add tomato, but did not today.  What I did add was weirdly inspired by hubby's remark earlier in the day that he was craving fruit, as he worked his way through some cherries from the grocery store and a Honey Crisp apple from FFtF . . .: I sliced and diced an Asian Pear from FFtF and added it to the mix in our salad bowls!  Finished off by topping with shredded carrots and some shredded cheddar cheese.  Dove Chocolate Discoveries' Chocolate Fig Balsamic Vinaigrette dressed my salad ::big smile::. 

When we were ready to eat dinner, I boiled up some water and cooked some Farfalle pasta, because that just seemed the best choice for this Pasta Night.  Again, no discernible reason.  And that was it, our dinner:  Farfalle topped with the homemade pasta sauce with a tossed salad including Asian pears.

Oh, and the wine.  That in itself might be the crowning reason to have a photo, to prove to friends who know me well and know that I just don't drink, because I don't like the taste of alcohol, that I truly did have a glass of red wine with my husband's birthday dinner.  Uh huh.

A special set of circumstances.  And in fact, dear Giraffe, I do have some photos I can include with this post, tho not of the meal itself.  I visited a friend, yesterday, to take copies of both Traveling Tea Ladies books that her visiting mother had requested, after she had been visiting her old home town for the past week.  This friend has a gift-basket business, and she was very excited to show me something new that she discovered back home, that she was going to research how she could bring into her business.  She and her mother had gone to a wine tasting at Still Pond Vineyard & Winery in Arlington, GA, and my basket lady friend discovered that she wanted to be able to offer their wine in our state as part of her baskets, and she had purchased a number of their wines for herself, she was so enamored!  I had to laugh when her mother reported that she doesn't like the taste of alcohol, either (I'm not the only one!), but her doctor actually has her drinking a small quantity of the muscadine wine, specifically, because of the abundance of a helpful compound in the muscadine grape, in particular, for fighting cholesterol.  That started us to talking about all the buzz about the health benefits of red wine and dark chocolate . . . and my friend decided to gift Ed and me with a bottle of the Notchaway Red Georgia Muscadine Wine so we could tell her what we think of it---well, chiefly what Ed thinks of it since I'm not a wine fan.

That was when I remembered that I had intended to ask her to create a birthday gift basket for DH before I discovered she was out of town all this past week.  She decided to build him a basket around that gifted bottle of red wine along with some dark chocolate, on the spot, and that's just what we did!  As if it was Meant To Be that I couldn't request the gift basket be made until after she had discovered the wine.  Which is why he & I had the wine for dinner tonight.

Furthermore, I was surprised to discover that I didn't find my first sip of the Still Pond Muscadine Wine as distasteful as I had anticipated based on past experience!  That sounds awful: "as distasteful as I had anticipated"!  I'm sorry, I do tend to find wine unpleasant.  I've had wines whose fruity taste was quite appealing--until the alcohol burn or aftertaste hit, which is so unpleasant for me that it completely obliviates any enjoyment I'd previously had of the taste.  Which is why I have tended to stick with non-alcoholic sparkling fruit juices.  However, I didn't experience that unpleasantness on my first sip of this Still Pond wine, and I was duly impressed!  I could taste a fruityness (that's about as distinctive as I can get) that was not cancelled out by a lesser-than-usual alcohol aftertaste.

I specified "first sip" for a reason.  We talked and ate for several minutes before I took another sip.  It must've been longer than just a few minutes, because the wine in my glass had warmed by the time I took my second sip---and that wholly distasteful burning aftertaste was back.  In truth, I didn't notice that the wine had warmed until after that disconcerting experience, when I tried to figure out why the first sip had been nearly pleasant and the second sip so entirely unpleasant.  I think the first sip had been on the verge of enjoyable because the wine was chilled, and that somehow quelled the worst of the alcohol afterburn and allowed the fruity taste to the fore.  Heavens, had I always had wine too warm, before, is that why I have never liked it even on a first sip, before this?

This raises memories of attending a Wine & Chocolate Pairing as part of the Biltmore Experience and learning there that when one hears of wine being best served at room temperature, that refers to Castle Room Temperature, which is considerably chillier than what most of us in our modern age consider room temperature!

