Teasire

Tea-Pirate?

2007-07-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

http://skulladay.blogspot.com/2007/07/36-tea-time-skull.html
I was just browsing around and I came across this page that has different skull every day. Well, July 10th was a skull made out of tea so it gets a mention.

It wasn't the coolest thing on the page but it was the most "Tea." (That means if you think this is "kind of cool" or only "nifty" you'll really like the spoon or the old books) Go take a look around.

Not a thing to do with it.

2006-05-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

Just for the record I have absolutely nothing to do with the new page Teasire.com

I have nothing good nor bad to say about them, but do not think that I now have my own company and try to support me in my wonderful new business.

I do hope that they wind up being a nice company to do business with and have nice teas. Unfortunately they will probably be sending me a note to take this page down. That will not happen though. Since I started this first there should be no reason to do so, and if they happen to take issue with what is posted on here or may be on this page in the future that would be unfortunate as I've kept it rather visible since day one.

Oh, and "Howdy Everybody!!!"

The YiXing You Have, Is Better Than the YiXing You Don't.

2005-12-30T12:43:00.000-08:00

While we are on the topic of holiday presents and YiXing teapots here is a photo of a great new addition to my tea drinking vessels. My girlfriend picked this "Small Pumpkin YiXing Clay Teapot" up for me online as a Christmas present this year. And while I think it's quite cute and I've been having some wonderful Formosa Oolong in it, it did cost me a few hours sleep on Christmas morning.

I have one of those minds that tend to have hard time settling down and may decide to rehash things that happened the previous day. Usually it happens as I'm going to bed and can be overcome by a good stretch or some such yogic exercise. This time it happened after several hours of sleep had passed. I was anxious to try out the teapot apparently and my mind started to think about it and something my girlfriend said rang a bell in my head. She had said, "It's a little smaller than I was expecting." and although that's never really something you want to hear from your girlfriend I was quite certain that she was referring to the teapot.

Suddenly I was awake in a way that cannot be ignored. My mind was wandering into thoughts like "Did she say that because it was so expensive?" and "Where did this come from?" Not for any distrust of my girlfriend but I know that there are a lot of disreputable places online and I've seen more than a few places selling YiXing teapots for twice or even thrice the going price. Now I'm not referring to legitimate collector quality teapots, I mean the exact same brand and obviously from the same shop but way more expensive. My girlfriend could tell that I liked the present and it wouldn't be like her to spoil it by saying something like "Those bastards ripped me off! @$#@! We're sending that back with a one way ticket to hell!!!!"

By now it's 5AM and I know that I'm not going to get back to sleep until I know whether or not I'm going to say something like that myself. She's fast asleep and I not going to wake her to ask, "How much did my present cost?" so I went to the computer and looked it up. I was quite relieved at her fiscal choice and went back to sleep quite comfortably for a few more hours.

She was shocked but not surprised when I told her what I had done. Although I didn't want to part with it, if she had been ripped off I would gladly have waited another month or so while we returned it and bought the same one from another company for a reasonable price if need be.

I know that all YiXing teapots should be unique and while I accept and appreciate that it would seem that the picture they have online is very different from the one I wound up with. Most noticeable is that the baby pumpkin on my teapot is not orange (visible near the bottom of the handle on mine) and the shape is much more round on their example photo. Like I said, I can appreciate the minute differences of each and every one but the colored orange thing does bother me since I know that details like that are probably what made her choose this one in the first place.

It makes a nice little cup of tea as I've been noticing and that is foremost in my judgment of a nice teapot. I am a little worried about a tiny little line in the center bottom of the pot that I don't recall seeing before yesterday (I did a rather thorough examination of it and it's a very fine flaw if it is one. Most people probably wouldn't even be able to see it.) I'm not sure if it's the beginning of a crack or even if that is something I should worry about. I've heard many a story about famous teapots that were broken then placed back together and made all the better for it. It's not like I've done anything out of the ordinary to it. For now I'm going to go with the assumption that many cups of tea in it will absorb into it making it an attractive character trait. As long as it doesn't start leaking I'm all good.

Now go have a cup.

You Can't Have a TeaBlog Without a Teapot Photo or Two.

2005-12-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

While we're at the old camera, here are some pictures of a couple of my favorite teapots.

The one on the left was given to me by my Grandmother on her birthday from her china collection. It is of unknown origin and I'm quite curious since she hadn't been a tea drinker her self for over forty years. On its base is a simple marking of three leaves. I've done some serious looking online but I don't really have a knack for searching for "symbols" and if you happen to type in "three leaves" you're not going to get very far. Regardless of its origin it makes a fine cup of tea and I thank my Grandmother for every cup I can have from it. I like to think that that was the present she wanted for her birthday.

The one on the right came to me as a birthday present from my girlfriend this year. We had driven about 40 miles to get to a store that had a blue YiXing teapot that I had commented on many a time only to discover that it had finally been purchased. While we were in town we did a little antiquing and found this beauty for a mere fifteen dollars. It came with four cups like the one show (No, I have not broken the others.) that have a wonderful weight and feel to them. They are some of the only cups I've seen that succeed in having art on the inside of the cup without it looking forced or out of place. The set was obviously never used and still new. It probably cost whoever bought it new around fifty dollars. This is the best example I can come up with for the saying "One mans trash..." This is especially treasured since it really was a very random find, and if the original teapot were available I would not have it.

Although I love both of these teapots they haven't managed to earn a naming like our good friend "Earl" the thermos of goodwill. Although, they probably will someday due to the strange ways they came into my possession.

How about you, any tea-ware come your way through interesting means? You know I love that kind of stuff.

Now go have a cup.

Stemware, by Request a Photo

2005-12-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

It was requested a while ago by Steph of "Steph's Cup of Tea" that I put a picture of the alleged stemware up for viewing. Sorry it took so long to respond I've been rather removed from my computer lately.

The pitcher on the left is "Earl."

One of these mugs is not like the others, "Can you tell which one?"

Happiest of Thanks and a Comic to Come

2005-11-23T23:16:00.000-08:00

Well I've just about sobered up enough to start posting a bit more often. What? Oh. No, not the wine, although it has been long enough since my last post to have been off at some remote celebrity detox center. No, nothing like that, but I'll admit I was getting a bit carried away with the other side of this whole "having a web page" thing and probably needed the break.

(I promise I'll finish this post with something tea but first...)

