Tea of the Month
We just had to make the
same product both our Tea of the Month and our Featured Product, this month. Caribbean Dream Herbal makes the perfect summer beverage. The vibrant blend of tropical dried fruits, herbs and coconut makes such a tasty iced tea, Sweet Tea lovers have told us they don't feel the need to sweeten this iced tea. Lovely: it's a more healthy summer drink than soda, and it tastes great, too! Furthermore (see below)... | |
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Our Caribbean Dream, dry, makes a great low-calorie topping, sprinkled over ice cream, or a tremendous snack mixed with nuts?! | |
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Calendar |
July ushers in a new, 2nd
local presence for KTeas,
in the center of
The Shoppes @ River's Edge! (see article below Calendar)
July 4th
Independence Day
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July 05 2pm - 4 pmTea & Chocolate Pairing for Westminster Towers Red Hat Club at the Celebration Cottage
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July 12 - 16 The Etiquette School of the Piedmont at The Celebration Cottage
1639 Ebenezer Road Rock Hill, SC
803-280-5662
See the ad in the current YC magazine!
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The Shoppes @ River's Edge |
No sooner did we return from the World Tea Expo (see "New Under the Summer Sun" to the right), than KTeas met with a prime opportunity & joined The Shoppes @ River's Edge in Rock Hill, SC--with barely a week to set up & prepapre for the Grand Opening (see photos) on June 25! The Shoppes is a collection of lovely businesses showcased in an indoor marketplace, truly-conveniently located right off I-77 at Exit 82A, at the intersection of Celanese (SC Hwy 161) & Cherry Rd.
KTeas will soon be joined in our space at The Shoppes by Cloister Honey--made locally in Charlotte, NC! Just wait 'til you try it on a scone or a biscuit!
KTeas' space at The Shoppes augments our presence at The Celebration Cottage. Watch for Facebook & Twitter (see below) notices that we're at our shoppe in The Shoppes with samples of a scone or biscuit or shorbread made from our mixes, or samples of a newest tea, for you to try as you shop at The Shoppes . . . but there's no place to Take Tea at The Shoppes. The go-to place for a Tea Party is still Celebration Cottage.
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Tea in History | How did Bohea make a splash in American history? According to information from the Old South Meeting House Museum in Boston, 342 chests from Britain's oldest tea merchant, Davison, Newman, & Co., were thrown overboard in that fateful 1773 event, all containing Bohea tea of the day. Even though the East India Tea Company was the importer, the tea was not from India. The East India Tea Company did some business in China, which is where Bohea originates.
At the time, "bohea" simply meant "black tea". Not necessarily smoky like the Bohea we carry, though there may have been some trace of the fires used to dry the leaves: the growing demand for teas in the Western World led to drying out the tea leaves for the prolonged journey by ship from Canton to London, thus producing Black Tea, which Westerners came to prefer. The tea came from the Wu Yi Mountains along the Fujian border. When buyers at Market asked the name of the tea, they were told "Wu Yi Cha" ("cha" = "tea") which the Western ear heard as "Bohea" (boo-he) and so was pronounced that way from then, on.
And it appears this Wu Yi Cha, or Bohea, is what went overboard at the Boston Tea Party. | |
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Celebrate DiversiTEA with these great recipes!
The 4th of July is a great holiday to spend with family and friends. Most people spend it grilling out or at the beach. Whatever your plans are for this Fourth of July, make sure that you invite some nice refreshing tea to the party. For those of you who like the traditional ways of cooling off, a nice cup of Iced Tea will help beat the heat. But if you enjoy trying new things, then we have got the perfect recipe for you.
July is National Ice Cream Month. What does that have to do with tea? Everything. Did you know that you can make tea flavored ice cream? (Yum!) Here is a recipe that we found for Homemade Red, White, and Blue tea ice cream. What a perfect treat for July 4th.
