Can You Say Rooibos?

Rooibos, pronounced “Roy-boss”, is very fashionable these days. It’s attractive to look at, healthy to be around, and makes you feel cool. You would think that I am referring to the latest trend in work out wear. Nope, Rooibos is tea, well, not really tea, but something similar to tea. Hard to follow, I know. I decided I needed to know more about this popular beverage. My research started this weekend at the Farmer’s Market, as I watched the Tea Drinker sell one bag of Citrus Rooibos after another. He had an iced-version of this tea on hand for consumers to try. It was refreshing, cool, and flavorful. A hint of lemon and sweetness, but with out being sugary. All natural. The sample was certainly a hit, and Dan quickly sold through what he brought to the market.

Rooibos is attractive to most, because it’s healthy, caffeine free, and tasty. It is also packed with anti-oxidants, and has low tannins. Not as astringent as black tea, and there is no worry of “over steeping” Rooibos, as it does not become bitter. Studies have shown that drinking Rooibos can help with digestive problems, insomnia and even allergies! Sign me up.

This popular “tea” hails from Africa, and is also known as African Red Bush. However, the bush is actually green! Found in the heart of South Africa, in the Cedarberg region near Cape Town. I can feel a “research” trip coming on…Like tea, the leaves are harvested, oxidized and fermented, before being left out to dry in the hot African sun. This is where the color of the leaf turns to that deep reddish hue. Steep this tea, an it will result in a striking orange-reddish color, and give you a beverage that is all natural. No coloring, additives, or preservatives. Sign me up again.

Drink the Leaf offers three types of Rooibos, all are flavored with natural ingredients. Citrus, Blueberry, Masala Chai. Drink hot or cold. Either way its refreshing, and healthy.

Start today!

Happy Mother's Day- Charleston, SC

USA Today ran an article in this weekend’s edition named 10 great places for memories with Mom. It just so happens that I am in one of those fabulous places -Charleston, SC- and Mom is with me. We are celebrating her birthday, as well as her being the best MOM worldwide. She is my number one cheerleader, and President of the Drink the Leaf Fan Club . Mom has never been to Charleston, so it was a perfect meeting spot. I spent the week leading up to our getaway working the Hilton Head and Charleston market. It was productive, successful, and encouraging. Wine sales were great. I love the South- it's rich with history, and the hospitality is warm, genuine, and refreshing. Charleston has a way of transporting you back to another time, and I find myself daydreaming of what it would have been like to live here during the 1700’s. However, being a Yankee, I’m not so sure I would have been allowed to stay!

Our weekend was filled with experiences like strolling through cobblestone streets lined with historic buildings, all the while taking in the confederate jasmine-scented air. It’s truly intoxicating. With the warm breeze against our skin, surrounded by some of the oldest buildings in our nation’s history, we felt honored to be able to spend the weekend in this charming city. We spent most days planning what and where to eat, and then wandered the town until nap time! A highlight was a Mother’s Day horse drawn carriage ride through the residential areas. Our tour was conducted by “Rebel St. Clair”. “Rebel” hails from Washington; she moved here 8 years ago, and is a tour guide by day and romance novelist by night. Rebel and her trusty horse, John, led us up Church Street to the Battery, and back down Meeting Street. She shared Charleston’s memorable history and left us with having a greater appreciation for this truly unique city. I highly recommend the carriage tours.

Today, as we ducked into a bar to avoid an impromptu downpour, we recapped our weekend festivities. We enjoyed lots of fresh seafood, all with a southern twist; food highlights were fried oysters, shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, parmesan crusted flounder over lemon risotto- of course, all chased down with loads of delicious wine. We did not have any tea, but I did share stories about the Tea Drinker joining me for a weekend here a few years back. We basically ate our way back and forth through this city, and then back again. The highlight of that trip was visiting the only tea plantation in the United States, located just outside of Charleston. Dan and I had the pleasure of attending a Tea Festival celebrating the harvest. It resulted in a funny experience. We set out in our rental car armed with a GPS. I punched in the location -Wadmalaw Island. We got lost in conversation as we followed our trusty GPS, traversing through roads lined with moss covered oak trees, and ended up in the depths of a dense marsh. Our GPS chirped, “You have arrived at your destination”. Without a Camellia Sinensis in sight, we realized that our GPS had taken us to the dead center of Wadmalaw Island. Oops. Hey, who do you know that has actually been to the exact center of Wadmalaw Island??