The main cause of this is a little project I've got brewing with a friend of mine, Brian. At some point in the future we're going to be making an online comic strip. Not related at all to tea but I'm sure it'll make an appearance from time to time. We're just getting the characters down and the feel for it. Brian is a damn fine artist and has a great sense of humor. I've always been something of a jokester and a storyteller myself and on paper it seems like all the pieces should just fall together and click, boom, bam = ha, ha, ha but the reality of it has many challenges that you would probably expect but not really worry about. We started working on this somewhere near the middle of September with a three hour lunch at a local restaurant that doesn't deserve the mention. We both arrived with a bit of an ego that by the time we left we would have the first month or two done. The result was a few funny ideas but no real success. That came a few weeks later.

We were kicking around some ideas for names (still kicking) when we both realized how much easier this would be if we just made ourselves the main characters.

Click

I had just started a new job and was really enjoying it and the sudden influx of money that I'd been sorely missing for the last few months. With these obstacles removed I finally managed to wrap my brain around the obstacles a comic strip presents.

Boom

The floodgates were open for me suddenly and over the next two weeks I came up with several ideas that will make there way into the comic. Once I broke past the first few it became easy to think in terms of non-moving objects and overcome the limitation of space to tell a coherent story that I've never had before. Now when I think of a funny idea I can break it into a few jokes and tell the story in five or six comics. I guess that's how they do it. It's not a matter of being funny every day just really funny once a week. Then sit back and say "Wow, I just wrote twenty comics about beating a dead horse!"

Bam!

I didn't by the way. But I may just have to now, eh?

I'm making it sound like I'm the writer but I'm not. We've both been writing some funny stuff and the benefits of having someone else working on this with me are great. I know now that I really couldn't do it by myself as my artistic ability is really limited and while there are a great many hilarious stick figure comic strips out there I would never have one. Mostly since it would still take me a week or so to draw one, even stick figure style.

Right now we're stuck on the name and the look. I think we have a fairly good idea of the feel and the kind of person that would find it most entertaining. Now that we have a few ideas and I know how easy it is to be funny in this format my confidence is way up so things like the name become so much more stressful. We've had plenty of ideas but the problems with having more than one person working on this is it's harder to find something that both people can get behind, and that's important for this to be a success.

I'm staying out of the art as much as possible. Since I really can't contribute anything but criticism I tend to make my comments more along the line of "Give my character a bigger nose." or "F'in A!"

Since we're still working on a name we have a temporary blog called Comic Name Here that we've been using (but not very often) to get used to the idea of having a presence and test formatting ideas. I'll be reposting a version of this over there in a few weeks but in the mean time Brian has a post over there that covers his side of starting this whole comic thing. Since we don't have any sample art put up yet I should mention that Brian has a deviantART page that has some interesting examples of what he can do, but doesn't scratch the surface. Give him a "hey" over there and he may just draw something upbeat for it. I mean it, his last post over there was an apology that he wouldn't be doing much posting or art for the page and I would love to piss him off by sending an audience his way 'cause that's how I roll. It will be a twisted comic but not necessarily in the same way.

Ah yes, back to the previously mentioned tea.

I wanted to send my first thanks to you for reading all of these long posts I put up here and an apology for always trying to leave the funniest part till the end.

The other Thank You for this Thanksgiving post goes out to Adagio Teas for making my birthday extra special by sending me one of their ingenuiTEA pots, their new book "A Guide to Tea" by Chris Cason and a bevy of tea. The pot performs as advertised and is quite easy to use, clean and trick people into having a cup just to see how it works. I suggest giving the tea a gentle stir about half way through the brewing process since it gets a little narrow at the bottom where the tea is. The book is commendable simply for being up to date and lacking in the bold fallacious statements that are often found in a book of this nature. I believe you can get the book for free with your first order over $19 and would make a fine present for a burgeoning tea drinker.

I'm trying to keep this page mostly review free since I don't think it really fits this pages style (I'm going for a have what you like not what I like and hey, here's a funny story to read while drinking it.) but since this post is rather off topic I don't mind mentioning that Adagio has very good Jasmine Teas. I've tried a few and can say without any reservations that if you like Jasmine you'd be a fool not to try some of their offerings. The company has shown itself to be a real class act several times by managing to put the drinking of good tea above the drinking of their tea (that is to say that they will go out of the way to answer a question even if it doesn't involve you buying from them, and I've seen them help people find things that they don't sell) and deserving of your money as a result. You know - family business, kill the Wal-Mart, Spirit of Jazz all that kind of stuff.

So happy Thanks to you. I just love when Jackass day falls on Thanksgiving but that's another story for another page and I assure you that these thanks do not fall under the rules of that particular holiday.

Now go have a cup...

Earl, and One More Tea Stop at the Wine Shop

2005-11-06T22:10:00.000-08:00

I wound up going back for a few days at the wine shop from a few weeks ago and this time I did it right. I brought Earl.

Earl, the thermos of goodwill that is. It might seem odd to name a thermos but famous teapots get named and any thermos that wants to be famous will need a name. Now I know Earl may not be famous to you but around me it's just about as recognizable as I am. You see when I get comfortable at a place I do what anyone would and start to preach the truth. I am a Tea Advocate and this is my tool.

Before I bring in tea I always try to do a little research into what kind of tea people like in this case the lady I was working with said that black tea makes her feel acidic. A little more digging and I discovered she liked jasmine. She just hit the jackpot since I happened to have a big ol' tin of Jasmine Pearls. I filled up Earl that morning with a damn fine brew. Now Earl is rated at "1.0L" and that might sound like a lot of tea but I just brew up a two cup size pot, then repeat using the same tea. You wind up with a very nice brew by mixing the first and second pots and you save a bit of cash. I wanted the tea to be enjoyed so I brought a few mugs from home that I knew to be free of any office coffee stains.

The tea was a hit but the cups were more of one. Stemware was the word of the day. Every person who came in was told about the wonderful tea and how great Jasmine Pearls were followed by "and he brought his own stemware." In the wine world a lot of effort goes into pairing. Pairing wine with cheese, meat, and the proper glasses. All of the vendors were thrilled and I was quite the hit as a result. They all were very insistent that I try their wines. Again, what kind of fool would I have to be? Now, something came up that only a tea lover in a wine shop would notice. Don't try tasting wine after drinking Jasmine Pearls all day. The first wine I tried was border line and when they asked my opinion I responded that it was "OK, but it would probably kill me to drink a whole glass." Thankfully they didn't appear too fond of it themselves and began laughing at my honesty. I apologized for being so blunt and added that it probably just didn't mix well with the tea I had been drinking.