I did finish my wine, over the course of the entire evening.  At hubby's suggestion, I added ice to the glass to re-chill the poured wine.  I still had not finished it, though, when done with dinner, so I put my glass in the fridge to chill while doing the dishes and so on.  Then later I had my last few sips with a few bites of dark chocolate! ---All for my health, for the cholesterol-fighting properties, you see.  ::winks::

---I do cook with wine quite often, even though I don't like to drink it.  I frequently keep those little 4-packs of individual serving bottles of white and of red wines with screw-on caps on-hand to add 1/4-cup here or a 1/2-cup there.  Have found it works great in place of butter on veggies.  Plus, because we don't drink as a rule, we tend to accumulate partial bottles of wine brought by visitors and left behind when they depart, which I also use for cooking because I'm sure they're no good for drinking anymore after sitting here for months on end.  I did add some wine to the pasta sauce while making it.  By the time I reached that point in the narrative, however, I had recalled the wine for dinner and decided to include it and the departure from the norm of my drinking some, and I didn't want to steal the thunder of the announcement by having already mentioned using wine in preparation of the meal.

My choice to explore this wine experience in this seemingly unrelated blog topic is because I realized, even as I recalled the wine as part of the simple yet special dinner I started out writing about, that I have been feeling a coalescing of the myriad tumbles of words and thoughts around terroir, which I once thought was a blog topic splitting into two directions which has since evolved into a series of blog entries, and around the oh-so-many similarities between Tea and Wine (and even Coffee!  Yes.  I said that.) regarding cultivating, growing, selecting, the art and the science of Making, and of Tasting, and while I don't wish to jinx it, I think I just may begin composing some of those Mental Blogs for less nebulous publication.  And so it seems appropriate to mention this timely sampling of a wine that I did not find entirely distasteful and in which I could discern fruity-ness!

Until we sip and speak, again . . . 
     

Tea: the Universal Problem-Solver --- & Vinyl Making a Comeback?!

Currently, the book I'm "reading" by listening to an audiobook in the car whilst running about taking care of business (very nearly the only way I manage to read at all anymore; very hard on a lifelong bookaholic!) is the BBC Audiobooks America version of Deborah Crombie's All Shall Be Well (a Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James novel).  As I set out on this morning's errands, I was thoroughly enchanted to read/hear:

Instead of answering, Vi ran some water in the electric kettle and pulled two mugs off the shelf.  "Sit down.  We'll have another cup."

Gemma almost laughed.  Tea: the universal problem-solver.  Her mother never dealt with anything unless fortified by strong sweet tea.

I laughed out loud at that point, and right then and there, this blog entry was born.  I simply had to share that passage as well as another delightful passage from the first Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James novel I'd read/listened to:  A Share In Death:

"It's the shock."  Kincaid held out a hand to her.  "It does strange things to the system sometimes.  What you need is a cup of the good old British restorative--hot, sweet tea."

::sighs contentedly::  Ah yes, "a spot of tea and I'll be right as rain."  Of course, ever since seeing the animated flick "Treasure Planet", in my mind I hear that phrase spoken by Emma Thompson as Captain Amelia!  I have spoken upon occasion about how I share the sentiments of a friend who has told me that her own children insist that when the time comes, her gravestone will read: "Come on in.  Sit down.  I'll make some tea and everything will be better." or words to that effect.  Warms the cockles of my heart. . . .

(An aside: If you want to look into these and any other books by Deborah Crombie, do stop by Amazon's Deborah Crombie Page and read her bio.  Positively delightful, with remarks like:  ". . . she lived in both Chester, England, and Edinburgh, Scotland, where she failed to make as good a use of being cold and poor as JK Rowling."  Did she write that herself?  Who thinks this stuff up?!)   

But wait---What does that have to do with Vinyl making a comeback?, you ask.  At first blush, nothing.  This morning, however, I was already regretting that I'd set off in such a hurry, I'd not made myself more tea to bring along in my travel mug before I dashed out the door.  That passage from All Shall Be Well and the ensuing wash of remembered tea references in literature or at least storytelling simply cinched it: I had to have tea.

And so I went into a Starbucks ( ::gasps!!:: ) that I had literally just come upon.  The lady in front of me at the counter had just told the cashier "That's all," but a moment later said, "No, can I still add this to my bill?"  And she pushed across the counter the audio CD: 21 by Adele. The woman said she had been looking for that CD, and the cashier gushed about how fantastic it is, and the woman said, "I've been meaning to download it from iTunes, but I'm old-school, I really prefer to have my hard-copy!"

