Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Chai-stravaganza!

Ok, the 6 teas a day ritual continues forward. Although I didn't have all these teas today, I did drink a lot of chai, my favorite flavor of all time, so I figured a run down of some chais I've had was in order.

Zhena's Gypsy Tea- Coconut Chai
Delish! It's very sweet and has a really spicy bite. You almost have to put some milk in this to cut the piquancy, but that's better than fine because the milk compliments the coconut flavor. A novel blend and very rich. Very recommended.

Zhena's Gypsy Tea- Chocolate Chai
LIke the coconut, this one is a big winner. I mean, what marketing son of God finally brought these two flavors together!?! This blend is smoother and not quite as spicy as the coconut. It has more cinnamon in it too. More unusually, it has a rooibos base instead of black tea which actually works great as the more robust, earthy flavor of the red tea goes seamlessly with the chocolate notes. I'm so glad something as cool as "gypsy" tea is as awesome as it sounds. There is no way not to love this tea.

Teavana - Mate Samurai Caai
This is a confusing tea which isn't too surprising since I have n idea what the "samurai" part is about. It's has the familiar strong, earthy, almost tinny taste of mate plus a whole lot of cardamom. It also has a strong, woody, resiny note almost like pine. This tea is more pungent that your usual mellow, winter spices and is better with just sweetener and no milk. Probably an acquired taste for some.

Teavana - White Chai
The delicate white tea flavor is so subtle that the spices really dominate this blend. The strongest flavors are clove and lemongrass. This is a tricky tea since white tea is notoriously heat sensitive and the tart note makes me unsure whether more milk or more sugar is necessary. Surprisingly, it is also good when mixed with the mate and strongly sweetened with no milk.

Tazo Chai
Much better than when you get the syrup at Starbucks. It's a pretty straightforward chai with a strong black tea flavor and an even balance between cinnamon, ginger, clove, nutmeg, and cardamom. It's good with no milk or sugar, but even better with honey and milk.

Stash-Chai Spice
Also a pretty straightforward chai. If I had to choose I'd go with the Tazo, but that might be because I like their packaging better.

Stash-Green Chai
Something about this brand's tea bags always has a musty taste, but I might be the only person that can taste it (Long story, I have a unnaturally strong sense of taste). Nevertheless, it's a pretty good tea. Ginger is primary spice which goes well with the grassy taste of green tea. It already pretty sweet and surprisingly creamy so I'd only add a splash of milk and a little sweetener. I'd like to compare it to the Republic of Tea's green chai which I haven't had yet. I feel like green tea is not the intuitive choice for chai, but maybe RoT can prove me wrong.

Stash- Holiday Chai
The "holiday" flavors are listed as gingerbread and rum. I don't really taste the gingerbread, other than the ginger flavor that already supposed to be there but the rum flavor is very strong in good way. It cuts the sweetness and gives it a smokier taste. It would be awesome loaded up with lots of milk and sugar. Suprisingly good, although winter teas usually are.

Stash- Double Chai
More of a good thing? Maybe. If you like spicy tea or feel like milk dilutes your tea too much this might be for you. The extra spiciness comes from more cardadom and a dash of coriander. It's also pretty interesting plain if you love cinnamon and cardamom. Be careful of brewing it too long, it will get bitter.

Stash- Vanilla Chai
It's kind of a misnomer. It tastes closer to hazelnut coffee than chai, but I like hazelnut coffee. It's got a nice toasty taste and not too sweet. Also awesome with lots of milk and sugar.

Teatime

So in an effort to organize the tea cabinet (yeah, we have a whole cabinet full of tea) I'm trying consume all the stray begs, sampler sets, and almost empty boxes. This has led me to the totally pointless plan of consume as many kinds of tea as I can a day. So for the rest of the week I'm going to have a cup of green, black, and white tea every day. In addition, I'm going to have a mate, redbush, and herbal tea too.

I'm sure Starbucks is pissed I'm not directing this urge toward purchasing one of their new tea products.

I feel like since each kind of tea has it's own purported benefit, drinking one of each will have some kind of salubrious effect. Since the experiment began yesterday I have lost 2 pounds which is probably from drinking about three times as much water as I normally do. Or maybe the 1.5 hours of yoga I did. I also woke up bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 8 am! Many of you many regularly wake up at 8, but I usually get rolling around 9:30 and that's only when I set an alarm. If left to my own devices I get up after 11am. So that is kind of a big deal. I also had the mental alacrity to write css style sheets and html out of my head with no editor all day. Perhaps the mild caffeine boost medicated my low-level ADD?

