Republic of Tea Hot Apple Cider Tea, reviewed

I love hot apple cider on a cold winter night, and I couldn’t resist the chance to try the Republic of Tea Hot Apple Cider Tea. This tea is a limited edition holiday release that hit shelves in the past couple of weeks. The tea is made with typical cider spices, including cinnamon, cloves and ginger, but it also includes several more subtle elements, including rose hips, berry leaves and cardamom. Of course, the most important element of this tea is the apples, and dried apple pieces are the primary flavoring element.

The tea tastes very much like apple cider, although it is much lighter in flavor and much less sweet than straight juice would be. You can actually taste the berry, enriching the apple flavor, and all the other spices blend in nicely. It is good plain and great sweetened, especially if you use honey or a bit of caramel.

Incidentally, the Republic of Tea also puts out a jam using this tea flavor. It’s definitely an interesting use of the tea and, if I pick up a few pounds of apples in the next week or two, I might try working out a batch myself!

Cheonji Dew Tea, reviewed

It’s been too long since I reviewed a tea, but since I’ve been traveling to Seoul, South Korea this week, I’ve had a chance to try a few new ones. This one is Cheonji Dew Tea, which I bought from a shop in Insadong, although I did see it at several other stores. The name of the tea itself, according to the woman at the shop, was Iseul Cha, or Dew Green Tea. The tea is a green tea that comes from one particular mountain area. The tea doesn’t look like leaves. It actually resembles small, soft branches or sheets of bark, each piece of which can be used for several pots.

The “ah-ha!” moment here comes when you first taste the tea. It is very, very sweet – almost like someone has stirred a lot of honey into your tea without changing the consistency of it at all. And all that sweetness is completely natural! It is absolutely delicious and the tea is also caffeine free.

The woman at the shop told me that it’s very popular with children, especially children who don’t normally care much for plain tea.

Trader Joe’s Relax Organic Tea

A good cup of tea can be very soothing – but relaxing? Not for everyone. For some people, the caffeine content of their favorite tea can keep them up for hours. For others, it’s just the fact that they took a break to rest and collect their thoughts that gets the re-energized. Trader Joe’s Relax Organic Tea is a tea that is actually supposed to be relaxing. It contains no caffeine and is made with a blend of herbs designed to calm and help you to unwind. These herbs include fennel seed, licorice, rooibos, anise, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, peppermint and strawberry leaf.

With so much stuff going on inside the triangular tea bags, I expected the flavors of the tea to be a bit overwhelming. Surprisingly, it had a nice medium body and a great, smooth flavor. Plus, it seemed to live up to the promise of its name – at least, it did for me.  The fennel, licorice and peppermint seemed to come through more than the other elements, with the fennel and licorice definitely having a soothing effect, but the mint adds a nice palate-cleansing finish that left me feeling pretty refreshed.

Making your own herbal teas from the garden

Herbal teas are not really teas in that they’re not made from tea plants. Herbal teas are brews of herbs and flowers that are steeped in water the same way that tea is made. The primary difference between a “standard” black tea and an herbal tea (aside from the leaves used) is that black tea is dried and fermented, while the herbs in other teas are usually just dried.

The Chicago Tribune had a great piece recently about how to make your own herbal teas at home. Sun-dried herbs are easy to come by – just take a trip to your garden (or your neighbor’s garden), take a few of the leaves that you like and leave them out in the sun between paper towels to dry. Good choices for making your own herbal teas include peppermint, calendula (pot marigold), bee balm and rose petals – all of which are quite common. It’s best to grow your own so that you know no pesticides will have been sprayed on the plants before you use them

Starbucks revamps pastry menu

You might have noticed a change in the pastry case at your local Starbucks over the past few weeks. In an effort to cut costs while increasing overall quality, Starbucks has completely changed the way that they do their pastries. Previously, Starbucks used a variety of regional bakeries to stock their stores. This meant that you could find different types of pastries in different areas, according to what was popular there, and that the ingredients that went into the items varied widely.

Starting today, Starbucks is using fewer bakeries, each of which will produce and ship more items. This consolidation also allowed Starbucks to tinker with its recipes and refocus on slightly healthier options with all natural ingredients. They cut out corn syrup from their Marshmallow Dream Bars, eliminated the artificial flavorings from berry muffins and real egg whites are making an appearance in a heart-healthy breakfast sandwich. Starbucks says that its new options have “15 percent fewer calories, 5 percent less fat and 8 percent less saturated fat” than previous items.

Time Out Chicago has done a taste test of the newest items on the menu, if you want to see how they stack up. Not all of these items may be available in your region, but some are nationwide.