The next day I brought some green tea, in fact the same one I used in the pizza recipe Hojicha Fugue. It's a green tea that's been lightly roasted, to me it tastes like a green but smells like an oolong. I've never been too fond of green tea but this day that would change. After having a few cups I had really become quite fond of this tea and was quite impressed at how well it went with wine. If anything it may have made that days selections taste even better. Of course it could be that the wines coming in that day were just plain better, but being who I am I must go with the tea.

So if you happen to be going out to do some tasting feel safe having some green tea before going but beware the jasmine.

As for being a Tea Advocate apparently the key to success is to bring your own gla--stemware(!) The irony is that the ones I tend to bring in these situations are $0.49 finds at a local thrift shop. Or I thought it was a find until I noticed that every thrift shop in the world has these same glass mugs with the lotus flower on the side. They hold a damn fine cup of tea though.

That was a few weeks ago and now I'm at a new place. A really nice job that pays well, well enough that I've been so side tracked with not being broke that it's taken a few weeks to get around to this here post about Earl. Speaking of Earl, has he made an appearance? Not yet but you can bet he will.

Now go have a cup.

Jasmine Tea Poached Pears

2005-10-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

My entry for this month's TeaChef challenge came out quite nicely. I didn't do anything crazy like last month with the pizza. It happened to be my birthday on Monday and since my girlfriend was going to make me some angel food cake I was charged with making something spectacular to go with it. The result:

Jasmine Tea Poached Pears

I just love poached pears, if you haven't tried these yet, really you must. If you don't happen to like amaretto or are afraid of balsamic vinegar don't use them. I've made poached pears about two dozen times, each a little different than the last and the one thing I can assure you is that no matter what recipe you follow it will taste great. I've made it with white wine, red wine, amaretto, oolong tea, and now jasmine oolong tea. Every time it was awesome. I even tried to mess it up, that's how the balsamic vinegar got invited to the party. No luck, still great!

This particular version really surprised me. As it was cooking I could still make out a very faint vinegar smell and was a bit worried. Once it had cooked long enough to give it a little taste the only word that I could think of to describe it was "delicate". That's not really a word that frequents my vocabulary unless I happen to have destroyed something. I wasn't sure if the tea would be even the slightest bit noticeable but there it was tickling the tip of my tongue the way jasmine tends to do. After my senses returned I took another sampling to get an overall taste and another word came to my mind "delicious." I was tempted to continue sampling but I've been known to finish desert before I've finished adding ingredients.

This recipe comes in two flavors. Blue plate and red plate:

Nothing special to say about the ice cream. I think vanilla is the way to go. Feel free to argue.

As for the cake. Mmmmm, angel food. I've always been a fan of this particular treat as well, and once my girlfriend made it for me from scratch there was no going back. Sinning was over for me, I was a' heaven bound. We both agreed that it would be interesting to try to mix a little tea into the recipe but it tasted so go already that I didn't want to sour the experience by having to type out the recipe. It takes a bit of the fun out of it. But don't worry, the next time a tea looks like it might go well in angel food cake we're going for it anyway, you'll just have to wait a bit longer for that part.

I would usually have made all the links to the TeaChef page go directly to my recipe, but this month there are so many amazing treats you really have to look at them all. This is one time I certainly don't mind if you vote for one of the other creations. My hats off to everyone.

"Jasmine Tea Poached Pears
Jasmine Tea takes a trip down Pear lane with this delicate amaretto and balsamic vinegar treatment to poaching pears."

It really is a very easy thing to make and it's such a classy dessert that it fits in well for any "special" nights you may have planned. Come to think of it, the first time I tried this treat it was actually for breakfast...

Now go have a cup...

This Really Tee's Me Off!

2005-10-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

Ever since I came across the whole smoking tea bags things I've been keeping my eyes on Canada. I learned long ago to trust a hunch as they usually pay off. It would seem that the revolution is coming and Canada is leading the charge.

I've been planning to post on this for a few days now but was having a bit of a hard time finding the Teasire angle on the story. Should I go with the "Canadians are sooo crazy?" How about "What's next, fertilize your wife with tea?" Well actually that's not too far from it since it would seem a lot of men are practically married to their local golf course. I've probably got your attention by now so I'd better get on with it.

It would seem that companies using tea as compost are popping up all over. And it's not just for nuts like me who will put tea on anything just to see what happens. A company called Earth Elixer Quality Compost Teas is one of them. One of their customers happens to be the Cordova Bay Golf Course in Victoria, British Columbia.

In March they started spraying their 16th and 17th fairways and greens with this brew and are having good results so far. Apparently their motivation was to find a better way to fight the harmful fungal growth that can plague any golf course by encouraging the growth of beneficial aerobic bacteria and fungi.

It sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and obviously to many other people. I did a quick search on Google for Compost Tea and it returned 736,000 results. I think this may just be a sign of the garden to come.

The first question I had about this was, "What kind of tea do they use?" followed very closely by, "How does it taste?" Unfortunately this tea is not for drinking. Somehow my mind just kind of skipped over the word "compost" and was focusing solely on the word "tea." It tends to do that. I must therefore thank Earth Elixer for having the warning "Earth Elixir Compost Tea is NOT for human consumption." posted at the bottom of every page on their site. I might very well have considered tasting some were it not for this stern warning. So:

"Thanks!"

This important piece of information came to me from the Oak Bay News in an article titled "Fertilizer tea splashes into town."

Now go have a cup,

but remember...
Earth Elixer Compost Tea is NOT for human consumption. (!)

Adventures of a Tea Lover In Wine World.

2005-10-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

Well maybe not plural but it does kind of roll off the tongue a bit better.

This last week has been spent working at a wine shop and while I was there I got to listen in while the owner was trying out some wines that various vendors brought in through out the day. Most of the conversation was of the typical sort when people taste wine with a sprinkling of insider gossip about other vendors and wineries. Lots of talk about three a legged dog as well for some reason.

The most entertaining part of the tasting was when they came across a wine that they didn't like. I had listened to them drink several good tasting wines while I was there and didn't really have any interest in trying any until they started to rip into one. I realized then that the way one really develops an experienced tasting palate is not by tasting good versions but rather tasting bad versions.

