My newest adventure, and why I've neglected you for so long

I have been neglecting my blog for several reasons, but the main reason being time. Lately, I have found very little time to write, which has saddened me, but all will be resolved!

Friday was the last day at my job. No, I did not get terminated. I quit my job about a month ago (gave a one month notice) for many reasons, one of the reasons being my thirst for the road and perpetual wanderlust has lead me down a path south, to the south pacific. In just a short while I will be making my way down to New Zealand, and living in Auckland for the year. I am very excited for one, to be reunited with my boyfriend, and two to see what the tea culture is like, and tea adventures await! I am curious to see it there are tea fanatics in Auckland similar to all the fabulous tea people I have met in Seattle over the past three years.

The past three years I have met some fabulous tea friends that continue to spread the love and joy of tea through classes, meet ups, and clubs. I was fortunate to start the Oolong Tea Lovers' of Seattle, and met about fifteen tea lovers last weekend who adore Oolong as much as I do! It was also fabulous to be around so many tea lovers! I will miss all of those I met recently and over the years, and encourage you to continue to follow my blog, and to keep in touch. Hopefully on the way back from New Zealand I will go to Taiwan, scope out more yummy organic teas, and have a wider selection of organic teas to offer.

For those interested in purely my New Zealand adventures I will be starting a New Zealand blog shortly, so please stay tuned for that. For my tea customers in the USA, if you still are interested in ordering from me (spring and or winter later in the season) I will have shipping at a discounted price (meaning I will not increase shipping prices due to the fact that I have relocated to NZ).

Take care, and see you on the interweb! :)

Taiwan Pictures

Just a few of my favorite memories

Farmer's shop in Pinglin

View from the top near the Kuan Yin statue in Pinglin

Just hanging out on an elephant..

Little hikes in Pinglin

Wah!! A giant tea party.

Love these trees in Taipei.

Beautiful parks (in the middle of the city!)

An exhibit at the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum

Let's do a re-roast (WWOOF experience @ Organic Tea Farm)

Packaging tea

For Americans! (at the tea packaging store)

Making Jin Xuan

Let's use a pulley system/crane to get the tea to the processing center (several stories up)

Part of the process making Jin Xuan Cha

Taipei Markets

Taiwanese man insisted on modeling some traditional jewelry for me.

Wishing I could take home all the flowers at the market!

Muzha tea farms -  his distant relative was responsible for bring Oolong tea to Taiwan.

Bing bing cha!

If you living in Seattle, you may be wondering when the summer weather is coming. It is June for crying out loud! Where's the sun been lately? I am hoping we'll have it eventually. Even with the lack of summer time weather, people in Seattle already treat it like it has arrived. Shorts and sandals are out, and people are enjoying iced coffees and teas.

However, if you live else where in the northern hemisphere, perhaps you are already enjoying the spring/summer weather, and enjoying some iced tea. I have never been a huge fan of iced tea until one very hot and humid day working in the tea fields I wanted to drink anything cold that would cool down my body temperature.

 The family I lived with loved the cold tea, especially the little five year old girl. She would always beg her mother for "bing bing cha" and would gulp down high mountain oolong cold steeped tea in the warm weather.

They are the cutest Taiwanese kids ever!

The farmer was so nice that she would bring me lunch and a cold brew when I took a break mid day.

Ever since then, especially in hot weather, drinking tea this way is amazing. I also found that it is very very hard to over steep or screw up, which is great for beginners and novices. You can oversteep it without it getting bitter.

I took about 10g of loose leaf (Baozhong farmers choice from www.floatingleaves.blogspot.com) for this cold brew.

I found this great glass bottle for my brew. You can always use plastic water bottles (or regular ones - any water bottle works) or even a large tea pot.

Above is the dry leaf in the glass bottle.

Next I put cold filtered water into the container with the leaves. It takes at least eight hours for it to infuse, so I usually make this the night before. When I wake up in the morning I have refreshing and chilled tea. Yum.

Does anyone else have any favorites or different ways of making cold brew? Or favorite teas you use? Comment your reply.