I couldn't help joining the conversation: "I'm the same way."  The woman turned to me with obvious delight to have found someone else who felt that way about hardcopy, and we began conversing.  In a moment, she said something about how she even still has her hard-copy vinyl.  She said, "I listen to my vinyl about once a year, but I can, you know?!"  Yes, I know.  I have boxes of vinyl and I miss very much listening to it all.  Especially at Christmas-time: my all-time favorite Christmas music is interspersed throughout albums my father brought home each year when Goodyear gave their employees these Christmas albums as a gift.

Then the woman said, "Vinyl is making a comeback, you know.  Yes.  The sound is different.  Young audiophiles are discovering vinyl."  In wonder, I mused aloud, "I might be able to get a new turntable after all!"  The woman said, "Oh, I kept mine."  I informed: "Mine unfortunately bit the dust some time back.  I've kept saying that I must get another turntable and replacement styluses before they stop making them, but I never have."  The woman assured me:  "Oh, now you can buy a turntable again."

What a felicitous chance encounter!  And all because I was driven into that Starbuck's for tea by that passage in my audiobook!

Perhaps Tea is, indeed, the universal problem-solver!

Until we have another cup . . .

Tea and Lace

What is it about lace and linen that seems so quintessentially Tea?  That is not entirely a rhetorical question.  I love a good Authentic, Traditional Afternoon Tea with all the trimmings, including lace tablecloths and gloves on the ladies' hands, but as I've stated elsewhere, my love of Enjoying Tea is not limited to the Proper setting of a Tea Party.  I'm just as partial to a cozy, comfy, casual Tea Environment. And yet, I just love the look and feel--both literal touch and "feel" as in ambiance--of lace and linen as part of Tea Trappings.

Tea and Lace is on my mind today because I said goodbye to a fellow vendor at The Shoppes @ River's Edge whose business is linen and lace.  Due to various factors, she made the decision to close down her shop within The Shoppes and I got to visit with her briefly today as she moved out.

I have had my eye on the contents of her booth since KTeas moved in at The Shoppes.  I immediately felt that her products were such a great fit with ours, and I wished to "dress" our booth with various of her wares.  Sadly, I never quite figured out a way to incorporate her products in our original booth.  It wasn't until just about a month ago that we had the opportunity to move into a different spot at The Shoppes which lent itself to arrangement that would accommodate elements which could include linen and lace products.   

Just for starters, the Lavish tablecloth on our little tea table, as shown on the left.  And the matching Lavish runner on our tea cart, as shown below.






These truly were intended to be just for starters, but I had no sooner picked those out, than I found out when I contacted the owner to arrange to purchase them that she was going to have to leave The Shoppes.

I'm also a consultant with Willow House (tealady.willowhouse.com), and I can't help but envision wonderful settings for KTeas as well as for my own home, combining the Willow House decor with the refined linens and lace of Butkins.


So, I will avidly be keeping up with her website:  Butkins Linen and Lace in order to grow my collection of lovely lace and linen to dress up whatever tea environment I may wish to enhance.

You may find her at various shows and expos, yourself.  I know she has traveled to distant locales (distant from our home base of South Carolina), at least as far as Texas, to hock her wares in holiday shopping shows and women's expos and all sorts of festivals.  Be on the lookout for her to visit your area.  She'll be posting her 2011 Calendar of Events on the website soon.  In addition, we are hoping to join forces at various times so that Butkins and KTeas may exhibit together at some of these shows.

In the meantime, peruse her website.  Read the delightful story of how she got into this business to start with:

"How Butkins Linen and Lace came to be....Our story begins back in the ancient days of 1991 when my husband was stationed with the USAF at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, England. . . ."

Dabble amidst the photos of her products and feel as if you're running your fingers over the exquisite workmanship. 

And see what answers spring to mind for you to the question:

What is it about lace and linen that just goes with Tea?  Or vice versa? Is it something about Tea that causes it to be such a grand fit with lace and linen?

 

Organic or Not Organic, That Is the Question ... well, Not Entirely

As consumers, ourselves, we seek to “go green”, including being conscious of our diet to make it increasingly consist of all-natural and organic, etc., as much as we can without having the control of living on a farm/ranch where we grow all of our own food.  So it seemed only natural when we formed KTeas that we would seek to have most, if not all, of our teas be Organic.  . . . Easier said than done, it turns out.  We are sure that many of you have already traveled farther along this road to knowledge than we have.  Nonetheless, we thought we’d share some of our own journey along this particular path and relate its own Intersection of Life and Tea.