I've had lots of tea in my time but I still don't quite consider myself an expert. The first tea I liked was Earl Grey but at the time I didn't know anything about bergamot, it could have been a preservative for all I knew. I was never all that fond of straight black teas like orange pekoe and ironically thought at the time that Earl Grey tasted a bit more orange to me. Which was for a good reason once I found out what bergamot was and that Earl Grey was flavored with it. The point at which I started to develop a palate for tea was when I tried a Double Bergamot Earl Grey. Sounded good, I like the tea with it better than without so more of it must be even nicer tasting. Nope, I hated it, but came away from the experience with a much better understanding of what makes a good Earl Grey. For me it's a brisk black tea with very little of the bergamot flavoring.

All right, back to the wine. I had that whole internal conversation about Earl Grey while they tasted this uncouth specimen and was pleased to hear that I hadn't missed anything. The vendor left the bottle for her to try again after it had mellowed for a day or so. I guess you really have to make sure you hate something in the wine industry. They seemed to think that it was getting less disgusting as time went on so perhaps this wasn't too far fetched an idea. My first though was that they were suffering from wine goggles, but perhaps they knew better and by the next day it would merely rate an "eh" in taste. Unfortunately by the way they were talking about it I didn't think it was the type of wine you'd want to wake up next to in the morning.

My reason for being there was some data entry so I felt I would probably work faster if I listened in to help me stay awake. I do get board rather easily I must admit. For the last few months I've been working the temp scene and as a result I get to work in many places that I wouldn't normally have. This was one of them. I would probably never get hired to work in a place like this outside of temping but it was an experience I'd rather not have missed. Towards the end of the day I was invited over to join them in their tasting. Probably the nicest break I've ever had and well timed too. I wasn't quite at head bobbing yet but at least slightly cross eyed. Strange that a glass or so of wine would clear crossed eyes now that I think about it. I didn't get to try the foul wine and I though it might offend them if I asked, since the wines I did try were very good.

The next day the owner announced that when a day goes by without any sampling five o'clock signifies time to open up a bottle. It was five and she did. Guess what the first one was. That's right the one that was sitting in time out. She said that it smelled nicer. That was frightening, as I could smell a distinct nail polish scent coming off of mine and to hear that it was worse the day before, ouch. I had to agree that it was not a very nice wine but I enjoyed not liking it much more than I would have enjoyed tasting a good wine. I know that because a very nice wine followed it.

The knowledge that I didn't like a bad wine was very comforting and it reminded me of a wine tasting experience that my girlfriend brings up every time she tries a new wine that she likes.

We were still rather new at tasting and really didn't know what kind we liked. Our best way of describing the wines we liked was "kind of sweet." Poison to this particular winery representatives ears and it was visible on every pore of his face. We tried his wines enthusiastically expecting to have our knowledge expanded by this exposure to what "good wine" should taste like. His rudeness only added to our enthusiasm since there was no way I was going to put a penny is his pocket and thus would have no feelings of guilt at not buying any from him.

Did we like his wine? Let's just say there's probably a reason this particular memory just came back to me. This time when thinking back upon it I was armed with the knowledge that I don't like bad wine. How about that, bucko?

This is a place of tea though so I'd better finish on a tea note. A few weeks ago a fellow tea blogger friend of mine did a post called "Tea...It's the New Wine" where she was comparing the worlds of tea tasters and wine tasters. I couldn't help but think about that post this week and it would be a shame if I finished this one without mentioning it. Unfortunately it seems that the Pu-erh teas are the closest to a wine like product and I have yet to really enjoy one. I can't seem to get past the smell to actually taste one. I even have some sitting on my counter that a nice salesman gave me for free. What's wrong with me? Free!

How about you, do you have any tea snobbery stories? How about "bad tea" stories that helped you to find out what kind of tea you actually liked? Perhaps you'd like to share an epiphany you experienced while tasting tea, or wine, or even dirt when you fell off your bike in 2nd grade. Feel free. Free!

Now go have a cup.

In Japan: Thirst Quenching Tea

2005-10-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

In my daily search for interesting tea things I came across a rather entertaining post about drinking tea in Japan from an outsiders perspective.

In Japan: Thirst Quenching Tea

The thing that caught my eye first was not the word anti-diuretic in quotation marks (I noticed that on the second read through.) It was that it seemed to contradict my last post about tea not growing in England with this statement:

"England, as everyone knows starting cultivating wild tea some time during the bronze age and the domesticated tea has been growing on the dales of Yorkshire from time immemorial."

At which point I was hooked. Was it possible that I was wrong and in fact tea had been growing there, wild no less, for a very long time? Perhaps it's one of those secrets "For British eyes only." I assure you that you would have found that last part funny if you had been watching Arrested Development. If not shame on you.

I was glad I had continued reading when I was rewarded with this gem of a description:

"...it tasted like sawdust and burning. Like water from a muddy puddle in small forest where all the inhabitants died of botulism."

I must admit I may have enjoyed reading that a bit too much. If you like the stuff I tend to have around here then you'll like this post. I've only had the briefest of looks around but it would appear that this post is not the only gem in the batch. I for one am looking forward to his further adventures "In Japan."

Now go have a cup.

*Updated*

The post this links to had a sudden name change from First Quenching Tea to Thirst Quenching Tea so I have adjusted the links and the title of this post. It makes a little more sense now. I was wondering what he meant by that.

You Can Grow Tea In Britain?

2005-10-04T23:43:00.000-07:00

After years of being know as a place full of tea drinkers England now has it's very own domestic supply.

Tregothnan estates.

This is puzzling, as I know it's been tried several times before with very little success. Mostly due to tea being rather fickle. Sure it'll grow in lots of places but a drinking quality tea has been an entirely different story all together.

I wonder how they plan to go about the picking and processing while conforming to labor laws and yet still make a profit. I imagine this will be a really expensive brew. Actually I don't have to imagine, it is.

I'd rather not get too deep into the conversation tea being growable in England leads us down. With questions along the line of "What was with all that Opium crap?" or "Jewel of the Crown, Eh?" it's probably best to just think that some clever gardeners have found a way to use modern technology to overcome the impossible and grow tea in England.

This particular piece of news can be found in an article called "Britain brews up its own tea" at The Australian among many other places no doubt.

Now go have a cup.