I digress. The weekend with Mom was great, and tonight we look forward to dining at a well-known Relais & Chateaux restaurant. Last time I dined here, I devoured the tempura fried soft shell crab served with pimento cheese grits. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will be on the menu tonight.

To recap, Mom told everyone she met, "From my first step onto the gorgeous tree-lined streets of Charleston, I was already planning my next trip back!" I have to agree. We will definitely be back.

So, go ahead and pour yourself a cup of soothing Drink the Leaf Organic Jasmine Pearl and dream of the fragrant, confederate jasmine-lined streets of this beautiful city, and plan to take your Mom to Charleston. Do it this year. Great resource: www.tripadvisor.com

Farmer’s Market – Napa Style

Yesterday kicked off the Farmer’s Market season in Napa Valley. There is a new location, new vendors, and a new found enthusiasm. We look forward to each Saturday morning mingling with our community, and hearing direct feedback about Drink the Leaf loose leaf teas. There is no better focus group than your community!

The Tea Drinker will need to put sleeping in on Saturday mornings behind him until the end of October. Moving forward the alarm will be set for 6am, the truck loaded with tea and props, the kettle on- all ready for lift off at 6:45am. The market opens at 7:30am, and goes straight through until noon. Yesterday morning was cool and rainy, and in our opinion, a perfect day for a steaming cup of Keemun Hao Ya A.

After my early morning torture, I stopped by the booth to offer my congratulations and support to my husband. Wishing him another successful summer filled with loads of new tea fans and ambassadors all spreading the word about http://www.drinktheleaf.com/. As I chatted with Dan, it was great to see past customers, and win over new friends with tea. Everyone is there for the same cause- to support local businesses. Or maybe they just don't feel like cleaning the house or mowing the lawn. That works for us, too.

This will be our 3rd market, and every year we walk away with new loyal customers that continue to seek us out the rest of the year. We look forward to continuing this trend. So, come by and see us, and bring your friends . Pick up fresh and locally grown produce, a bag of your favorite tea, and head home and make a tasty brunch for your family.

Farmer’s Market Frittata

Serve with a side of mixed greens tossed with olive oil and white wine vinegar. Treat yourself to a handful of Organic strawberries. Chase it all down with a mug of Jade Oolong. Or if you are like me, a refreshing glass of Sauvingnon Blanc will suffice.

4 eggs
1/8 cup non-fat milk
Pinch of cayenne
Pinch of salt
Pinch of pepper
Feta Cheese- crumbled
**Whisk the above ingredients in a bowl

Organic cauliflower – thinly sliced, 1 cup
Olive Oil

Heat olive oil in pan, cook cauliflower about 5 minutes until golden. Sprinkle lightly with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Add egg mixture- stir to combine. Heat for 3-4 minutes- transfer to oven (heated at 350) and cook for 15 minutes. (Make sure your pan is oven proof. If not, pour mixture into oven proof dish.) Remove pan from oven, cover, and let stand for 5 minutes. Serve warm or room temperature. Delicious, and healthy.

Serves 2
Recipe adapted from Food Network

Support your local farmer's market today!
Napa Location- Napa Valley Wine Train parking lot. Website coming soon.

Lap Pat Dok ( Tea Leaf Salad)

“ I don’t think Burmese Food is a good idea.” -Is what the Tea Drinker moaned to me this morning, as he was lying in bed. That’s what he thinks- I had it all planned out. The “good idea” was already in my head, and I was eager to hit the road to Mingalaba Restaurant in Burlingame. The night before at a wine tasting I met a young couple who were vegetarian, and ate mostly ethnic food. Of course, I inquired of their favorite restaurants in the area. They immediately told me about Mingalaba. I asked them to write it down, since to me it sounded like- “Mama Mia”, and I was pretty sure that was not a Burmese restaurant.