The murkiness or lack of clarity on the matter of Organic, and of Labeling and Marketing your product as Organic, is not limited to tea.  As I said, we strive to “go organic” in our personal lives, so when we recently met a local honey producer, we asked if their honey is organic?  The answer we got was quite an education in itself.  The main points of the answer are as follows:

“The reason is that bees fly up to 2 miles  to collect nectar so, while a beekeeper’s home/farm/orchard may adhere to organic guidelines, our neighbors may not . . . Since there are very, very few places in the world that can raise organic honey  (you'd need a plot of land at least 4 miles in diameter and your bees would need to be in the center)--they are certified organic  -  and the rest of us are not permitted to use the word organic in marketing. . . . "Organic" is good but rare so you should always look for RAW honey - that means the footprint of the honey is from comb, through a filtering system and straight into the bottle.  Most (if not all) large honey distributors - like Sue Bee - gather honey from a large number of beekeepers (both domestic and foreign), combine the honeys  then pasteurize/boil the honeys in order to maintain a consistent color and flavor over their stock.  Boiling removes the enzymes, microscopic particles of pollen and propolis and basically renders the honey a different flavor and not as beneficial as raw, local honey.”

Suddenly, after reading that explanation, I began to understand better why I’d been recently seeing so much fuss about local stores carrying raw milk.

You may think that whether honey can be marketed as organic has nothing to do with whether tea is organic.  Recall that the purpose of the regulations and certifications and seals in the U.S. is to protect the consumer from unscrupulous businesses using the word “organic” willy-nilly so that they may cash in on the buzzword even if the products are not entirely, or perhaps not at all, organic. 

The idea is to allow the consumer to simply look at a label and by seeing that USDA Organic stamp of approval through the NOP (National Organic Program), be able to trust that the integrity of the tea leaf (or any ingredient used in the tisane) has been protected all the way from growth in the plantation without pesticides and chemical fertilizers that compromise the natural state of the plant and leave toxins in our bodies, grown by farmers emphasizing the use of renewable resources and conservation of soil and water, right through the processing as tea and shipment to facilities where it’s packaged under organic conditions.  That’s a good thing.

But the impact on small businesses goes a lot farther than local honey companies not being able to market their honey as organic because they cannot afford to have a plot of land large enough to ensure that the plants their bees pollinate have all been grown with organic practices.

We have read, for example, that some small wineries, like family-owned-and-run, may have similar problems.  Even if they may be Organic in practice, they may have not yet managed to get Certified Organic, so they cannot market themselves as Organic.

What’s more, returning to the topic of tea, consider that camellia sinensis is almost exclusively grown and processed into tea elsewhere, not in the United States.  Sometimes, the problem with labeling and marketing organic may be a matter of:  the U.S. end of the operation has not been able to get the entire operation certified to USA stipulations.  In order to display that USDA NOP certification, every step along the way, each link in the chain must be certified, at Source as well as the processing plant or warehouse here in the States.  At present, the USDA does not simply accept that if something is EEC Certified Organic or Japan certified, for example, then it is certified organic and they can put their stamp of approval on it.

One European-based tea business from whom we’ve purchased tea as consumers has this to say on their site: 
“Teas with the “Bio” or EEC Organic symbol are certified Organic in Europe. Teas with the USDA Organic symbol are certified Organic in the United States. Selections marked ‘made with organic tea’ have a USDA Organic tea base with added ingredients that have not been certified organic, but do meet [our] strict standards. It should be noted that EEC standards are actually stricter
than USDA standards.”   

That company is still somewhat unusual for having gone for the USDA Organic certification for some of their teas.  Most likely because they do have U.S. operations, they decided it was worthwhile to get U.S. Certification for the most popular teas in the U.S.  Many of the European-owned and Asian-owned tea gardens & processors, however, are certified organic to European and/or Asian standards, and since the bulk of their market is Europe and/or Asia, they don’t see the need to pay for USA organic certification.  There may be debate about that assertion in the above quote, but most European and Asian entities do feel that their Organic Certification is more exacting than the USA’s, thus they don’t see the need to undergo the expense and procedure and time required to gain USDA NOP certification in addition to the certification they already have.

