Tea Blog - Learn All About Tea

I write a blog about tea.  The one that you’re reading, to be precise.  I have written this blog for a year.  I assumed that at this point, I understand most things about tea.  It’s all the same plant (except when it isn’t) whether it is black, white or green.  Different types of tea should steep at different temperatures.  It originated in China, and was brought by the British to India.  And those two nations continue to be the largest exporters more tea than anywhere else in the world. However, I was completely wrong about one of those facts.  The...

For many people, tomorrow is a holiday.  It’s the summer solstice, or the first official day of summer.  It is the longest day of the year, and is celebrated by many, along with the winter solstice and the equinoxes, as a time for reflection. The summer solstice, in particular, is about everything you would associate with summer.  It’s about celebrating the abundance that’s absolutely everywhere right now, from the birds waking you up in the morning, to the weeds pushing up through the sidewalk, to the children home from school.  It’s a time for a general sense of gratefulness for...

When 17th Century master merchant Abu Taqiyya rose in the ranks of the Cairo elite, he witnessed what few people in Europe had seen. Various spices, medicines, coffee, and even ice traveled from the Eastern part of India to Europe and were sold along the Persian, Arab, Jewish, and Ottoman markets along the way. This lead to cultural differences in how life was documented and created a vast historical gap. Our record of life in the Indo-Persian-Muslim world is scarce compared to some others such as Western historians. Egypt came under Turkish, then Ottoman rule and in the 1800s, and the nation...

A relatively new health fad has hit the tea industry, and that health fad is turmeric.  Turmeric is a yellow spice which acts as a natural food coloring.  It is popular in India, as a major ingredient in many curries, and in Okinawa, an island of Japan, it is popular as a tea. Many people are interested in the fact that turmeric tea is such a popular drink in Okinawa, because Okinawans live unusually long lives.  The average lifespan of someone from Okinawa is 81.2 years.  When compared to a global average of 71.5 years, and the average in America,...