Tea Birthday

For my birthday (over a month ago), my sister got me a really cool present: lots and lots of tea.

About a week before my birthday, I got an email informing me she had gotten me a $25 Twinings online gift certificate. $25! That's a lot of tea!

For the sake of posterity, I shall now record what I ordered:
2 boxes of delicious, delicious Lemon Twist
2 boxes of family favorite (Neal and I both drink it) Prince of Wales
1 box of Blackcurrant Breeze (since it was new to me, I'll report: Kind of weird. It sort of tastes like somebody dropped a bunch of tart fruit-flavored candy in the tea. It's not bad, but I don't think it will earn a permanent place on my tea roster, either.)
1 box of Pure White tea (also new: I had been curious about this one for awhile, but didn't spring for it until I got a gift certificate because it's almost a dollar more expensive [that is, almost 30% more expensive] than the other teas. I think I'll keep buying it, though, because I really like it. Or I think I really like it? Maybe I'm just fooled into thinking it's great because it costs more? For the record, it's khaki-colored instead of white--until you add milk, and then it is pretty darn white.)
1 box of decaffeinated Lady Grey (another experiment: I think this stuff is great. [For decaf.] It tastes almost exactly like Lady Grey; it doesn't have the weird tinge to it that decaf English Breakfast [which tastes disconcertingly yeasty] or decaf Earl Grey [the store brand that I buy--for some reason, I strongly dislike Twinings' Earl Grey] have. And I like Lady Grey better to begin with than the Rooibos, so this one has taken the top spot among decaffeinated teas. Good job, decaf Lady Grey!)
1 box of regular Lady Grey, for old times' sake.

A few days later, my tea arrived--but oh, what's this? Two boxes from Twinings on my doorstep?

It turns out that not only did my sister give me the present of shopping for tea, she also bought me more tea.


I received this, the Twinings Tea Trolley, which both came with more boxes of tea and, once I dumped the packets out of their boxes, gave me a place to store much of the ridiculous amount of tea I now possessed. Score! My cabinet shelf o' tea is a much better place for it.


Now, as a post-script: sometimes I forget to comment back to comments people leave. So I'm going to respond to months-old comments on old tea entries right here, right now.

I did finally try some Chai tea. The problem is that it tastes like the holiday season, so it's weird in the springtime. I think I'll really dig it once late October rolls around, though.

Also, Hannah, your under-brewing suggestion about fruit tea made a huge difference. My instinct had been to steep as long as possible to intensify the flavor, but once you pointed it out, I realized that that washed out the fruitiness. Now I set a timer when I'm steeping fruit tea, just to make sure I don't wander off and forget it.

MacKenzie: how did brewing your own tea go? Have you started on "mommy teas" yet?