(We suspect that this attitude is in the process of changing as the U.S. market for quality loose tea grows and the average tea consumer in the U.S. is growing increasingly better-informed, but that’s just our opinion, and at the moment we have to deal with the prevailing state of affairs.)   

Okay, that’s all well and good, but let’s get down to the impact of all of that on KTeas.

KTeas is private label, meaning we are our own brand.  We made that choice because from the very beginning, we intended that one day we would be creating our own blends to sell.  In fact, as referenced on our Facebook Page on New Year’s Day, we already have a “signature blend” that we cannot yet package and sell to you because the blend was created out of teas we bought retail before KTeas even existed, and we have not yet found just the right wholesale teas to use in re-creating our signature blend!

What’s more, even if we had found “the right teas”, we have not yet found a facility in which we could do the blending and packaging.  It was recommended to us, because we are such a small business, that we locate a commercial kitchen, such as a caterer’s, which is not in use all of the time and whose owner would be willing to rent out the use of the kitchen during their own non-use hours.  Because:  one of our goals is to eventually work with local grocery stores and markets and restaurants who like to carry/use the products of local businesses, and such establishments must meet Health Dept. standards.  Hence, we would need a Health-Dept.-approved facility in which to do the blending and the packaging of our products which would go to those establishments.  However, though one might think in these economic times that catering businesses or restaurants or other enterprises with commercial-grade kitchens would be looking for an opportunity to bring in some extra money, we have not yet located such a facility of which we can rent the use.

What this has to do with the organic question is:  Another reason we would need a commercial-grade kitchen is that when we do make our own blends, if we use organic ingredients and want to be able to label the resulting blends as “organic”, we would have to have a facility that has been Certified Organic.  We’d probably have better luck with a commercial-grade kitchen that is already Health-Dept.-approved either turning out to also be certified organic or easily getting certified organic, than with our own kitchen, right?

Thus, as we researched tea wholesalers and found suppliers who do private label, whom we had determined we could trust as far as (a) the quality of their teas, (b) the fact that the workers on the plantations and in the factories are paid and treated fairly (Fair Trade, Direct Trade, Ethical Tea Partnership, etc.), and (c) the teas and tisanes they make available to us being as much as possible organic . . . we tried many of their teas and tisanes to determine which ones we wanted to carry our name, KTeas. 

Then, we narrowed down the list to those suppliers who also offered the private label service whereby they package those teas and tisanes which we selected, and they put our private label on the packages for us, in their own facilities before shipping to us. 

We thought this would enable those products which are organic to be labeled organic under our private label, since they would have been sealed up in an organic facility and the seal not broken once they reached us because they’re already in their resale packaging.

Not so.  We have learned it’s a lot more complicated than that.  At least if we want the trustworthiness of the USDA Organic seal of approval on the label.

While there are a lot of loopholes, for lack of a better word, concerning whether the word “organic” appears on the front of the label or only in the ingredients list, and based on percentages of a business’s product that is organic being below a certain % of that business’s total products, blah, blah, blah . . .  if you want to have that USDA NOP stamp of approval on your product label in the United States so that people can look at your label and trust that your product is 100% organic (or whatever organic claim you are making), then you have to have passed inspections to be Certified Organic by a USDA-approved Certifying Agency and be able to pass annual renewals of certification.

We thought that by selecting teas from suppliers who are Certified plus receiving our private label teas in sealed packaging from those Certified facilities, we could then have Certified Organic KTeas teas.  Not that cut-and-dried.  At least as far as having the NOP certification appearing on the labels, one supplier has informed us that our private label KTeas labels must be approved by the same certifying agency that certified our supplier, even though the teas have already been certified before they’re packaged for us!  Which, if you stop to think about it, is a good thing: remember the remarks earlier about the assurances that are supposed to be inherent in the stamp or seal seen on the label?  Going through the approval process is no doubt to ensure that nothing broke the organic chain by the time the tea is sealed up in private label KTeas packaging.   