We headed out, and using my nifty i-phone, I rattled the menu off to Dan while he was driving. “Don’t worry, we can order light”. “Look, they have Green Papaya salad”, and then, I sealed the deal with Lap Pat Dok (tea leaf salad). Whew. I was getting worried, that we would end up somewhere safe, like a café shop- sipping lattes, and eating west coast bagels. Enjoying a Tea Leaf Salad sounded like an adventure, and could surely transport us to another culture.

Burma, currently called Myanmar, shares borders with India, China, Laos, and Thailand. Burmese food pulls from each one of these culinary havens, bringing together a wonderful array of spices, and ingredients. Lap Pat Dok is a salad that is centered around Burmese tea leaves. Tea is not only drunk in Burma, it’s also eaten!

The tea is fermented or pickled, and the appearance is almost similar to a pesto or paste. The Lap Pat Dok is typically prepared table side by your server. With the Burmese tea leaves in the center of the plate, our server pointed out the other ingredients: tomatoes, green cabbage, dried grounded shrimp, fried garlic, sesame seeds, peanuts, split yellow peas, and chiles. She then proceeded to squeeze fresh lemon juice onto the leaves, and fold in the array of ingredients creating a delicious and delightful salad. It was a wonderful mixture of tangy citrus, highlighted by crunchy treats. We backed the salad up with House Special Noodles. One of the restaurants popular dishes- flat noodles that tasted homemade and melted in your mouth tossed with coconut chicken, shredded lime leaves, yellow peas ground to a fine powder, topped off with a combination of onions and thin noodles that were fried. Need I say more?

I would love to prepare Lap Pat Dok at home. Not sure, where I would find Burmese tea leaves, or how one would go about pickling their tea leaves. Maybe a vodka party? Okay, sorry. I am giddy from the all that caffeine in the salad. In any case, I have the Tea Drinker on the project.

Enjoy more Ethnic Food...

P.S.

By the way, the reason behind why the Tea Drinker felt that Burmese food was not a good idea was because he was still reeling from a food hangover. The night before after my wine seminar, we had dinner at the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay. No Burmese food in sight, but a setting along the coast backed by a multi-course meal perfectly paired with a different wine for each course. Dan’s menu consisted of an appetizer of Dungeness crab salad mixed with avocado cream, mid-course of glazed pork belly accompanied by creamy polenta, onto a very filling main course of braised short ribs alongside pureed Yukon gold potatoes and rainbow cauliflower. Dessert was chocolate upon chocolate. The wines consisted of a Pinot blanc from Alsace, a Crozes-Hermitage, a lovely Syrah based wine from the Northern Rhone, and a Banylus, a fortified French wine. Now, you can see why I had to work my magic to get Dan to go to out for Burmese food. He thinks that the tea business is exhausting, try peddling wine!

Honey, I am home!

Hello, and greetings from the road! I am in Orchard Park, NY, and am taking a "bye-week"- I believe that is a Football term?! Appropriate, since I am in the hometown of the Buffalo Bills. In any case, I am taking a pass on posting something brilliant today. The picture to the left was emailed to me by the Tea Drinker. Apparently, we have some visitors at our home in Napa Valley. Is Dan trying to tell me something? Is he now in the honey business, too? Well, it would be a perfect match with http://www.drinktheleaf.com/ teas. Stay tuned, as I may post later this week- Oh, the suspense!

How to Grill a Whole Fish, or Not

The Tea Drinker was quite adventurous this weekend. He began Saturday as suspected by making me a wonderful robust cup of Vithankande tea, and then he announced that he was willing to join me and 30 other campers for an early morning Boot Camp class. We ran, skipped, lunged, leaped, and shuffled our way to health. It’s a mysterious thing after boot camp, you are immediately energized, and feel like you can face the day, and tackle anything. That is until this feeling of "super human" powers wears off later, and you’re staring at your half-eaten meal. Now wait a minute, I am getting ahead of myself...

After Boot Camp, we trooped off to Model Bakery. Doesn't everyone reward themselves after strenuous exercise with homemade English muffins right out of the oven, slathered in butter, and apricot jam? No? Well, we do. It was the weekend, after all. We were headed home for a day packed with house cleaning, yard work, and menu planning for Easter, until the Tea Drinker declared that we were going to grill a whole fish! The euphoria was definitely running high. It sounded exciting to me. I was game. So, we set off to Whole Foods.

