Husband: How did you get the tea to taste like honey?

Me: I added … honey.

Husband: Touché.

Graphic by Zhena’s Gypsy Tea

Although purchased primarily for my then-visiting (and English Breakfast-loving) father-in-law, Zhena’s Gypsy Tea’s Breakfast Bliss, a black tea from India and Sri Lanka, had me at first sip with its robust and full-bodied flavor.

Not only is Zhena’s a woman-owned business—she started out pedaling from a cart—but its teas are also organic- and fair-trade certified. The Ojai, Calif.-based company buys wind power through the purchase of green tags to offset its carbon footprint. And the reusable, refillable, and recyclable tins, which are made in a fair-trade facility in China, are absolutely luscious to behold. I want to hoard them like dragon treasure and secrets. Available in loose leaf and unbleached sachets. (From $5.99, Zhena’s Gypsy Tea and most natural-food stores)

My new guilty indulgence: Stonyfield Farm’s certified-organic vanilla chai ice cream, made with certified-fair-trade and -organic Kashmiri chai from Honest Tea. See that diffuse glow surrounding my tub of ice cream? That’s because it was made by angels.

Photo by Justin Pumfrey/Getty Images

Is there anything more exquisite than a well-brewed cup of tea, especially when it’s gray and inconsolable outside? Here are a few of my current faves:

Both fair-trade- and organic-certified, SerendipiTea’s loose-leaf ceylon green tea (Idulgashinna Estate, Sri Lanka) has a deep, mellow, and toasted taste, yet it manages to remain light on the tongue with no bitterness, even after it’s been steeped for longer than usual. Pair this with a pinch of dried rosemary leaf for an extra one-two-punch of flavor and antioxidants. Tip: When steeping with fresh or dried herbs, cover your mug or teapot, as the steam can carry off the beneficial oils you want. ($14 for 4 oz, SerendipiTea)

The increased chatter over the ether about yerba maté (pronounced “MAH-tay”), plus a dangerously low supply of ceylon green in my office cubicle, had me zeroing in on a bag of Guayaki’s loose-leaf traditional yerba maté (Itabo Rainforest Preserve, Eastern Paraguay) during lunch. A natural hint of sweetness, with a mild tartness reminiscent of oolong. Maté is said to contain less caffeine than regular tea (i.e., Camellia sinensis) does, containing, according to Guayaki, “24 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids, and 11 polyphenols, a group of phytochemicals which act as powerful antioxidants.” Rainforest-grown, certified organic, and designated as fair trade by the Fair Trade Federation. Next, I want to Feel the Good Energy!™ with some of the company’s flavored varieties, which include Mocha Maca and Vanilla Nut. Check the Web site for a list of retailers. ($8.95 for 8oz, Guayaki)

Sympathy for the Kettle, down on St. Mark’s Place, makes a mean orange-chai latte with frothed soy milk and a touch of honey. An organic and fair-trade blend of Assam and Nigiliri teas, with orange peel, ginger, cardamon, clove, vanilla and cinnamom. Absolutely delicious if you’re in the mood for something sweet and creamy. ($15.50 for 4 oz, Sympathy for the Kettle)

What are some of your favorite teas?

Related article:
1. Eat a Bowl of Tea: Masala Chai Muffins

You are what you eat, and to help us along is World’s Healthiest Foods by the nonprofit George Mateljan Foundation with its detailed listings of, well, the world’s healthiest foods, complete with nutritional information broken down into specific minerals and vitamins necessary for our long-term wellbeing. Thanks to my CSA, it appears that my packed lunch is the cancer-fighting special: cabbage, red beets, green peas, garlic scapes, and turnip greens. Coincidentally, so was the chocolate chip-oatmeal-yogurt whole wheat muffin I had for breakfast (freshly baked yesterday with honey instead of processed sugar).

You’ll also find loads of recipes, and suggested meal plans to combat specific ailments or for general health.

I also recently discovered that adding a pinch or two of oregano or thyme into your teaball when you make a cuppa packs a mighty punch of antioxidants, along with a very slight minty flavor that’s extra flavorful. (We like antioxidants—which are potent combos of minerals and vitamins—because they help battle cancer, reduce cellular damage from free radicals, boost immunity, and possibly slow down the aging process¹.)