Homemade Red, White and Blue TEA ICE CREAM
1-3/4 cups whole milk 2 cups heavy cream 2 eggs 2/3 cup sugar 7 teaspoons of loose leaf tea ( for red, consider raspberry, for blue consider blueberry tea, for white consider a white tea) Fruit (optional) In a small saucepan, combine 1/2 cup of the milk (set the rest of the milk aside for later use) and 7 teaspoons of loose leaf tea of your choice into cold milk. Cook over medium heat. Do not boil.
Remove from heat and let steep for 5 minutes. Strain out the tea.
In a small mixing bowl, combine the eggs and add the milk/tea mixture. Add the sugar, remaining milk, and heavy cream.
Using a commercial ice cream maker, follow directions as stated. If you do not have an ice cream maker, a hand mixer will be sufficient to use.
To make the ice cream, using the electric hand mixer is easy. Freeze a stainless steel bowl. Combine all the ingredients in the cold steel bowl and mix on high for 4 minutes. Place the whipped contents into the freezer and freeze overnight.
For Raspberry tea ice cream, add 1/2 cup raspberry puree to the cream mixture when whipping. Then put in freezer.
For White tea ice cream, add ˝ tsp vanilla extract and 1/tsp almond extract.
For Blueberry tea ice cream, add ˝ cup blueberry puree to the cream mixture when whipping. Then put into freezer.
Looking for a way to add tea to your main course? Here's a great recipe for finger-lickin' chicken or ribs. Who knew?
Orange Spiced or Lemon TEA GLAZE (for chicken or ribs)
1 cup of your favorite loose leaf orange spice or lemon tea (steeped for 5 minutes) ˝ lemon or orange juice 1/2 cup honey 1 cup your favorite barbeque sauce Mix in a small sauce pan over low heat. Use as a glaze over grilled chicken or ribs
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Looking for a great gift, whether for a special occasion or just to say "Thinking of you"?
We can help!
KTeas and Simply Elegant Gift Baskets have partnered to create the perfect gift for any occassion.
Visit www.simplyelegantbaskets.net for gift ideas. To order please email heidi@simplyelegantbaskets.net or call 803-324-5073.
Nationwide shipping and local delivery in Rock Hill, Fort Mill, Charlotte, and surrounding areas available!
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New Under the Summer Sun
The World Tea Expo must be the biggest Tea Party in one spot, ever! KTeas is so excited and pleased to have attended in June 2010. In truth, we are still assimilating all that we discovered and learned, there, but we'll go ahead and share just a taste: Hawaii Grown Tea: Why Is It So Important? presented by Eva Lee, Teaist, of Tea Hawaii & Company, was fascinating and exciting to attend. Eva, through Tea Hawaii & Company, represents a number of smaller Tea Gardens on the Hawaii Islands. We talked to several Hawaii Tea Growers in the exhibition hall and began our relationship with them. We are enjoying the samples of their teas that we brought home from the Expo, and we are looking forward to bringing in our first shipments of Hawaii Grown --- another U.S.-grown---Tea to join the ranks of KTeas selections! Furthermore, also in the exhibition hall, we were able to strike up relationships with the representatives of a few more tea estates around the world. Again, we enjoyed the teas we sampled at the Expo and the teas we brought home for further sampling, and as a result, in the coming weeks and months, we are so excited that we will begin bringing in Low-Grown Ceylon Teas from Morawaka Tea Estates Ltd in Sri Lanka, and marvelous Darjeeling, Assam, White, and Oolong teas from the Glenburn Tea Estate in Darjeeling, India!! Cooking With Tea: The Tea Ice Cream and Tea Glaze recipes are not from this presentation but are fortuitous finds to share with you and introduce you to the concepts central to one of the most delightful sessions either of us attended at the Expo, presented by Robert Wemischner! Another happy session was Tea Sommelier Cynthia Gold's Pairing Tea & Cheese. We met Cynthia at our first professional conference in September 2008, and she cemented our fledgling interests both in both Custom Blending teas and in Cooking With Tea. In fact, not only was the workshop