Taste Test: Everyday Teas

I realise I am in a fairly small minority in that I always drink premium loose-leaf tea. Despite loving a cup of splosh I only tend to drink one or two cups a day so I figure that it's worth spending a bit extra to ensure they're of a really good quality. But for many people the supermarket is where they do their tea-shopping and I can't deny that for a famously tea-loving country like Britain, teabags are where it's at.

Review: Butter, Prenzlauer Berg

 
There was a time when Berlin was full of cafés like Butter: large, airy, bright, lots of wood and great lighting. At some point those cafés started to disappear and get replaced by trendy coffee shops and fancy restaurants. Now, it's not like I'm not a fan of those too but sometimes when I'm in Berlin I just want to go to an old-fashioned corner café that serves good coffee and great cakes.

Coffee: Going Over to the Dark Side

I have an admission to make: just lately I have been drinking more coffee than tea. This came about for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was our summer trip to the midwest of the United States. I have always drunk coffee (albeit decaf for some years due to boring health reasons) but have generally favoured an espresso with various milk options: a latte; a cappuccino; a Milchkaffee; whatever the local variety happens to be. I drink one of these most mornings but at other times of the day it just feels like too much milk.

Review: Kensington Palace Orangery

Before heading off on my summer break to the Midwest of the US of A (where I had a wonderful time but drank very little tea worth writing about) I was lucky enough to be invited to sample the relaunched afternoon tea at Kensington Palace's Orangery. Now, the Orangery is somewhere I've always intended to visit but being located in a part of town I don't venture to very often, I have somehow never quite managed it. To make even more of a treat of it, I took my sister H along.

Very Easy Oaty Biscuit Recipe

I'm not sure what's going on but just lately I've been craving food with crunch. It's not the flavour of things I've been thinking about but the texture. I'm sure this has some deep psychological reason but there seemed only one thing to do: bake some biscuits. I'm not talking about soft crumbly cookies or biscuits containing a buttercream centre but an old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness crunchy biscuit.

Review: Café am Waldsee, Zehlendorf

As I have mentioned before, I love going to museums and galleries with good cafés. Obviously I love going to museums and galleries generally but it's so much more enjoyable when there's somewhere nice to have a spot of lunch or afternoon tea while you're there.

A Kettle For The Perfect Cuppa

Right back when I started this blog I wrote about water temperature and how important it is to get it right when making different cups of tea. Ever had a really bitter tasting cup of green tea? Chances are you've scalded the leaves. It's one of those things that sounds like it's just for people who are a little too serious about their tea-making (really, moi?) but it's actually something that anyone who drinks anything other than good old black tea needs to remember.

Another thing I feel pretty strongly about is the quality of the water. Living in a hard-water area (as many of us do) I always use a water filter - both for drinking cold and for making tea. This is not just to avoid de-scaling the kettle on a monthly basis but also because the tea just tastes much better with filtered water. So when I was contacted recently to ask if I'd be interested in trying a Morphy Richards water-filtering kettle, I was really excited to give it a try; especially as, due to the hot and cold water pipes being too close together somewhere in my house, I've a rather complicated system involving my filter jug and various glass bottles that ensures I don't have to run the tap for 2 minutes before I can pour myself a drink of cold water. Anything to simplify my water-processing/tea-making situation sounded like a good idea.