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Gingerbread tea and pie crust cookies

Ah, again, the tastiness that is Pie Crust Cookies! Today's pairing with Gingerbread tea (a seasonal tea from Adagio - big surprise, eh?) is MOST excellent. In spite of my laissez-faire approach to tea brewing, the gingerbread tea tastes like...well, like gingerbread. It makes me wish I had some gingerbread right now. In fact, that might be a tasty thing to bake up later this week....

But back to the topic at hand - the tea is a typical flavored black tea, providing a good balance between the bite of tea and the gingerbread mellowness. Not one of my favorites, but a nice tea anyway. Definitely would not want anything more substantial than the pie crust cookies with this one - it could get overpowered easily.

Friday! Chocolate MacNut Coffee and White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

What a good day!
Zoe slept 10 hours straight last night, JJ woke up at 5 but didn't insist on bouncing out of bed until 7am - at which point he actually ate breakfast! - I worked out a little, got some work done, had a lovely lunch with my friend Joanna at a new place (The Holy Grail - the fried goat cheese with tomato jam was lick-your-plate AMAZING and the Red Dragon burger was scrumptious), and now, for my afternoon coffee, John sent me with Chocolate MacNut coffee and I snagged a couple of my fav cookies from Paradise bakery to go with.

Life is good. Really good.

Honestly, it just doesn't get better than this coffee. It is my favorite coffee of all time. And that's saying rather a lot. It has a velvety smoothness in your mouth that reminds you of that perfect taste you have in your mouth after you drink a cup of really high quality hot chocolate but before you've had anything else. And the cookies (already a fav) match perfectly.

I'm never going to lose weight at this rate, but right now I just don't care.

Here's to living the high life - yeah baby!

Strawberry tea and chocolate fudge

Ok, so it's been a rough day. The baby kept me up most of the night and I had an early morning meeting that I needed to be "on" for. I'm a little dizzy and a lot tired. SO, I was really looking forward to my tea today.

Unfortunately, the strawberry tea was disappointing. The first taste was quite nice but it quickly went bitter on the tongue. Like, I am inspired to shave my tongue bitter. No kidding. The fudge - one of our friend brought it to our Christmas in July party - was the saving grace for the afternoon. I only had a little bit, but it was heavenly and made up for the bitter bitter bitter tea. To be fair, I may have brewed it just a bit too long (like maybe a minute) - if so this is not a tea for the careless tea drinker (that would be me). I'm just not dedicated enough to time things that closely.

rooibos vanilla chai and sopapillas

OK - an odd comb I know. But I just *had* to have some sopapillas today (from Mi Chula's) and the rooibos vanilla chai was the only tea on my desk at the moment that didn't have the word "berry" in it. Surprisingly, they go great together. Actually, I guess it shouldn't be all that surprising since the sopapillas have a nice dusting of cinnamon on them. And they're sopapillas. I mean, really, what wouldn't go well with sopapillas?

The chai is a nice spicy sweet all on its own - definitely a sit up and grab you by the nose kinda tea. It give you that kind of sticky feeling at the back of your mouth that you get when you sip hot cider through a cinnamon stick. In a good way. I like this tea, but I think I will save the rest for a colder day. Since it's a rooibos tea, I could see myself having this before bed, maybe curled up on the sofa watching a rented CSI episode.

Tie Guan Yin and Big John's Cajun

After a delicious Pad Kee Mow for lunch, I was left wanting just a little something more. So I settled on some Big John's Cajun cheese and an apple as my "biscuit" today along with a pot of Tie Guan Yin. This oolong tea is light, floral, and less grass-like than most green teas. It actually holds it own against the spicy cheddar (which is to die for - get a sample and try it at your local Whole Foods), which is slightly surprising, but matches very well with the apple (a nicely crunchy Pink Lady that has been sitting on my desk all week waiting to be munched). I also have some cold yogurt pancakes for the baked item (I'm clean out of crackers at the moment) which also match well with this tea.

If you're a cheese fan, definitely get some of the Big John's if you can find it. So far, it seems to go well with just about everything - including hamburgers!

So, a veritable Friday feast today! TGIF y'all!

Blueberry tea and a chocolate chip cookie

Today's tea schedule was a bit off because I had a bunch of meetings in the afternoon, then I had to feed the baby, and then the my son said his head was grumpy....well, you get the picture. Chaos. Contained, but chaos nonetheless.

As a result, my tea ended up steeping a bit longer than I intended. Like, 30 minutes longer. But fortunately, that was ok. My Adagio Blueberry tea was still pretty darn tasty. I really like the flavored black teas from this company - they have a nice balance of tea-ness to whatever flavor they are using. In this case, the blueberry flavor was pleasantly understated, even with the serious tannin bite you get when you let tea sit too long (you know that fuzzy feeling that makes you want to scrape your tongue across the roof of your mouth?) Brewed properly, this is a very good tea. And it matches REALLY well with chocolate chip cookies. I had one leftover from my Paradise Bakery run (they give you a FREE chocolate chip cookie when you buy lunch) and it went perfectly with the tea. A lesser cookie would've been overpowered, but this one stood up to the challenge. Try it!