magnificent, but we got word that Cynthia's book, Culinary Tea, which she was working on when we first met her, is due to be released in September! Cannot wait! We have these pie-in-the-sky dreams of teaming up with some of the local establishments with whom we'd love to partner, such as Ida Roselle's, Savannah's Room, and BacInTyme in Fort Mill, SC, and Amelie's A French Bakery & Café in Charlotte, NC, to do some Special Events, perhaps Fundraisers, where we would supply the appropriate teas so they could prepare some recipes with their expertise and facilities. Who knows, if we're lucky, these partnerships might emerge as contracts with them to supply largely tea-based menus for Teas at The Celebration Cottage. . . . Pie in the sky right now, as we said, . . . but we enjoy the aroma of these fresh-baked pipe dreams. Pairing Tea & Chocolate was another great session which is abundantly useful since Kathryn likes to do Tea & Chocolate Pairings at The Celebration Cottage. This workshop was presented by Lisa Boalt Richardson, author of Tea With a Twist & of The World In Your Teacup, another tea celebrity we met in September 2008 and who we hope to invite to The Cottage sometime for a book signing and/or Tea Talk. Tea and Cocktails - Flavor Fusion proved to be another fascinating session in which we learned about making tea-infused cocktails, whether with already-steeped tea or by cold-brewing tea leaves in the aloholic liquid. The presenter, Chris Cason, as it turns out, has several of his own Tea Cocktail recipes appearing in Cynthia Gold's book. In addition, Chris is putting together his own book of his own recipes, and believe us, we will keep you informed as to when it appears!
Have you tried--or perhaps concocted, yourself!--a tea-infused cocktail? It's fascinating what is possible! Drop us a line on Facebook or by email and share, if you have!
Chris is also a the author of A Guide To Tea, which Kathryn literally "just happened" to have with her at the Expo---"just happened" because Chris was an unexpected stand-in for the original presenter who couldn't be there, so she had not known, when she packed the book to skim on the plane or in between sessions, that she would be able to get the book signed when she brought it!
. . .Along with our dreams of teaming up with the culinary establishments above, we are thinking we should approach some local establishments that might like to try some of these recipes with teas supplied by KTeas: perhaps the Six Pence Pub in Baxter Village (Fort Mill), SC, in their bar, or possibly Baxter Village's Grapevine might like to try cold-brewing some wines with tea? (In her Tea & Cheese presentation, Cynthia demo-ed cold-brewing port with an Earl Grey tea!)
Specialty Tea Institute's Foundations of Tea: Level One all-day seminar & test, the day after the Expo ended. We began our journey toward STI Certification---and we noted that volunteers at our seminar were there to attend the first class of a new Level Four certification---which was likened to a graduate course in college, about the technical and scientific aspects of tea---to help all of us join Cynthia Gold and Chris Cason as Tea Sommeliers, ourselves!
Another swirl of activity revolves around one more tea business person whom we met at the same time we met Cynthia Gold and Lisa Boalt Richardson: Melanie O'hara-Salyers of Miss Melanie's Tea Room & Gourmet Tea Emporium. Melanie is also a new author whose first book of "The Traveling Tea Ladies" mystery series is due out in mid-October 2010. KTeas and Melanie and Libby are coordinating a book signing and perhaps tea party at The Celebration Cottage to launch her series. Watch for information and signup at The Shoppes, at The Cottage, and on Facebook and Twitter! Perhaps we will launh our own Traveling Tea Ladies Society to meet at The Cottage--we could also start a Group on Facebook for KTeas chapters of Traveling Tea Ladies---& Gentlemen!!!---Societies from all over the country to "meet" and discuss the books and the teas we all drink while reading them! What other ideas can you think of to celebrate this new series of tea-inspired books? |
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