Tea Journal

Lately I've been experimenting with homemade spiced chai recipes. I've made a handful of small batches, adding and subtracting different spices, testing different kinds of milk, and playing around with steeping methods. This weekend, I made a fresh batch and I think I'm quite close to perfecting the recipe! I'll post my version as soon as I nail it down.

This weekend, Eddie and I are packing up to move out of our first apartment. Ah! We're moving to a house downtown Atlanta with some friends, which we're pretty excited about and have been anticipating since the beginning of the summer. We're looking forward to living in community with other believers and to being more intentional with our time, space, money, and relationships.

Earlier this Summer, my sisters and I took my Mom on a belated Mother's Day trip to Tennessee. One of our favorite tea shops, The English Rose, is downtown Chattanooga so we drove up for afternoon tea!

Tonight, I spent the evening out on my porch surrounded by plants, listening to the birds, and enjoying the cooler part of the day with a citronella candle lit, cold-brewed iced coffee in one hand, and a tea magazine in the other. I borrowed a small stash of these magazines from my Mum and am finally going through them. The photos are captivating and the articles are good refreshers for things I've already learned and full of new things that I haven't. Sweet summer evening. May there be many more like this one.

A while back, my Mom and I spent an afternoon in the city and stopped for tea at Dr. Bombay's Underwater Tea Party, one of my favorite tea shops in Atlanta. With bookshelves overflowing with donated books lining the walls, umbrellas hanging from the ceiling, and an eclectic collection of photos and art spread throughout, it feels a little bit like walking into a scene from Alice and Wonderland. While I've spent time at Dr. Bombay's in the past, I'd never had afternoon tea there.
 
To raise the awesome factor even more, Dr. Bombay's is also the home of The Learning Tea, a not-for-profit that provides education for young women in India. Every month, Dr. Bombay's hosts A Taste of India dinner, and all the profits from the event support The Learning Tea. When I went to the monthly dinner in January, the shop was packed out. It was so encouraging to see the community there supporting such an inspiring cause!

A while ago, I came across a recipe for Earl Grey infused marshmallows. Uh, yum! A few weeks later, when all my people were out of town on vacation, I decided to make some version of the marshmallows happen. I decided to use chai tea and experiment using coffee, too. I used the same marshmallow recipe as in this past post and tweaked it a bit, switching out the required cup of water with a cup of tea or coffee.
I attempted to make both flavors simultaneously, which was not the best idea. Trying to blend one flavor with one hand while whisking with the other resulted in less than fluffy coffee marshmallows. The chai turned out fantastically, however, because they were whipped well enough. Moral of the story: go for one flavor at a time and err on the side of over-whisking!
Overall, this experiment was a definite success! Both flavors taste and smell amazing. The chai marshmallows smell of star anise, cardamom, and, as my sister would say, Christmas.  Not bad. I ended up dipping the coffee flavored marshmallows in chocolate which was a total win.
The final product is quite sweet and dense so I paired them with unsweetened black tea. I'm sure they would be amazing in hot cocoa, too! I'll definitely be experimenting with different flavors in the future...different teas or spices. Cinnamon marshmallows anyone? What flavors would you try?