We are paying the fees and going through the process of having the labels of those teas approved.  In the meantime, there are teas that we are getting from that supplier that are organic but do not yet say organic on the label.  (We had proceded to identify those teas as organic in the website listings, but it turns out that we were doing so prematurely.  We are waffling on whether to remove the word “organic” until we have completed the approval process, or leave the word because we are going to have that approval, we just don’t know yet when the process will be completed and we’ll start getting those teas shipped to us with the certified-organic labels.)  We do have a few teas from another supplier who does go ahead and put the word “organic” on our private label when the product is indeed organic, but you’ll notice those labels do not display USDA NOP seals.  

So: be vigilant, to be sure---“caveat emptor”!  But also be aware that the whole organic labeling practice is (relatively) new and complicated and the wrinkles are still being ironed out of it. 

Try to get to know the sources of the organic products you’re looking at buying.  Having some kind of relationship with them might be the best way of knowing what you’re getting, since the question is not entirely whether a product is organic or not, but sometimes the question is whether a product qualifies to be labeled organic even when it is organic.  Perhaps if the products in question are not local and can’t be produced locally, “getting to know” the supplier might be more a case of doing your due diligence, researching the company.  And hey, if it all makes your head hurt, how about enjoying a soothing cup of tea while you’re doing the research?   

When it comes to produce and meat that is organic, if you have local farms and providers that you can literally, personally get to know, that may be the easiest way of determining the quality of what you’re getting.  Perhaps you could literally build a relationship with those folks over a cup of tea!

And please do develop a relationship with KTeas.  We at KTeas believe that Relationships are an integral part of what Tea is all about, and we want to share a cuppa with you, literally or figuratively, at the Intersection of Life and Tea. 

(This blog entry was inspired when completing the questionnaire for the KTeas interview on Now Serving Tea.)

Tea Dances Need To Make a Comeback!

Don't you think?  Admittedly, we kind of have Dance on the brain just now: the dance studio where we take lessons has been closed for the holidays and we've missed it terribly; we're quite jubilant that it re-opens this week.  I've wanted to write this blog since August or September, though. 

We had discovered a delightful little book called A Time for Tea: Then and Now, Tea Activity Book by Catherine A. Macaro.    Very close to the time that we participated in our dance school's competition The Cosmopolitan Classic, while browsing through the book, we found a page about Tea Dances.  

We felt sort of like "There, you see!" (not saying "you see" to anyone in particular, mind you)  "Our simultaneous passions for Tea and for Dance are not so disparate after all!  Once upon a time, not so very long ago*, and right here in this country, Tea and Dance went together hand-in-hand!"  *Well, a century ago, looks like:

"During the 1910s and the 1920s many fashionable hotels 

featured tea dances. These afternoon gatherings were considered a proper place for young ladies to meet young men. The tango was a popular dance. It even affected dress styles because the ladies' skirts had to be slit so the dancers could glide around the floor better."

The Tea Dances page also came to mind when we participated in our dance school's holiday party and Showcase: Dancing In a Winter Wonderland, which had a theme this year: "A Century of Dance", moving through the decades of the last century.

 Personally, we have often longed for establishments still to be common where we could go for dinner and dancing nearly any night of the week.  The idea of Tea Dances beautifully dovetailed with our wistful nostalgia for an era we didn't even know, ourselves; know only through movies and the stories of our elders.  On New Year's Eve, we were assailed by thoughts of Dancing In the New Year; gosh, the Tea Dances page spoke of fashionable hotels featuring tea dances, are any establishments hosting NYE parties where we could ballroom- (and Latin- ) dance right through midnight?  I was strongly tempted to post on our school's Facebook Page to tell all our instructors that they should "just give up having your own lives over New Year's and put on a big Dancing New Year's Eve bash for all of us students---KIDDING!! You know that right?" ... Well, kidding about them giving up their own lives in order to throw a party for all of us; not kidding about wishing we'd known of a place where we could've waltzed, fox trotted, tangoed, rumbaed, cha-chaed, mamboed into the new year.

Imagine our delight on New Year's Day when we were out getting some decorations for next Christmas and we came across the book:  Shall We Dance?, Brian Lanker, photographer. 
It fed right into our Dance-on-the-brain state of mind as paged through the book, utterly awestruck.  It helped somewhat to alleviate our ache to be dancing.  Once again, visions of a ballroom filled with swells of music danced through my head as I sighed over my next cup of tea.

And knowing that this week the studio reopens and our first private lesson of 2011 is only about 48 hours away, has the image of Tea Dances gliding through my head, again.  Tea Dances really do need to make a comeback, don't you think?