Zen Tara Tea Blog

A Multitasking Tea Sherpa Crosses the Road

What does your day look like? 

Before entering graduate school, I had a 9-to-5 desk job where my biggest hazard was leg cramps and awkward paper cuts. My arms exercise was lifting the tea infuser of my teapot.  Life was good. Ok well, life was slow, sometimes more or less stationary.

That’s a far cry from what my day looks like now.  These days I balance taking classes at a university in DC with being a tea sherpa at Zen Tara Tea in Bethesda. I spend a good amount of time shuttling to and from campus and dodging cars while disobeying walk-signs. I nimbly weave through crowded Metro subway cars and body-check undergrads on my way to class.  All the while I would be in a reverie for a quieter time when I was able to just reach for my tea and relax a bit. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my new life. However, I’m finding it’s harder to have tea time (Earl Grey with Rose, please!) when I’m scuttling from one side of campus to another. Breathe, sip, renew is now sprint, type and print. 

We’ve all felt like this from time to time, life pulls us in different directions and we forget to take a much needed time-out for ourselves. We become so caught up in checking off the next box on the To-Do list that we lose sight of the bigger picture.  We become unable to see the simple steps that could lighten our load, bring the stress down a notch.

May I humbly suggest examining how often you overbook your calendar? No matter how busy it is, if you look hard enough you can find 15 minutes to relax with a cup of tea to ease your mind. Still having trouble?  Multitask: Sprint... Breathe... Type... Sip... Print...

Here's a Cold Weather Hint: Mint

Perk up your winter health with the uplifting aroma and flavor of a pure leaf peppermint or spearmint leaf tea. Teas from mint leaves have been drunk for centuries for their relaxing menthol flavor and their properties of calming the stomach and offering an invigorating taste without caffeine.

For a stronger mint flavor choose peppermint leaf, for a smoother tea with a slight natural sweetness opt for spearmint leaf. The crisp clean flavor of mint teas is refreshing and helps freshen the breath as a bonus. Try mint leaves alone or do a little blending by adding to green teas, perhaps a little lemongrass or lemon balm, blend with spices for a minty chai drink of use in combination with a black tea for a refreshing black tea - hot or iced, add a little honey to sweeten.

Chill out with a warming cup of mint tea today.

Have You Taken Care of Your Kitchen God?

One of the wonderful facets of enjoying teas from around the world is being exposed to the culture and traditions of tea producing countries. While we all turned the calendar on December 31st at midnight and welcomed the arrival of a chronolgical New Year, in China and many other countries in Asia, the arrival of the traditional Lunar New Year is the more significant holiday, ushering in almost two weeks of celebrations, customs and superstitions. Which brings us to your "Tsao Chun" or Kitchen God.

His image would be hung in the kitchen in a prominent location at the beginning of the Lunar New Year. From his perch, perhaps right over or next to the stove, he would keep an eye on how everyone behaved in the kitchen. After observing your family in the kitchen for the year, his image is then taken down a week before the arrival of the next Lunar New Year begins and burned so that the smoke will rise up to Heaven where he would report on your family to the Jade Emperor.

In order to insure a good report, some families would smear honey on his lips before burning the image so that only sweet reports would come from his mouth. Sugar and sweet pastries would also do the trick. Other families were less trustful, worrying that even after sweetening the lips of Tsao Chun that he still might not deliver a good enough report. In order to keep things quiet they coated his mouth with sweet sticky rice so he couldn't open his mouth to make any kind of report.

The Lunar New Year arrives January 23rd this year so if you haven't taken down your Kitchen God yet, now is the time. Grab a jar of honey and a match and send him on his way. If you've not had a Kitchen God to help watch over your kitchen in the past, maybe this is the year to start if you can be on your best behavior in the kitchen in 2012.

