Rules: answer the 20 questions and tag 20 amazing followers you would like to get to know better
Name: My friends call me Kat.
Nicknames: I still get Kitty Kat, Katie, Li, Angel, Neechan, and a few others I’m probably forgetting.
Zodiac sign: Pisces
Height: 5′7″ and some change
Orientation: Ace as hell
Ethnicity: Caucasian mutt (Scotch, Irish, English, Welsh, German, French)
Favorite fruit: Peaches
Favorite season: Autumn
Favorite book series: The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher
Favorite flower: Confederate Jasmine, because it’s the only flower I can’t kill
Favorite scent: Vanilla
Favorite color: Black, followed closely by grey and bright red
Favorite animal: Definitely cats
Coffee, tea, or hot cocoa: Tea dammit, but cocoa is a close second
Average sleep hours: Most nights are between 4 and 6 hours. Some nights are more like 2, and others are closer to 8. The cats don’t let me sleep more than that.
Cat or dog person?: I have three cats. I would love to have a dog again, but our apartment is too small.
Favorite fictional characters: Faraday. Vasquez. Kaiba Seto. Yami no Bakura. Harry Dresden. Bob the Skull. Tsukino Usagi. Duo Maxwell. Connor Temple. Connor McLeod.
Number of blankets you sleep with: Three most nights during winter because I also have three furry space heaters, but in summer, it’s more like one.
Dream trip: Netherlands or back to France (but someone would have to go along with and make me come back home)
Blog created: July 2011 (or at least those were my first posting dates)
Number of followers: 198, a huge chunk of which are porn blogs
Thanks to @cambetaut for tagging me!
So... tagging... @katsuko1978, @hazel-athena, @fantasysci5, @bow-weaver, @djdangerlove, and anyone else who might want to give it a whirl.
The Social Justice Diplomat is currently on vacation. The temp filling in is an overstressed, undercaffeinated peon who really just wants to get through the week without any more international incidents.
I usually have the bandwidth -- to explain, to reach out, to bridge cultural divides, to rephrase, to forge better understanding. It's something I find rewarding, which is why I can be maddeningly calm and empathetic with people who have been blundering around and stepping on toes and knocking champagne flutes over on folks who just want to have a good night.
I usually have the bandwidth. I really don't right now. I'm less willing to engage, more willing to drop people out of my circles. It's not that I'm upset or offended or broken up -- I'm just tired. Worn out.
I find myself seeking comforting and familiar things. I'm going to retreat into my little cave of self-care, have some ice cream, watch my favorite movies, and resort to just punching "like" as stuff scrolls by -- disengaging as soon as I'm asked to explain my perspective for the Nth time. Because I'm on vacation.
Okay. So, matcha tea drinkers who are holding out on getting the whisk thingy. After having a cup made with, and several without, I can tell you that the quality of your tea will be much better than if you do what I'd been doing until now—trying to beat it fast with a cocktail fork. It's smooth, silky. And somehow less bitter. Matcha whisk. Get you one.
A word of brief explanation: Last year, after a severe bout with PTSD that literally was almost the end of me, I started a blogging project of 100 things that give me life, things that motivate me to keep going. There's a few places you can find those, one of them which shows up every time I post to my Wordpress if you care to know about such things. These are truncated with the little Wordpress W in the corner. This one here is double-posted technically because there's a tea review under all the details for anyone who wants the funny story but doesn't feel like going off-site or simply doesn't feel like hearing me go on and on about the shit that I like that helps make me not dead because I know not everyone's into that sort of thing. Now back to your regularly scheduled story. Most of it's under a cut because pictures. (And I don't know why the sizing went wonky. I tried to fix it four times and tapped out.)
Since I was about 10, I've loved tea. I LIKED it before—preferred it iced, not oversweet most of the time; if it was to be sweet SWEET tea it had better be strong enough to knock over a godsdamned house, that's to be sure. I've been basically fiending on it since we accidentally discovered it would work on my ADHD instead of the drugs.