However, I'm mostly suspicious of claims like that and just like tea so here is today's tea recommendation:


Republic of Tea - Yerba Mate Latte.
Yummy! It's smokey and chocolaty. It would be a good substitute if you can't bear another cup of coffee today. I almost always drink tea with no milk or sugar, but I bet this would taste like a fancy latte as the name suggests with some milk and a little sweetener. Mate has a lot of caffeine so beware before bedtime. Finally, it has a volcano on the tin which is always fun. Mmm, lava.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Nesting

It's uncanny how Wiccan holidays sneak up on you. February 2nd was Imbolc (or the 1st or 5th depending on your calendar). It's a Celtic cross-quarter holiday and one I often gloss over being that I am not of Gardenerian variety of witch. Nevertheless, it's a solid enough holiday, the vestige of it that you might recognize is Groundhog Day.

Imbolc, or Candlemas, is sort of a placeholder in my mind. The point between the longest night of winter and the vernal equinox in March when spring is really getting into full gear. As the groundhog tradition indicates, it's a time to start getting ready for spring and pace yourself through the vestiges of winter. It a holiday of spring cleaning, getting your house in order, beginning to put the winter items away, and starting the spring gardening.

So anyway, I totally flaked on Imbolc. I had some plans and totally forgot about them. In the meantime, I've developed and unhealthy obsession with finding an apartment-- a plan that cannot be set into motion until March or April. Regardless, I've been torturing myself by filling in floorplans like crosswords and gazing flirtatiously at large kettles imagining tea parties for a half-dozen and other such rituals for domesticating of a space. All month I've hungrily devoured interior decorating magazines, rabidly dogearing the pages with pleasing paint and exotic furniture. I even doubled the size of my herb garden in an afternoon. It wasn't until I was longingly stroking a seven foot framed mirror at Home Goods that I realized what was going on.

Brigid, the patron goddess of Imbolc, had her hands all over this frenzy.

I thought I had skipped Imbolc, but it clearly hadn't skipped me. Retracing my steps, February 2nd was, in fact, the very day I had inexplicably taken a sewing break to peek at apartments Craigslist.

That's kind of the end of the anecdote, I guess. It's probably more charming if you know your holidays or could see me pacing around World Market with utter covetousness in my witchy eyes.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Who you gonna call?

So "Ghostbusters" was the midnight movie last weekend, and despite getting properly riled up about it two weeks in advance, I didn't really seriously contemplate making a costume until the day of. I KNOW, RIGHT? How could I be so remiss? Dressing up is what I do.


Actually it went down like this:

Me: (around 1pm)Um, if I make Ghostbusters costumes, will you wear one?
Meg: Wow, that's a real friend commitment. Will they be cute?
Me: Of course! Although I might not have enough time to make them....



Around 3 or 4pm I decided after a few minutes of web research I should get on this. Also, I wrote about the plan to dress up on my Facebook, and now HAD to deliver. I gave myself about 30 minutes to get to Joann's and back with a rough pattern, fabric, thread, and zippers. Meg opted for Venkman, I settled on Spengler.


5:15pm
I went about cutting out the pattern which was a piece of shit. It may have been the worse pattern I've ever seen. If you're wondering how a S-XL men OR women's costume can be finessed out of one pattern that answer is that it cannot.


This is not, by the way, the right way to cut out a pattern. Patterns should be cut flat on a hard, smooth surface but since I was free handing adjustments to the pattern as I cut this is how I did it. I also don't have a cutting table at my house. I also realized I didn't quite have enough fabric, but I just fudged some of the other pieces instead of making the jumpsuits into shorts. Because it's weird enough having to explain why you're dressed like a Ghostbuster without explaining why you're dressed like a SEXY Ghostbuster.






6:00pm-9:00pm
It took roughly 1 and 1/2 hours for each jumpsuit including the zippers, collars, and ironing. I made Jeff put together the ghost logo and name tag patches in AI, but I ended up have to tweak them and battle with the printer so it only saved me about 10 minutes.9:45pm
Patches are on. Judicious use of fabric glue for hems and facings applied. All done!

The final result:

Oh wait, I mean the real final result:
Meg's got the nice, non-camera phone pics so you'll just have to be patient, yucca plants.