Tea Shelf, meet Tea Cabinet

I have a tea shelf in my kitchen:

As you can see, it's getting rather full. And in fact, I can't fit the tea I bought from Adagio teas on my tea shelf, because there's not enough room. (The only thing that doesn't have tea in it on the shelf are the teapots. The box is full of tea.)

Yesterday, Dad and I went to an auction, where I found what will become my new tea cabinet:

It's a nice kitchen cabinet-type cabinet with a glass front and a drawer. The two inside shelves will be for tea. The drawer will hold tea things, like tea balls and such, and the bottom will hold the lids to my pots and pans and casseroles that are currently in drawers.

Just what I needed; more space!

Rice Wine

Well, it's finished. For having five pounds of sugar in it, it is not what anyone could call sweet. In fact, I think it's 100 proof hard liquor. I swallowed a tiny, tiny bit to my lips and just about fainted from the alcohol content. Whew! I think you could get drunk on a shot glass of this stuff. But that could be just me. :)

It was not clear. In fact, it's yellow, like watered down orange juice. Which makes sense, really; it does have three oranges in it. However, after four filterings, I was unable to get it clear enough to see through. So it will have to be cloudy. (Which is fine, because I'm not drinking it; I'm just going to cook with it or something--in fact, the rest of the wine in the bowl is going to hopefully end up as vinegar, if it doesn't contain too much alcohol.

So another experiment... but vinegar will take much longer.

Now I have to go do dishes...

Wine update

The wine smells like wine!

It changed overnight from smelling like vaguely rotten fruit to smelling like wine! (Meaning: fermented rotten fruit. *grin*)

But still--I think it worked! We'll see how things go on the weekend when I strain it, etc. I'll have to dig out that cookbook again. Boy, that was a fast three weeks.

Adagio Teas and an update on the Rice Wine

Why didn't anyone ever tell me about Adagio Teas? I stumbled across it two days ago, placed an order, and got my order today. Wow. One point in their favor.


A very good smelling order, I might add. It was all nicely packed in boxes and cute little tins (I bought mostly samples, and at $2 a piece, that is so cheap) and for the two I decided to splurge on (pomegranate and lemon at $6/each) nice UV inhibited containers.

Since this was my first order, I decided to get one of their IngenuiTEA teapots, which is really an infuser. You put the loose tea inside of it, fill it up with water, let it steep, and then put it on top of your teacup. Then it drains into your teacup at a rate too fast for my camera to catch (I forgot I had turned it off, in truth.)

It makes just enough tea for me to fill up the rest of my cup with cold water, since I can't drink it that hot. Obviously my cup holds more than 16oz, which is what the IngenuiTEA holds.

I tried the Pomegranate tea, and I hate to say this (well, not really) but it really blows Harney and Sons' Black Currant Tea out of the water in smoothness of taste and flavor. It's very, very smooth. I've never been one to call something 'full-bodied', but this has a very full body, if that makes any sense at all. I imagine it will make a great iced tea as well.

If the rest of what I bought is as good, then I now have a new favorite tea site. I did really pick and choose; I did get a lot of flavored teas, because they just sounded so good. But I got some other ones as well. And I will be trying them for weeks, at least.

(The nice thing is that if you buy $50 worth of stuff, you get free shipping. And it's fast shipping, too. Two days! And I ordered at 9pm on March 7th! Impressive! Also, you get points as you order, and when you have $100 points, you get a $10 gift certificate. Which is nice, too, especially since the samples are so cheap.)

So I have a lot of tea to try. :)


Update on the Rice Wine:

It's starting to smell very interesting now. It's still bubbling, too, so that's good. And I realized today that I--totally unintentionally--will have finished wine on St. Patrick's Day. Maybe I'll have to have a toast.