After officially abandoning soda for at home consumption (I still drink it while out sometimes) I had to broaden my beverage horizons. Water and water with ground coffee beans infused into it just wasn’t cutting it, so I decided to branch out. Ok, more accurately “leaf” out. I didn’t ditch the bean, but recently I’ve been very fond of the leaf. It all started when I tried some “Honest Tea.” It is simply bottled ice tea and it comes in a variety of (delicious) flavors. Their teas are flavorful but subtle, not overly sweet and not too bland. My previous exposure to tea was limited to the way too sweet Arizona iced tea that came in cans that I remember never liking. Waaaaaaay too sweet. You might as well be drinking soda or a glass of water with 2 cups of sugar in it. On the flip side of that, there are the little tea bags that are commonly found in the grocery store near the coffee aisle. Those teas are far too bland, and barely resemble the Honest Tea that I grew to love. There was only one problem with Honest Tea, the price tag. They aren’t really sold in bulk and they only come in small glass bottles that cost approximately $1.80 at most stores. This isn’t very economical, so I had to search for something a little more reasonable. I settled on gallon containers of Arizona Green Tea, which wasn’t nearly as sweet as their other teas and cost waaaay less than Honest Tea. It wasn’t nearly as fulfilling or healthy as Honest Tea, so the search wasn’t over. I soon came to realize that crappy bagged tea wasn’t the only way to prepare it. There is also “loose tea” which is kind of like the equivalent of buying coffee beans and grinding them yourself instead of settling for Folgers. I’m all for high quality coffee, so trying loose tea seemed to be the next logical step in my quest for good tea. Thankfully, my mom recently purchased a ridiculous amount of loose tea, despite not knowing how to prepare it or even how insanely much she had purchased. I decided to give it a whirl, and the results were satisfactory. The tea wasn’t nearly as good as honest tea, but it beat the hell out of tea bags. I decided to seek quality loose tea online, that way I could get user feedback and know that I was going to receive quality tea. After awhile I came across the Adagio Teas website, which looked very promising. They had an active forum, a plethora of flavors, and reviews for each one. The teas in their Green Tea sampler are definitely better than I ever expected. They are very unique and flavorful, not overly sweet, and not disgustingly bitter. Now I’m very excited to try their other teas, specifically of the oolong and white tea varieties.
At the same time my loose tea habit was developing, I took quite a liking to the masala chai (tea) that was offered at an amazing Indian buffet near MATC that I go to quite often for lunch. I’m still searching recipezaar.com for good chai recipes, I’ve found some that are decent but I’ve mainly stuck to powdered chai and some really kick ass liquid chai latte mix. It’s kind of similar to coffee, it’s like the coffee of the tea world. I approve.