A Tea Pizza Is A Happy Pizza

2005-10-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

A while ago I mentioned that I would be trying to use tea in some rather odd ways in an ongoing attempt to fight my growing bald spot. One of the challenges I gave myself was to use tea in pizza and make it good. Coincidentally TeaChef, a page dedicated to using tea in cooking went live this month with the challenge of using tea in new and exciting ways in food. Tea Pizza fit that bill. I expected most of the entries to have a strong Asian influence since tea is complimentary to that style of cooking and already used often. My many skills honed during years of Iron Chef fandom were awakened and I could hear Masahiko Kobe's words in my ear as I was preparing. Unfortunately I don't understand Japanese so his advice could not be heeded, that seemed to anger him and I was on my own. Here is what became of it.

Making pizza is really quite easy but it does involve many steps. After you've done it a few times it's a breeze to make but trying explain it can become quite long winded. As a result the recipe became rather large. It can be found at the TeaChef web page under Tea Pizza With Shitake Mushrooms and Steak.

I took lots of photo's not really knowing where this would go and when I saw what the yeast looked like with the tea in it I must admit I was a little worried. The water used in this is actually tea with the spent leaves put in the blender and added as well.

Then I realized what shirt I was wearing. Was this a premonition?

No, it just one of my favorite bands with an unfortunate name: Failure. Before you ask musically no they didn't, as a continuing band yes they did. But the members all went on to other great things that I'm sure I'll sneak into another post someday.

After the mixing and kneading you always have to double check that the tea hasn't all fallen out.

OK it's still in there we can continue.

I was worried about the dough rising normally since tea has caffeine in it I though it might go crazy. On the other side I worried about the tea killing the yeast. It rose a little faster than expected but quite wonderfully. You could see the tea pieces in the dough a lot easier after it had risen.

Not too much to say about putting sauce on a pizza but boy does it look good. Sorry there's no tea in that sauce. I consider it to be perfect and so far cannot find a way to make it better. Even the addition of tea cannot improve it!

I used some dehydrated shitake mushrooms and steak for toppings. Care to guess what they were re-hydrated in? They were all cooked in tea as well, about two cups worth. They were juice-tacular.

Once I started to put it all together I realized that I would want some cheese pizza to really compare it to regular pizza since I don't usually have shitake mushrooms and steak on my pizza, in fact I never have. I had some vague idea of calling the pizza something along the lines of "It's 4 O'clock: Pizza Time" but it just sounded kind of dumb so I just let the photo say it for itself.

Almost done.

The finished Product looked a little like this. Too bad we don't have smell-o-vision on the web yet.

You can see that I made two dipping sauces in this picture. The one on the left was quite good, you can find the recipe for it over at the TeaChef page at the very bottom of the pizza recipe. If you make the sauce you'll find you have plenty of it left so you might as well try it. The one on the right is best left unexplained, it looks better than it tastes, and I don't really think it looks all that good to begin with.

If you'd prefer your pizza without tea, the recipe will work fine with just boring old water just as well. The tea dough tastes somewhere between rye and wheat. Without tea it's closer to sourdough. Enjoy.

Now go have a cup.

Can't Stop the Broadcast.

2005-10-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

Put down that cup of tea and go see Serenity!

If you can't bear to be without for a full two hours, sneak some in hidden in a flask, do whatever you gotta' do but do it now!

When you are done doing that you'll need the DVD for the rest of the story. It's not at all required to understand the movie but you will need it like a fool. I expect a shortage the likes of gasoline so go get a copy soon. It's that good!

Oh, and they drink tea in the TV show so that's how I justify mentioning it here on a page about tea. Serenity rhymes with tea as well so how could I not mention it? Sadly the movie only made reference to tea, but hey I'll take it.

If you're not familiar with the show yet you will be soon whether you want to or not so I'll be merciful. The fastest way to sum it up is "Imagine Star Wars with everyone as cool as Han Solo." Everyone is awesome, the good guys, the bad guys, the ugly and the pretty. It's the funniest movie I've seen in a very long time. Not because it's a comedy but because when something screwed up happens the characters recognize the absurdity and react appropriately.

If you already have the DVD excellent. I'll add some eggs to the comments when I remember where they are. There is one of Jayne singing "The Hero of Canton." that's a can't miss.

Feel free to skip $7.00 worth of tea to see this movie.

Now go...

see this movie!

Tea Pizza With Shitake Mushrooms and Steak

2005-09-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

TeaChef has just gone live.

I promised to try to make a tea-flavored pizza and have done so it turned out great and I posted the recipe this weekend. I plan to do a post some time this week with some pictures of the process. Until that time has come I suggest you check out the new TeaChef page. I'm only going to link to my recipe because I'd prefer you voted on it (there's a rumor of some form of prize), but you're welcome to look around.

Tea Pizza With Shitake Mushrooms and Steak

Now go have a slice.

How Does One Say "Teasire?"

2005-09-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

I was presented with this question upon running into a schoolmate of mine the other day and thought it was a good one. I had an answer but would he believe me? Being in several of my classes he was well aware of my ignorance in such things so, no he wouldn't. At least not based on my word alone. Thus inspired to prove myself once and for all I set about to prove it.

How could I prove that my pronunciation was the one true pronunciation? With Maths of course! I dusted off my handy Look Around You Textbook turned to the appropriate chapter for pronunciation and found the proper formula:

Tea multiplied by the addition of peace and the emotional state of happiness is but a fraction of the whole number Addiction proportional to Desire and that this fraction is equal to the square root of Green.

According to Formosa's law we know that Green is equal to (99cc33) or (446666), but not to (bbccaa) and the square root of all good colors is Dee Toot over Hamburger. Since green is only a decent color its square root must therefore be De over Honk.

Adding Peace and the emotional state of happiness gets us toot (You should write this down!) and as we all know any time you have Toot on one side of an equation and Honk on the other they cancel out making Honk merely Cha and Toot becomes Pop. Now we're getting somewhere!

Applying Darjeeling theorem Pop cancels out Addiction leaving us with Tea divided by desire equaling De divided by Cha.

Wait a minute this is getting pretty tough you might want to take a break and read a book now. Can I make a reccomendation?

Done reading? OK, lets get back to work...

Now all we have to do is reverse the dividers using Murphy's Law. While we're at it lets eliminate that pesky De from the equation leaving us with the pronunciation "sire".

Since Tea is equal to Cha we have achieved the whole number of Tea and it can thus be pronounced as "Tea."

