My spouse asked last night what that morning’s advent calendar tea had been. It had been a long day, so I couldn’t remember at first, and that short exchange entirely justified the 45 minutes I’d spent on Monday building a new “teablog” content type onto my Hugo site.

It’s not that I think pumpkin spice tea pairs well with Friday night sushi takeout, it’s that I can’t remember the last week I lost this much sleep over work anxiety, so I need dinner tea to get through the rest of the day.

It is September 13th. I am already buying myself a tea advent calendar and hating myself for it. I am thinking about how much more offensive capitalist Christmas should be to Christians than secular Christmas.

Trader Joe’s chai mints are everything I was hoping they’d be.

One of my favorite tea brands is a local one that imports its own leaves. I think one of my weekend projects is going to be to bulk order from them to get ahead of tariffs.

This weekend, I read some Star Trek comics, did some cool stuff in Kerbal Space Program, and bought a new tin of my favorite chocolate mint tea. It’s exactly what I needed to let my mind relax for a bit.

(Now that I think about it, scanning for digits in a wall of tea tin text is like the brain’s natural regex, and I think that’s beautiful.)

Tea steeping times should always be printed in digits (“4 minutes” not “four minutes”) so that I can scan for digits on the tin instead of having to read through words.

Love that our family makes a point to stop at the Kentucky Artisan Center rest stop instead of the Buc-ee’s just up the road. Further love that my favorite locally-made tea company can always be found there.

Finally trying Bigelow’s “Constant Comment” after several months of meaning to. So far, it ranks pretty high on my list of non-desserty teas.

Trying jasmine tea for the first time. I can see why Le Carré characters keep ragging on Control for drinking it, but it’s not bad, actually.

Spouse bought some “chai spice” nut butter last weekend, and—tragedy of tragedies—I’m the only one in the family who likes it. It is a bit more peppery than I usually like chai stuff, but my increased toast consumption wouldn’t indicate as much.

Any recommendations out there for CBD teas? I’ve found CBD chews invaluable on particularly anxious days, but since I’m already a tea-drinker, I’m interested in trying the intersection of the two.

Après un vélotaf sous la pluie, une tisane à la réglisse fait beaucoup de bien.

I like herbal tea, but there’s only so much interest I can show in a cookbook on the topic. The only reason I read this was because reading a cookbook is one of the squares on my local library’s 2023 reading challenge. It could be interesting to grow my own herbs and make my own blends, but I just don’t see myself doing it.

For orthodontic reasoms, kiddo has to brush teeth after eating basically anything, and we usually double check after each brushing. This just happened while I was making myself some chai, so she complained my fingers tasted like tea when I was poking them in her mouth.

I wanted this coconut tea to taste like coconut cream pie, but it’s going in the direction of piña colada instead, and I’m always disappointed when I make myself a cup.

If some tea (well, tisane) purist wants to tell me that smores tea shouldn’t be a thing, I don’t really have a great counterargument, but it’s delicious, so I have no plans to stop drinking it.

I grew up not drinking tea or coffee because of religious convictions—a habit that ultimately stayed with me longer than those convictions! Over the course of the two years I spent as a Mormon missionary, I taught a number of people that (among other things) they should adopt the same convictions and also give up tea and coffee. One of the most interesting lessons on this subject I had was with Jonathan. At the time, I was assigned to the Latter-day Saint congregation in Renens, Switzerland, where Jonathan was attending university, probably at l’Université de Lausanne (though I can’t remember for sure); wherever he was attending school, it was relatively far form Ticino, the Italophone canton of Switzerland that he came from. My missionary colleague Matthew and I found his name on a list of people whom the missionaries in Renens used to teach and decided to knock on his door.

I was excited last weekend to buy two new teas to add to my growing collection, but these might be the first duds I’ve picked out since starting with tea in May. I know rooibos is a red flag for me from years of herbal teas, so I don’t know how I missed it in the one ingredient list.

A few weeks ago, I added a tin of tea that tastes like Andes mints to my growing collection, and it’s taken a lot of self control to drink anything else in the morning.

This summer, I’ve taken advantage of my 9-month contract with the University of Kentucky to have lots of adventures with kiddo while my spouse (who has a 12-month contract) continues at her job. It’s been a real delight! A couple of Fridays ago, we drove to Danville, a town in Central Kentucky where I spent a summer as a high schooler but haven’t been back to since. We bought her a book, me some amazing chocolate mint tea, and had a great time exploring fun shops and public art in adorable downtown Danville. More recently, we spent a Friday driving over to Louisville to visit the Kentucky Science Center. We hadn’t been there since kiddo had been way too young to appreciate it, but thanks to a local summer reading program, we scored a free ticket, so we made our way back there to try the museum again and then meet up with a local colleague for some delicious ice cream.

In early May, I decided to give tea a try. I’ve enjoyed herbal teas over the years, but I grew up never drinking actual tea (or coffee, which I still have never tried), so this has been a new(ish) experience for me. Over the past two months, I’ve acquired a couple of tea infusers as well as a variety of different teas that I’ve been trying, and tonight I felt like writing about some of the teas I’ve tried so far:

All right, black tea, let’s see how we get along.