Tea blending: Assam with T2 Spi Chai

I was poking around the T2 website in past days and found the suggestion of blending Assam with T2's Spi Chai.

Now, I happen to have been drinking more Assam of late, because over Christmas Twinings was selling 100 Assam Bold tea bags in a really nice tin, and Chez Stutters being Chez Stutters, naturally we bought it for the tin.  But I've been enjoying the tea, as well, and will probably keep getting it, perhaps in loose leaf form, once I've finished the tea bags.

Having read the suggestion of blending, however, I decided to give it a try - particularly because our Spi Chai has essentially gone unused since it got too hot for Chai.

The website says it's best without milk, but I don't believe that any tea is best without milk, not really.

That said, it's a beautiful blend, and I recently bought more Spi Chai so I could keep making my wonderful Assam/SpiChai blend.

My first finished crochet project.

It's the third project I've started but the first I've finished - a relatively simple little star for my gym bag, inspired by the TV show "Smash".

Some explanation - I recently joined a gym.  I joined at a point in time when a deal was offered with a gym bag, t-shirt, etc.  Which means that there's a lot of identical gym bags around these days.  I wanted something to distinguish mine, and given my new-found love of crochet, it seemed like the right medium for my identifying mark.

Meanwhile, I love the show "Smash".  It's almost certainly not going to get renewed for a third season, which really annoys me, as they're clearly getting things set up beautifully for said third season.  Red and gold are the obvious colours for Smash, but it's so bound up in the story of Marilyn Monroe that it clearly had to include white.  Meanwhile, my crochet mentor and general bad influence, Mel from Crochet of a Subversive Reader, mentioned beads, and I thought that beads would suit Smash perfectly.

And so here's my Smash-inspired "(Let me be your) Star".  In situ.

This particular pattern has gone onto my short list of patterns for Christmas decorations this year.  I want to put decorations in some of my cards this year.  Like this star.

What I am up to Wednesday

In the last few weeks, I've gotten hooked (no pun intended) on crochet.  I'm using a my Ravelry account (heidisews) in its proper way now, and currently have two projects on the go.  My friend Mel of Crochet of a Subversive Reader has begun "What I am up to Wednesday", and I'm going to try to do the same.

So, current projects -

Croydon Square Baby Blanket - I've finished fourteen motifs of twenty-four.  On Monday I blocked the first three. As well as another ten motifs, I have a lot of endings to weave in.  Even so, I'll admit that this project has mostly been put down, in favour of another - a gift for a baby born before the baby for whom this project is a gift.










Rainbow Square Baby Blanket - I'm currently at round 25 of 56 (slight alterations to the pattern occurred).  As each round grows by 24 stitches, r25 is nowhere near halfway, but at this point I'm really pleased with it and in fact rather love it.  (Since the second photo was taken I've finished three and a half more rounds.)

The square is looking a little skewed when you look closely.  It will definitely need blocking when its done.

Tea blogging again - Lemongrass and Ginger

I bet you thought I'd forgotten about the tea-blogging.  After all, I only did it once.

But thanks to someone randomly leaving a T2 sample of Lemongrass and Ginger in our tearoom at work, I'm back again.

Description from the T2 website:

Bright lemongrass joined by ginger's spice creates a harmonious blend of freshness and warmth in a deliciously well-balanced fashion. Cool lemongrass brings a zesty zing which is followed by the warming spice of ginger.

No milk - because there wasn't any at work (plus ginger and milk just doesn't seem to work. Oddly, because ginger and milk are part of the basis of pumpkin pie, which is awesome.) On the other hand, lemongrass mitigates against milk.

There are very few teas that I'm happy to drink hot, without milk.  This is one of them, and it's magnificent.

Tuesday Bento

By the way - I'm sure I'll get over my obsession eventually.  Even if I keep taking photos, I'll likely end up with a weekly bento post instead of daily, and maybe only those that look particularly interesting.  So if you're getting bored, just hold up for a week or so more and then I'll stop bombarding you the way I am at the moment.

A bit of a change!  Here's Tuesday's bento box:-



(From the top: Cottage cheese with spring onions, raw snow peas, steamed brocolli, pepper confit, marinated cauliflower (a Moosewood recipe).  Hidden beneath the cauliflower is a brocolli and cauliflower stem kinpira.)

 No carbs at all - I kind of forgot to plan any.  Also no fruit, and I did miss my daily grapes!  Other notes from today - the kinpira is delicious, but got hidden under the cauliflower and thus a lot of it is still uneaten because I'd filled up on the rest of it.  And I have to say that I thought more about individual recipes than about flavours that go well together.  Think I need to spend more time on my planning!

New week - new bento box

I mentioned last week that my purple box, much as I loved the colour and shape, was too big.  If I filled it properly I had more food than I could eat, and if I didn't fill it up the food moved around annoyingly.  Especially the grapes.

So I got a new, smaller box.  It's 500ml, and it also fits far better in my lunch sack than the previous one did.  So there's two points of yayness.

What I put in it was a little less original - the last of the quinoa/ham/peas from last week, plus some Moroccan quinoa salad that was made for Sunday dinner.  (Quinoa is both carbohydrate and protein, or I wouldn't have put so much in.)  Fresh raw snowpeas (they make great walls!), chargrilled zuchinni (not a success - it was mushy and rather awful), two cherry tomatoes, and then a mix of grapes, raspberries and blueberries.

For the record: the zuchinni and cherry tomatoes were from our own garden, while the snow peas, raspberries and blueberries were from the Farmers' Market.  We also got grapes from the market this week, but the ones I had for lunch were last week's, which were from the supermarket.

End of the first week of Bento

A confession:

My Friday Bento didn't look exactly like this. 
But mostly like this.

This is not (quite) my bento from Friday.

It almost was, but the cheese (the diamond shapes, cut from a Milawa red cheddar) smelled a bit squiffy, so I decided not to risk it, and replaced the cheese with red onion instead.  It's still a very green bento, mostly because I ran out of carrot kinpira on Thursday and the pepper and onion confit on Wednesday.

Again, no cooking in the morning, just assembling.

I have plans for next week's boxes.  Nothing set in stone, yet (other than marinated cauliflower - definitely doing that), plus trying to get the amounts a little better and to definitely cut the celery shorter if I do another celery kinpira.