¹I’ll get back to you in about 30 years on that one.

Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.metropolitanevents.com
Saturday, July 15: 11am-7:30pm
Sunday, July 16: 10am-6pm
($10 per adult; $15 weekend pass; children free)

Everything 4 Coffee and Tea Festival is a two-day event dedicated to the growth and proliferations of the specialty coffee and gourmet tea market place. Bringing together over 40 vendors from international, national and local coffee and tea distributors, roasters and cafes, this festival allows participants to explore topics from brewing a perfect cup of coffee to choosing the best confectionery delights to have with your tea.

Details on the festival Web site here. The NYC Fair Trade Coalition will have a table on both days. Expect loads of tastings and samples. Want to get in for free? We still need volunteers!

Photo from Misterart.com

How to use your broken teapot’s fitted but removable infuser to help brew a cup of tea:

• Grab two good-size bulldog clips (see right)
• Clip bulldog clips on the outer ring of the infuser, opposing each other like airplane wings
• Balance franken-infuser on the lip of your mug
• Add tea leaves to franken-infuser
• Pour hot water
• Wait 3 minutes; use the lid of your broken teapot as a saucer to hold your dripping franken-infuser and used tea leaves
• Savor your tea and congratulate yourself on your resourcefulness
• Wonder if Richard Dean Anderson would be so impressed he’d stalk you
• Wish Richard Dean Anderson would stalk you

Photo from Amazon.com

I’m in mourning. Completely and UTTERLY devastated.

Wait, scratch that. I am IN A GLASS CASE OF EMOTION.

I accidentally knocked my wee white teapot off the counter at the break room at work, and its immaculate little handle splintered into three immaculate little pieces. Because its polished facade is now marred by two vampiric fissures—like the gaping holes of my now-fractured soul—the teapot can no longer hold water.

Both the break-room counter and my misbehaving elbow are DEAD TO ME. You hear that, you co-conspiring nogoodniks? DEAD. TO. ME.

Photo by Steve Taylor/Getty Images

TransFair—the only third-party certifier of fair-trade goods in the U.S.—just introduced fair-trade-certified chamomile, hibiscus, mint, and vanilla. (The first three herbs, from two producer groups in Egypt, are part of Transfair’s fair-trade-certified tea program.)

Why fair trade?

The Fair Trade Certified label is a simple way for consumers to know that their products were produced under socially, environmentally and economically sustainable conditions. Farmers and farm workers in Fair Trade Certified producer organizations are guaranteed fair, above-market prices for their crops and fair wages; have direct market linkage with international buyers who offer reliable, long-term contracts and pre-financing; use sustainable farm management systems that protect the environment, and prohibit forced and child labor, harmful agrochemicals and GMOs; and have the right to organize and democratically decide how to best re-invest their Fair Trade premium in community and business development projects.

Where your money will be going:
The two Egyptian producer groups, Sekem Initiative and Royal Ottoman, are investing their fair-trade premium in scholarship funds and literacy programs to help lower Egypt’s illiteracy rate of more than 40 percent. To boost Egypt’s basic infrastructure and ease access to basic necessities, Sekem Initiative is also contributing funds to better housing, sanitation, and healthcare facilities, along with safe, reliable transportation. At Royal Ottoman, producers are setting up private healthcare and life insurance plans, while increasing the number of women in their workforce to 65 percent, favoring those who are the sole breadwinners of their families.

What’s up with the vanilla industry?

The vanilla market has been tumultuous since 2000, when environmental disasters and political turmoil in Madagascar and Indonesia cut supply so drastically that the world price skyrocketed. As a result, many companies switched to synthetic vanilla flavoring, just as new vanilla farmers in Africa and Latin America emerged eager to capitalize on an inflated market. Production increases combined with a drop in demand caused prices to plummet almost 90 percent since 2003, when vanilla prices peaked at around $500/kg.

While the vanilla industry is still recovering from devastating price fluctuations, many farmers are struggling to sell their crops, some even uprooting or abandoning their vanilla plants. This option is devastating for farmers who have invested considerable time establishing their crops—vanilla is perhaps the world’s most labor-intensive crop with the lowest yield, taking an average of five years between first planting the vine and producing aged extract.