Oops! The equal sign was a plus sign in disguise all along. Silly plus sign, I'll catch you yet!

(supplemental photo)

Too late to start over now so we will just continue by adding "Tea" to "sire" leaving us with "Teasire."

Armed with a properly proven answer I now sought out my school chum only to find out that it was a case of mistaken identity and that I had never actually met him before. Leaving me with only one reasonable option:

Now, go have a cup.

Does Tea Equal World Peace?

2005-09-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that earlier this month Japan appointed Sen Genshitsu as a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations. Sen Genshitsu is an eighty two year old tea ceremony master. It is hoped by them that his appointment will improve public interest in the activities of the United Nations.

That seems like a good way to go about such a thing to me. As you may have noticed here in America we've taken another approach in a recent appointment that accomplished the same results. Our way of getting people interested involved a scary mustachioed man. Unfortunately the mustache is the least scary thing about his appointment. That's a bold statement that can only be appreciated if you've seen the thing.

I have to say though that I would really like to see what would happen if these two had a nice cup together. Although I suspect it would result in a green mustache and not much more.

As long the Britt's don't try to get in on this "shock the world" type of U.N. appointment by nominating Gorillaz lead singer 2-D.

I wonder who Sen Genshitsu would give the "honored guest" position to if they all had tea together...

This story was found on: Japan Today.

Now go have a cup.

Brought To Us By Resourceful Canadian Prisoners: A Cigarette That's Good For You!

2005-09-16T16:04:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy this last week so this one skipped by my sixth sense of tea related oddities.

Last week a Manitoba jail began serving up cruel and unusual punishment by banning tea. No, not tea-bagging, bagged tea. The prison has been attempting to be smoke free since November of 2003 but so far the inmates have shown just how smart an addiction and jail boredom can make you.

The inmates are now making tea cigarettes:

''The gum is boiled and there's a nicotine residue that's removed and dried and then sprinkled on the redried tea bag leaves, and then rolled''

Jail superintendent Cathy Sandney

As exciting as that sounds it can apparently take up to two days to make just one. I call foul on addiction getting any real credit for this as I was first inclined to believe since they could have got their fix from the gum a lot easier. I think peer pressure and boredom deserve the credit here. Before they tried using the tea bags they turned to the good book for the thin pages that probably made for a very nice smoke and showed just how tough they were.

He walked onto the yard with a devil may care look in his eyes as he puffed on his Bible Brand Cigarette.

As a result use of the Bible is being monitored very carefully.

Now I repeat that this is the wrong addiction for me but I can't help wondering how a smoked tea bag sprinkled with nicotine gum juice compares to a regular brand. I'm not willing or qualified to judge this comparison but I beg of you if you happen to be a smoker to try this. I would love to have a review on this page or even just to be able to link to your page. I was upset that I couldn't find a picture of the finished product as I think to fully grok this phenomenon we need to see a picture of a person smoking one.

I took the quote in this story from The Brandon Sun but it looks like it was a wire story since most every version I've come across is almost the same. If you happen to have come across a more detailed article (perhaps with pictures) or are willing to try this out feel free to share your wisdom in the comments here. If you want to email me about it you can do so at:

himthatwas.blog@gmail.com

Now go have a cup.

A Dangerous Tea Tin That Was Not A Tea Tin

2005-09-14T23:01:00.000-07:00

Tea is not my only addiction.

I have an addiction to hidden things, they call them eggs, or hidden eggs or Easter eggs or sometimes even subliminal messages. Several years ago I took a class in Psychology that covered subliminal messages extensively. Since then I've found that I cannot look in a magazine without looking for hidden things. I've found two shocking ones on my journeys. The first and worst was a swastika on a mountain in the background of a car ad. I don't trust my memory of which car company so I won't chance blaming the wrong company until I track the magazine down again. I know I kept that one. The other less controversial, and OK to laugh at, one had a glamour model posing in front of some trucks selling some expensive clothing. If you look really close you can tell that the trucks are carrying manure. Now, these were both ten or fifteen years ago so you'll have to forgive my not having examples. They aren't what this post is about anyway.

I vaguely remembered seeing something about a controversial tea tin a few months ago that had to be changed because it had tiny people and animals having sex hidden in the scenery. I've spent the last few days tracking down where I saw this and finally found it at eggs.com. Sadly enough I could not find an actual image of it anywhere on the web but I did come across a blog that had something almost exactly like this. Only problem was that it wasn't a tea tin after all, it was in fact a tea biscuit tin. Close enough, but not what I was looking for. I'll give you a little photo but if you want the story you might as well go over to the sayanythingblog to see a larger version and the story that goes along with it. It's not all that shocking but still a little entertaining.

I think that there must be some really good hidden things in tea packages or on tins out there and I'll keep my eyes open for you. By any chance do you happen to know of any?

Feel free to post about non-tea related eggs or even subliminal messages you've found in this posts comments. Please remember that everyone probably already knows that the Joe Cools nose looks rather phallic. In fact it would be best to just avoid cigarettes and alcohol ads completely. Wrong addiction! It's more interesting to find a genital or two in an ad put out by one of the "good guys." Since were on the topic, here's a strange page that has "The Phallic Logo Awards." I'd rate the page PG just because these are actually the logos of the companies mentioned. Fortunately no tea companies have made the list...

yet.

Now go have a nice hot cup.

The Almighty PG Tips, Plastic Spoons, and a Wine List That Speaks Tea.

2005-09-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I received an email from a person with the same name as me asking if I was a different person with the same name as the person who sent the email. Sadly I had to answer that I was not in fact the person named me. Thankfully he seemed like a nice person himself and it's always good to know you might be mistaken for someone else that doesn't suck. As I understand it the person he was thinking I am is quite nice as well. We all seem rather nice in fact.

Once the email moved beyond the identity portion he mentioned a very popular tea: PG Tips. Which I accept to be a fine tea, but unfortunately is not really to my liking. It's just a little off, I like my black teas a little perkier I think, but it's hard to nail down exactly what it is. His mentioning it brought back a tea story to the front of my mind and I shared it with him, so I'll do the same to you.

