Mar 13 2009
A Tale of Two Teas for the Soul
“Years from now when you talk about this – and you will – be kind.” – Tea and Sympathy (1956)
Maybe I am getting old. 30 just passed me. The sharp decline has already started.
I’m starting to appreciate the little things a little more. It’s not because of the state of the economy.
Quality is now preferred over quantity. Tea & therapy has more appeal to me than all-nighters (please, don’t tell my friends I said that).
My moment of paradise consists of a soft, spacious room with sundown swimming through a southwestern exposure. Place a long, posh leather couch on a Brazilian cherry wood floor and center the room with a glass coffee table. Throw a little rug under the table for ambiance – so long as the color matches the impressionistic landscape paintings on the wall – and the weight of the world slips off my shoulders.
Roots music, played just above a whisper. Blues, Jazz… Classic, never contemporary. Only songs that stand the test of time.
A glass of Riesling, Zinfandel or blush would round out the picture. I prefer whites and blushes to reds. But, lately, something else has caught my attention. It stumbles around playfully: tea and therapy. Green tea. Yerba Maté tea. Teas brewed for the soul.
Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea
When I first heard of Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea, it was the brewing process that first caught my attention. An occasional fad in L.A. and other intermittent spots along the left coast, Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea is a green tea brewed from the leaves of a jasmine flower. Instead of tea bags, you get a flower bulb.
How to Make Chinese Flower Tea - Jasmine Tisane
The first step to making a pot of Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea is to heat up a tea kettle of water. Sounds simple enough, but it’s amazing how many people forget this step when they’re planning to have tea. Then they’re stuck waiting around for the water to get hot and the moment to enjoy the tea has passed. This also gives you a few minutes to prepare a snack, slip into something more comfortable, and prepare for the experience.
The next step in preparation is to make sure your glass teapot is cleaned and ready for the next brew. Don’t have a glass teapot? If you order from the Himalayan Chinese Flower website, the offer comes with not only a glass tea pot but with insulated glass tea cups. Place the glass tea pot where you plan to drink. It is suggested to place a little heat pad under the glass teapot so as to not scar your table.
The next step is the hard part: deciding what flavor to drink. I know of 14 different flavors of Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea. Flavors range from Jasmine Lotus Fresh Peach to Rose Fairy. Don’t fear. The flavors aren’t as exotic as they sound.
Once you’ve decided what flavor to drink, take the bulb and place it in the center-bottom of the glass teapot. While you’re at it, get your glass tea cup in position. Keep the experience fluid.
That slight whistle heard behind you is not coming from the music. The water is ready to be poured. Pick up the heat pad, grab the handle of the tea kettle using the heat pad (another step more people mess-up – natural selection applies here) and slowly walk the water over to the glass tea pot. Pour gently.
The next part you will want to do quickly: take the tea kettle back to the stove – make sure the burner is off (natural selection, again) – come back to the tea pot, and watch the jasmine flower bulb in action. The process takes about 3 minutes and it’s worth witness.
This is the part you worked so hard for: to lay on the couch and watch the flower bloom. My fear would be that I’d fall asleep watching the flower bloom because of the tranquility of the act. I would wake up to cold tea. Actually, this would benefit me because I like cold tea. But, if the Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea was still warm when I awoke, I would definitely still pour myself a cup. I’m not afraid to grow as a person.
So, what if you don’t have the kind of time to have such a soothing tea?
Diet Yerba Maté Tea
Try this scenario:
Walk through the door after a long week – a business trip. The room is as pitch as the night sky you traveled home under. Tired and fumbling, you manage to flip on the light over the kitchen table. Your typical seat at the hand-me-down table has become the coat hanger for your roommate’s brand new leather jacket. The table section typically reserved for you is now the filing system for the month’s bills, including the HDTV bill your roommate says he’s a little short on cash to co-pay for, again.
Throw your roommie’s coat over your nice leather couch roommie’s friends mistake for their bed. The good person hiding inside you tries not to take delight in the hope that if the freeloaders are sleeping on it again, the coat zipper will poke them in the eye. As you throw the bills onto your roommate’s side of the table – on top of the HDTV bill co-pay’s worth of fast food wrappers and domestic beer bottle tops – your weariness and frustration collide and all you want to do is throw your degenerate roommate out the door, down the stairs, and into the street – next to your parking spot he’s half-parked his rusted foreign sedan in, again.
Sadly, you need his half of the rent to afford the loft, so you need to relax and let it go.
Time to fix yourself a drink.
Diet Yerba Maté Tea Benefits
Diet Yerba Maté Tea is a cultural fetish in Brazil. With its origins in the Amazon rainforest, Yerba Maté Tea is not only a soothing experience, but also is a source of nutrition for tea drinkers. It makes a great drink to rejuvenate your body after a long trip or a weary day. Especially helpful for those with annoying roommates.
Brewed from the Yerba Maté leaves, Diet Yerba Maté Tea contains polyphenols which have been shown to be filled with antioxidants. According to a University of Illinois study of 25 different types of Maté, research concluded that the Maté leaf contained “‘higher levels of antioxidants than green tea.” And based on cell studies, Yerba Maté “may help prevent oral cancer.’” – DietYerbaMateTea.com.
What can also be found in a cup of Diet Yerba Maté Tea are amino acids and 24 vitamins and minerals including vitamin C, vitamin A, and calcium. And before you start to get concerned that the taste is equivalent to purified asparagus, flavor was considered in production.
Traditionally marketed as a coffee alternative, Diet Yerba Maté Tea comes with many enjoyable flavors including Mint Madness and Açaí Berry Blast – Açaí, the same Açaí that is Oprah’s Superfood.
Many benefits found in Diet Yerba Mate Tea including appetite control and enhanced weight loss, improved digestion, resistance to premature aging (even when brought on by roommate stress), and overall improved health and vitality.
When you wake up the following morning and the cold light of day reveals that your apartment could have been the setting for the movie, Bachelor Party, Diet Yerba Maté Tea will be the kind of wake-me-up drink that will help you deal with the situation – and probably help you from committing capital crimes on your roommate.
The way it is packaged, one can make Diet Yerba Mate Tea by the cup. Order from their website and you can get a tea strainer to go along with it. You don’t have to make it by the pot. Also, like Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea, Diet Yerba Maté Tea is also good cold so you don’t have to worry about keeping it warm or reheating.
Yerba Maté Tea vs. Green Tea
There have been posts and stories written to compare the benefits of Yerba Maté Tea versus Green Tea. The problem is that any comparison is an unbalanced comparison because the comparison is essentially apples to oranges. Both Diet Yerba Maté Tea and the green tea found in Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea provide different benefits. The products complement each other and can both be fine additions to any tea drinker’s arsenal.
In the end, it is up to the palette of the tea drinker. And, given the mindset of a tea drinker, new and inventive ways to drink these kinds of teas will be discovered before this goes to publishing. But, if someone was to ask me how to use these products, I would recommend the following:
Diet Yerba Mate Tea can be the drink to start your day and get your day going. Himalayan Chinese Flower Tea can be the kind of drink to help you wind your day down peacefully.
My stress levels are plummeting just thinking about it. And I feel at peace with the acknowledgement because, “manliness is not all swagger and mountain climbing. It’s also tenderness.” – Tea and Sympathy (1956. please, don’t tell my friends I said that, either.)
Tea and therapy.