Most vanilla is shade-grown, and integrated with other crops. However, this practice could soon change. A new sun-tolerant variety of vanilla has been introduced that may force sustainable, small-scale vanilla producers out of business, and further contribute to deforestation and erosion. This new variety of vanilla may also further depress prices by flooding the market with even more supply. Fair Trade Certification standards require environmental stewardship, giving value to sustainable, shade-grown vanilla.

(Emphases are mine.)

To find fair-trade-certified products, search here. (Remember to look out for the little fair-trade guy!)

I experimented with making masala-chai-flavored muffins yesterday when Juanita and her husband came over to Chez Chekhov for brunch. The hub declared them a success and I might try making these with some extra shredded orange rind next, or, yum, substitute chai for green tea. I much prefer honey as a sweetener versus processed sugar. (Because it’s denser and sweeter, you end up using less than you would have with sugar. Honey is less fattening, too!)

The Worsted Witch’s Masala Chai Muffins
Makes 6 large muffins

• 2 cups organic, whole wheat or unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 cup organic honey (I used Ecomeal’s Brooklyn-made organic honey)
• 1 cup of soy milk
• 1 tsp loose-leaf or powdered masala chai
• 2 large organic eggs, whisked
• 1/3 cup butter (more if you want a more cake-like consistency)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Heat the soy milk over the stove or in a microwave, then steep the masala chai for 5 mins (using an infuser/tea ball to keep the spices separate)
2. Cream together butter, honey, and eggs. Add the rest of the ingredients, leaving baking powder last. Mix well.
3. Lightly grease a muffin pan. Pour batter into pan.
4. (Optional: Sprinkle a mix of sugar and cinnamon powder over the muffin batter.)
5. Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of muffin comes out clean.
6. Allow muffins to cool for 5 minutes.
7. Serve on its own or with some clotted cream.

Choose loose-leaf teas in easily reusable/recyclable tins instead of tea bags. You’ll instantly notice the richer taste that follows when the tea leaves have had sufficient room to unfurl during the steeping process (be careful not to break the leaves when you’re scooping them into your teapot or infuser). The contents of tea bags, especially the kind you buy from supermarkets, are essentially tea “dust,” or the sweepings left behind after the whole tea leaves have been processed and packaged. Couple that with the fact that most tea bags aren’t kept in air-tight containers, what little flavor that did remain after all that crushing and trampling (mostly the bitter tannins) is lost through oxidation.

You also get a lot of extraneous packaging with tea bags, which are usually bundled in eco-unfriendly chlorine-bleached paper with staples and string. The used tea leaves in your teapot or infuser, on the other hand, only need to be tossed into the compost heap. Used green-tea leaves, because of their negligible caffeine content after they’ve been steeped, can be dried and then sprinkled over cat litter to absorb smells (we tried this, it works!)

I have a new Love that Dares Not Speak Its Name: tofu whipped cream. No, don’t make a face. Until dinner last night at The Organic Grill, I was a skeptic, too—eyeing the frothy concoction suspiciously and getting ready to throw my body atop my banana and apple crepes as a human shield if it so much as looked at them the wrong way. But despite my initial gut reaction, and by that I mean my gut telepathically transmitted to my neural center that there would be hell to pay and that wasn’t a threat, it was PROMISE, it was surprisingly good. So were the crepes, and my omnivorous husband’s lentil burger. (He was also impressed that the Grill used Seventh Generation’s recycled toilet paper in the bathroom, along with a can of non-aerosol air freshener. And usually it would take the Second Coming of Godzilla vs. Rodan to impress the man.)

We walked over the next block to Sympathy for the Kettle. Not all their tea is fair-trade certified (look for the label), but the organic, fair-trade orange chai latte I had was absolutely delicious. (Tea purveyors like Adagio Teas, which claim the organic and fair-trade teas are of lower quality—because, you know, ethics waters down the flavor—are simply making lame excuses.)

Oh hey look, Whole Foods has a recipe for tofu whipped cream here. Yeah, seriously, you can all stop retching now.

The Organic Grill
123 First Ave.
New York, NY 10003
212-477-7177
www.theorganicgrill.com

Sympathy for the Kettle
109 St. Marks Place
New York, NY 10009
212-979-1650
www.sympathyforthekettle.com