Last year around the holidays my girlfriend was working as a receptionist in an interior design firm (no link here) as the token hot receptionist (again no link here, sorry). Part of her job was to ensure that the clients' thirst was quenched. While they were waiting for the designer she was to offer them the choice of coffee, tea or water. I was beaming with pride that my girlfriend worked at a place that provided tea to the thirsty. That is until I found out the selection of tea consisted of an apple cinnamon flavored herbal tea, a very old box of vanilla flavored black tea, and what she called a bag of generic green of the kind you buy in discount shops for less than a dollar.

I was perplexed at this until I remembered that this was the same place that spent five hundred dollars on a newsletter (it worked out to about three dollars a piece, and was mostly spent on the extra thick shiny paper) but had my girlfriend washing the plastic spoons (it says disposable on the box!) that they gave to the clients. You can go to TJMax (we know they shop there) and buy a box of shiny stainless steel utensils for less than the cost of five newsletters.

Now when I heard what they were serving I gladly donated my box of PG Tips knowing that a tea lover would come in and subconsciously think "one of these things is not like the others" and be grateful.

Shortly after this my girlfriend lost her job and was quite bitter about the whole thing but I insisted that the PG tips stay. A decent tea loving person should not have to suffer. I wonder how she ever managed to work for someone that would supply their customers such a foul selection of such a fine beverage. In the email I spelled foul as fowl. Probably because I was thinking about how jive those turkeys were. As they often say "Never trust a spellchecker, always proofread."

The person named me also mentioned recently visiting the Dorchester Hotel in London and being presented with a tea list rather than a wine list. Now that is true class.

It makes me wonder at the stories you might have. Have you ever been to a place that pleasantly surprised you with either some tea that was unexpected based on location (perhaps a roadside cafe frequented by truckers on Route 66) or in a spectacular place like the Dorchester Hotel where you might have been expecting a wine list? You probably havent thought about it for a while, but I'm betting the story is worth telling. It's time to share your secret find and send us there. If they brew it we will come!

Now go have a cup, even if it's a tea I not particularly fond of. In fact, especially if it's PG Tips!

A Post To Thank the Most...

2005-09-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

Well this is the obligatory thank you post to all the web pages and people that helped get this page up and going thus far.

On the design end the original template used was "Rounders 4" by Douglas Bowman www.stopdesign.com. This seems to be a very popular template so I had and probably still have quite a bit of work to do keep it unique and memorable. Most of that work will be done with GIMP. Or if you prefer Photoshop you call always try GIMPShop a project trying to make the GIMP play like Photoshop. I'm all about the free.

This article on Photoshop Support.com was instrumental in inspiring me to attempt messing around with graphics (something I'm not necessarily skilled in) and was chocked full of resources. I found it through the ProBlogger 31 Days... page.

The pre-GIMP photo used for the header came from stock.xchng. They had the best selection of free tea photos I could find, if you've found other great places please post them in the comments for all to see. They had many other wonderful photos as well but who cares? The original was called "Fresh Tea" by Sandy Ardiansyah. I don't know anything about her but the few photos she has up on stock.xchng were all nice.

I've been using tinypic.com to host the template images without any trouble (or registration) and blogger is hosting the rest via "hello". For a helpful list of free hosting services check out: Blogger Template. Give it a look around as they have some other nice things for someone starting out as well.

Probably the biggest boost came from Anitbland at dustyroaddesigns.com who allowed me to get back to writing with his great post on fixing the Google AdSense flicker. I use Firefox always and the Adsense ads are annoying on most pages and probably dangerous to your epileptic readers. I've seen sites that don't have it and was having a hard time figuring out how to fix it. He came to the rescue. He also has the distinction of being the first person to compliment this page, and it was the most important one since it didn't come from a friend at my request for feedback. It came on a rather experimental post that I wasn't too sure would come across as intended. Without the encouragement at the time it came I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to do some of the strange posts I'm working on now. A thanks also goes out to all the other people that did the same for me on that post who's pages can be reached by following their profiles on that same post.

Super big ups to Tea Posur for being the first place to link to my page unprompted and before I knew of her page. Thanks!

Most of the traffic I've had so far has come from Blog Explosion and from BlogClicker. Most of you I should say came from one of the two but both are working quite nicely. If you're just getting a blog started click on these links to get some people seeing you. It's all free and didn't require installing anything on my page. P.S. I get bonus points if you sign up via these links rather than saving them to your favorites for later use. ;)

I should also thank Jeff who mentioned in the same comments putting slices of onion on my head to help with the baldness. Unfortunately I live in an onion free house and my girlfriend would likely shave my head in my sleep if I tried to pull a stunt like that.

The (probably funny only to me) question in the corner that I'm linking to here because it will be disappearing shortly uses SFESurvey
but I don't have a server I can upload it to so I've just been using the test one I made on their page. :( Sorry. I'm going to be replacing it with a poll question I'm working on from The International Voting Center.

I'm using w.bloggar to write these posts since the Blogger page always crashes when I try to do a spell check. Nice program, worth a try.

I'm going to thank myself for making the cute little cup icons 'cause I love them so much. If you have a tea web page and want to use them go ahead! If you mention me even better, but I'm not going to require it.

Thanks to my uncle Greg Phelps for suggesting a few months ago that I start a blog about tea. And a special shout out to my girlfriend and a wonderfully orange towel that I think will be making many future appearances.

Whew, you'd think I was accepting an Emmy. Thanks again gang! I do my best to make it worth a visit back here to see who it was that linked to you.

Now go have a cup.

Waiter, There's a Tea Bag In My Oatmeal!

2005-09-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

In the morning I usually start the day with either oatmeal or cereal and a cup of tea. Today I was having oatmeal and right after starting to eat it I realized that I should have used the tea to make the oatmeal. So I started working on a second bowl! I looked in the cupboard for the most teacup like bowl I could find, grabbed my camera, brewed some Twinning Earl Grey and...

I know what you're thinking.
What no lemon, milk, or sugar?

The only oatmeal I tend to have around is instant "Maple and Brown Sugar" so I figured it had enough sugar in it already. Then I combined the oatmeal and Earl Grey. Yes I used a teabag, I prefer my Earl Grey that way.

Notice how I covered up the
filthy stove from the first photo
with a wonderfully orange towel.

Then it was time to do some eating. The first bite was admittedly a cautious one. I really didn't know what to expect.

Wow! Lesson learned...

I was completely shocked. I suspected it would be good or I wouldn't have bothered, but I had no idea how good it would be. That was quite literally the best bowl of oatmeal I have ever had. I was actually laughing! I'm not sure if you can remember the last time a bowl of oatmeal made you laugh, but I'm betting it was a long time ago if you can. How much was I laughing? Enough time to think it would be a good idea to make a happy face in my bowl.