I couldn't focus, and one day my uncle asked me if I'd tried this tea right here, this green tea that was just really freaking strong that he couldn't figure out how to make potable to save his life, and in the week it took to figure out how to brew Ceylon teas (remember, we're Black Americans living in Black America, and this is the mid 90's at the time, there aren't resources in our area for tea at the time other than the occasional Claudia-centric Babysitters Club book), the both of us were so mellow and focused that my dad--his brother--wondered if we'd been replaced with pod people. This same week was my appointment for my suspected ADHD. Having heard about this alphabet soup my uncle comes with, as does an aunt. My doctor notices how much more mellow and focused I've become, and Unc and I mention the tea adventure. That's where we learn the beginnings of tea research, and how stimulants (like the ADD/ADHD pills and caffeine) work in managing this thing.
We take one look at each other and go, "Makes sense."
Dad and the aunt that went with us take one look at each other and go, "Whut?"
Since then my tea fascination has only expanded, from strictly "this is delicious" to "So if this ails you I can throw this that and the other into a pot and have a fix for you, yeah?" That brings us to the bonus section here: a tea review!
BHOT: All Day Blend
No, this is not a comically large spoon or a comically small cup. I typically drink my tea from demitasse-sized or espresso-sized cups, and if I sweeten it I don't use much—excepting my Lousiana-style iced tea, which is strong enough to knock a house over and sweet enough to convince an idiot not to blackmail your friend. The clarity is very nice, and the scent is crisp, almost coffee-like.
At first I thought it was my brewing method—
But I'd run a cycle of CLR through the thing, which removes hard water deposits from the brewer, and the carafe had received the same treatment. Little tip: when you use this cleaning method, run a second full carafe of plain water through the machine before you brew anything, to prevent any chemical from getting into your cuppa.
Little known trick: If you own a little four-cup Mr. Coffee-style brewer, you have one of the best ways to brew loose leaf tea out there already. Because the water is never AT boil, it's nigh impossible to cook your tea to death and overbrew it. Further, your leaves have plenty of room in the filter to expand, and you don't have to monitor temperatures quite as obsessively.
Oh, right, don't forget to use a filter. Otherwise you have a reeeeeeeeeeeeal bitch to clean up. As an added bonus you can get a second full-strength brew out of those leaves, just like if you used a tea ball or other more traditional infusion method.
This is only a teaspoon and a half of leaves. The general rule is a teaspoon of leaves per person per pot and an extra for the pot (assuming you're brewing traditionally.) I like strong tea but decided to go with the usual strength. They expand like whoa, and you can see why I said to use a filter if you're going the Mr Coffee (renamed Mr. Tea for me here) route. In fact, the presene of Ceylon in this blend means you have wicked tannins, and they'll bake up as hot tea tends to do to them. If you want to minimize the staining in your mugs and the amount of tannin floating around (because it does aggregate), double up. Use two filters. (No more than two. You'll flood the brew basket.)
Taste 1, straight: STRONG. assertive and coffee-like almost. It's potent, and has this light but sweet air that almost doesn't need anything.
Taste 2, with monkfruit sweetener: This is a VERY EASY TO OVERSWEETEN tea. I only used a slxth of a packet and it was overdoing it. If you sweeten this, make it a strong cup.
Taste 3, with sweet cream and a little sugar: OKAY, STOP. WHAT GAVE YOU THE RIGHT.
This is delicious. Sweetening it by itself is NO for me. It just DOESN'T WORK. But with cream, OH GOOD GRIEF. I'd brewed the entire four-cup (translation: four-person intended) thing and drunk two thirds of it like this, just shotgunning one after the other in disbelief. Adding cream to this tea gives it a nutty, almond-like richness. It becomes like a dessert that you want to eat.
Here, have a glamour shot of cream tea with tiny spoon in a tiny cup.
Verdict: If you like a black tea for all occasious, aren't frightened off by loose leaf tea, and suspect that you might be a liiiiiiiitle bit of a tea snob (I will willingly admit that I am), GET THIS TEA. If you're curious about what good tea tastes like, GET THIS TEA. If you like te, GET THIS TEA.
I need more tea. I thought I had more tea. But I braved the wobbly "there is no way this can safely support my 170 lbs of beefcake" stepladder to get some tea off of the tea shelf and, well...there is very little tea. There is certainly not enough tea to survive winter. ...the stepladder hinges also caved slightly. Come tax season, I'm going to go get a new one. This one is a literal antique.
Warm, very windy, going to rain this weekend. The county's already a lake of mud because of the melt from the ice storm two weeks ago, and we're supposed to get 3-5 inches of rain by Sunday midnight.
Right now it would be glorious to sit outside but probably damp enough to make you sniffly.
Oh well, I have ginger tea.