How hard can it be to grill a Whole Fish? Put it this way, we should have started with smelt, or maybe miniature sardines from Monterey bay. At Whole Foods, we talked to the fishmonger, and decided on a 3 pound black cod, gutted, and scaled. We put a few other things in our basket, such as broccoli rabe, olives, lemons, fontina cheese, Italian Peasant bread, and a nice Italian white wine. We had a theme, and we were running with it!

We started the evening by enjoying a watered down version of a Negroni, a refreshing Italian cocktail that consists of gin, campari, sweet vermouth, and lots of soda water. Next up, we steamed the broccoli rabe, then chopped the florets and stalks, tossed with fresh garlic, olive oil, dried oregano, and a splash of red wine vinegar. With grilled slices of the fresh peasant bread in hand, we topped it with the broccoli rabe mixture, and grated fontina cheese. This was all enjoyed while sipping a very nice dry Falanghina from the Campania region of Italy.

We pulled out Mario Batali’s – Simple Italian Food. We were off to a roaring start! We lit the grill, poured ourselves another glass of wine, took the fish out of the refrigerator, and then an odd feeling came over me. A daunting feeling, like the first time I cooked a Thanksgiving turkey. We had Mario’s book by our side, and the words jumped off the page at us -“to grill a whole fish requires confidence that only experience can bring….to over cook a whole fish is better than under cooking by a few seconds…” and “practice before serving it to the President’s wife…” Geez, now politics are involved!

Sprinkled only with salt and pepper, and brushed with olive oil, the whole fish went right on to the barbecue. We turned it every 3 to 4 minutes for a total of 14 minutes. We stared in agony as our fish withered, and fell apart before our eyes. The black cod came off the grill undercooked, and had to be finished in the oven under the broiler. Oh, heck. It did not look appetizing, and our confidence waned. So, we abadonded the grill, and dived into Kara’s Cupcakes, instead. Its at this point that the Tea Drinker decided to work off his sugar high by demonstrating his new found Boot Camp move- a version of a squat, push up, jump thrust into the air. Result: a broken big toe. No kidding.

To grill a fish, or not!

What’s all the flutter about Twitter?

That is what I am trying to figure out. So, I just dove in, signed up for a Twitter account, and began “tweeting”. Do I even know what tweeting is? Not really. I owned a parakeet once, but I feel that this may be a bit more profound. It certainly did not stop me from convincing the Tea Drinker to sign up, too. I am fascinated by social networking. There is so much information to be had by using the Internet. My number one goal is to help my husband get Drink the Leaf’s name out there. That’s my role as the Wife of a Tea Drinker!

As Twitter’s website states: “...a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate...stay connected...through quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” You have to answer this question in 140 characters or less. I love that. And as you type, the ticker counts down the characters. I love that pressure, too. You better be doing something interesting. Who wants to read that you are doing nothing? Or that you had Eggs Benedict for breakfast. People may want to know where you had those eggs, though.

To offer useful information is even better, yet. This is what sucked me into Twitter. You can follow individuals that have a wealth of knowledge, and the best part is that these people are are willing to share this information. It can also give you the objective to strive for something interesting to talk about -to answer that question-What are you doing???

How can Twitter help your business? The key is to “follow” other user’s tweets, which are text based updates. I typed in “tea”, and hundreds of names popped up, from business owners, organizations, tea enthusiasts, to tea bloggers. A great way to communicate and connect with knowledgeable people that share the same passion as you: loose leaf tea. These short messages are sent to you, and if something catches your eye, you can read that person’s profile, and learn more about them and their business. Reciprocating seems to be the protocol. If you follow someone, they follow you. Celebrities twitter, too. I heard recently that Kirk Douglas ( for crying out loud, he is 92 years old, and is using Twitter) is now using this social media.

Check it out, and sign up to follow us on Twitter. It's free. We promise to bring you interesting, and useful information. Hurry up, and join. There still seems to be plenty of room with only 5 million users tweeting up a storm. Now, that is social networking!