Happy Oatmeal!

This was a complete success! The worst part of the experiment was trying a dozen or so times to get a decent photo for the happy face. Not so much the picture taking part but the waiting to eat its eyeballs out.

You must try this, I am not kidding about how good it was.

Now go have a bowl.

Tea is "The Great Baldness Cure!"

2005-09-01T13:51:00.000-07:00

How will you know until I try it? Today I'm beginning an experiment. I'm going to try to cure my baldness using tea. I've been drinking tea for quite a while now and can only assume that either I would be completely bald by now if I had not been doing so or that it has had no effect whatsoever. So I'll just skip that whole part and move onto more interesting ways.

How bald am I? Not very, I've just got a little shine on the back of my head. When it's windy there is still enough up there to catch a bug or two. I'd rather it not get any worse so now might be the best time to start working on a cure.

The first method is of course to apply it directly, but it raises more questions.

Should I grind it up and smear it on my head as a paste?

How long should I leave it there?

Should I just use some brewed tea as a soak?

Should I boil some shampoo up and brew some tea with it?

What if I just tape some dry tea back there?

The second method is to eat it. Seems rather straight forward, I can add it to many of the recipes I already eat. Some might be trickier than other though. Anyone have any Ideas how to add it to:

Spaghetti Sauce?

Pizza?

Nachos?

I do eat healthy foods as well, but adding tea to those is not as hard or interesting.

Third method is osmosis. I could just put some under my pillow at night.

Fourth method mind over matter. I know it will work!

The only other method I can think of is one I won't be using but was sure to be the most suggested is using tea as a suppository. If I ever get hemorrhoids and want to try using tea to cure that we can go down that path then. If that does happen I promise to check my head as well (for baldness curing, possible for sanity).

I'd like to include before and after photos so it'll be a while before I can start showing the results (reason number seven not to try method number five) but I promise you we will get to the bottom of this.

Thanks for stopping by!

Now go have a cup.

*Updates*
How About A Tea Bath?
Waiter, There's a Teabag In My Oatmeal!
A Tea Pizza Is A Happy Pizza

How About A Tea Bath?

2005-08-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

You hear a lot of things about tea these days. How it can heal your cancer, prevent a cold, take ten years off, and raise the dead. This is a post in that regard. Not every interesting tea story you read here will come from the dawn of civilization (there could be no civilization before tea). From time to time I'll share some of my personal experiences.

A couple of weeks ago I did something I've been meaning to try for a while now. I took a bath in tea. Sound weird? I promise I didn't drink it afterwards, nor expect anyone else to.

Sometimes when I'm out shopping with my girlfriend I'll come across some five-dollar satchel of tea for the bath. I'm not going to spend that kind of money on one bath and I hope that you wouldn't either. I'd had a rather long week and decided to take a nice long bath. Now, I'm six foot two and the tiny bathtub in my apartment is probably five foot six, so you know it must have been a rough week if I'm going to try to fit into that thing.

The problem was I couldn't find any of my girlfriend's bubble bath. Not to be deterred I set out to make my own. I remembered that at one point I'd discovered that the main ingredient in one of her Lush bath bombs (cool stuff but expensive) was baking soda, so I started there. Digging in the cupboards I found an old bottle of Dr.Bronners Tea Tree Oil soap. I'd never liked the smell of that stuff but I knew it would bubble up really good so it would do. At the time I was saving up my used tea leaves to put into my plants (they say it's a good fertilizer) and had a few days worth waiting to be used. I felt I had all the pieces now for a good bath.

I brewed a really big pot of tea with the spent leaves and took it to the bathroom. While the water was running I added the soap and baking soda then poured the brew in. For some reason I threw the leaves in there as well without really thinking. Immediately I regretted that as it looked rather swamp like in there. I'd spent too much time putting this together to just forget about it and made a mental note not to do that again and got in.

I immediately erased that mental note. This felt great! The baking soda was aerating the water and making the leaves float all over the place. The result was that it felt like sitting in a spa, a weak one, but still nice. The leaves were now brushing up against my skin, and the smell of the tea had begun to overpower the damned tea tree oil smell.

Suddenly the week wasn't all that bad. My skin had never felt better and my mind was refreshed. Yes, I have tried some of my girlfriend's expensive bath bombs (I'd rather not think about how much they cost) and they were nice, but this was definitely better. No doubt in part due to my having made it myself and feeling quite clever as a result.

Did it prevent a cold or heal my warts? Probably not, but when you feel good you tend to stay healthy.

Cost = Nothing, I already had everything. The baking soda was just sitting in the fridge, the soap was something I'd never intended to use, and the tea had already been used.

What were the final results of taking a bath in tea? Ahhhhhhh!

Do it! But find a way to do it cheap.

Now go have a cup.

So you thought kids were bad these days...

2005-08-25T14:49:00.000-07:00

At some point in the 15th century lived a man named Ichiro who was something of a scholar and philosopher and as most scholar/philosophers do lived as a hermit. He did so in a town called Sakai (the same town where tea master Sen no Rikyu would live and die.) His relevance on a page dedicated to tea stories is that he is known to have taken tea with the tea master Ikkyu at some point in his life and was in possession of a tea pot that has it's own tales and that he referred to as "The Handy Pot". The odd part of his life, though doubtfully the only odd part, is the way in which he died. No, it does not directly have anything to do with tea but does exemplify the lengths someone will go to when trying to make a point.

Ichiro had built a window into the wall that faced his garden that people would give him offerings through. It is not known if there was a sign on it stating that he was a veteran, but I suspect not. Apparently the children of the town took to throwing straw horse shoes and dung into it as a joke or perhaps as a rite of passage much like children growing up in the eighties would challenge each other to go up to the "scary German guy's" house and ring the bell. Well, he wasn't as inclined to invite these kids into the house for pie. Instead he sadly proclaimed that he was living in "...a degenerate age!" and proclaimed that he "...would have no more to do with it." At which point he stopped eating and eventually died as a result.

The moral of this story is first don't throw crap into people's windows. Or if you are a parent and you think that your child may have thrown crap into some ones window you should invite the crazy person over for some tea. He might just have a very good recipe for pie. Oh, and teach your damn kids some manners.

Now go have a nice cup.