Chinese Tea Infused Dragon Eggs: Recipe

I first learned of Chinese tea-soaked eggs in grade school, when a Chinese friend of mine brought one in for lunch. The marbled pattern on her egg was so lovely I was convinced that she was about to bite into a porcelain egg.  But when she offered me a bite, I was surprised by the mellow saltiness of the hardboiled egg. It was the perfect snack, and beautiful to admire.

With the Chinese New Year just around the corner, I decided to try my hand at making this traditional Chinese treat. Although delicate and beautiful, Chinese tea-soaked eggs are actually quite easy to make, and easier to eat.

You will need:

6 eggs
¾ cup of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of Zen Tara Golden Yunnan Tea
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon whole peppercorns

Place the eggs in a medium pot and fill it with enough water to cover the eggs by one inch. Bring the pot to a boil, then lower the heat and let the water simmer for three minutes. Remove the eggs, leaving the water in the pot. One by one, run cold tap water over each egg. When it is cool enough to hold, crack the shell with the back of a teaspoon, but make sure to keep the egg intact (the more cracks you put in the shell, the more the tea mixture will seep into the egg and create that marbled look). Replace the cracked eggs in the pot, and add the soy sauce, tea leaves, cinnamon stick, sugar, and peppercorns. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 40 minutes. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the eggs steep for at least four hours (for best results, let the eggs steep in the tea mixture overnight).
Finally, peel and enjoy!

From everyone here at Zen Tara Tea, we wish you a happy and healthy Year of the Dragon.

How You Made a Difference in 2011

Sometimes with the overwhelming demands the holiday season puts on our time and attention, by the time we get to January 1st we're more than ready to close the book on the year past and move forward to a bright, shiny new year. The look of a clean desktop calendar and an entire year of possibilities in front of us is inviting but before we run away from 2011, it is worth one more fond glance back at a lot of good things you may have been a part of at Zen Tara Tea.

Your purchases of our teas and accessories not only helped our small business, they helped others in the community and across the globe:

~ Together we raised almost $1,000 that was send to Direct Relief International to help with the Japan tsunami and earthquake recovery.

~ Hundreds of dollars were donated to Hope Connections for Cancer Support in Bethesda, MD through purchases of our Orange Spice and Rejuvenate tea blends.

~ Zen Tara Tea was able to participate in and donate items to fundraisers for local schools in Bethesda, Potomac, Rockville and Washington, DC.

~ Our shop was able to co-host events with the Bethesda Writer's Center and provide opportunities for local musicians to perform during evening events.

~We were able to continue expanding our range of organic teas, one of the largest selections in the nation, while at the same time starting a new program for Direct from Grower teas to connect tea buyers back to the source of their teas.

~ At a time when much of the economy continues to struggle, we've been able to grow every year since starting out 5 years ago at the Bethesda Farm Women's Cooperative Market, becoming Bethesda & DC's favorite tea source locally, and through our website extending that local flavor nationally to customers who don't have access local tea shop.

~ While tea is our main focus, we've appreciated that for many local customers a relaxing hour in our shop is a must on their weekly schedule and we added morning oatmeal, fresh fruit and all-natural soups to have a couple of more food options for when you get together with friends, have a long study session or get caught up in a good book and stay longer than first planned.

We hope you appreciate the way your choice of having a cup of tea with us at the shop or with our loose tea at home is able to have such a positive influence. In 2012, Zen Tara Tea looks forward to continuing to staying true to our roots, embracing teas that are grown organically and sustainably whenever possible, being a part of the local and national tea community, sourcing innovative products, partnering with local artisans and organizations and offering a calendar of 50+ tea events annually.

At a time when musicians like Moby and Billy Corgan decide to open a tea house because it seems like a cool thing to do, while others roll out tea chain stores to raise capital, Zen Tara Tea has created a unique East + West fusion to bring an honest, open, relaxing tea experience to the American tea drinker. To our eyes, Bethesda, MD is Tea Town USA and all of our customers are Mayor's of Tea Town!

Join us in 2012 where experiencing tea is a joy that is fascinating, fundamentally friendly and where great organically grown teas at a reasonable price is a birthright no matter where you live.