The Importance of Tea XI

“Chai One On”

My favourite after-school snack is a cup of black tea and one of Ter’s killer GF “not just for Christmas anymore” shortbread cookies. The silky vanilla/almond-scented cookie is the perfect match for a sweet, spicy, creamy chai. I carry my treat into the Ocean Room to cast off the workday args and await my roomie’s arrival—it’s often the best time of my day.

No chai, however, is created equal. I ordered my first at Starbucks fifteen years ago and was promptly hooked. Their brand was Tazo, which became my go-to until proper tea shops started popping up all over town. I have since tried a handful of others, both bulk and bagged: Stash, Mighty Leaf, and Numi in the boxed brand department, loose varieties from David’s, Teavana, Murchie’s … and the winner is: the Mumbai Chai at Blenz.

For the uninitiated, Blenz is Canada’s answer to Starbucks and their focus is coffee. They do, however, feature ten or twelve varieties of tea for the non-coffee-drinker. I’ve tried most of them. White Peony was my standard until I went dairy-free and gave up the occasional chai latte. Then I got bored and tried the black chai tea plain, no latte; okay, with cream and two sugars. Now I’m hooked. My wee sister is hooked. My work pal Julie is hooked (and happy—it only costs $3.10 per cup). The kid behind the counter now hesitates before starting my order, though I think he’s figuring out that white peony is morning and chai is afternoon.

My at-home/after-school blend is David’s “Saigon Chai”, the former standard which Mumbai has knocked out of the park. Alas, Blenz doesn’t sell loose tea. Or they didn’t. I recently got an email announcing that their tea blends are now available for bulk purchase, so off I went to the shop to see if our local franchise owner was complying with this particular corporate policy (he guards his customers against what he considers the sillier head office orders, which is why everyone loves him).

As it happened, I was the only customer in the shop, so I had time to ask him about it. He gave me rebellious brown eyes and said, “I’m not advertising the loose tea. It’s hideously expensive, so I can’t in good conscience sell it to you.”

“Define ‘hideously expensive’,” I said. He and I had talked years earlier about the white peony, but I never took him up on his offer to work something out if I really wanted some for home.

He punched the flavour up on the computer and frowned. “$12.95 for a hundred grams.”

I burst out laughing. “You think that’s hideously expensive?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Not if you’re a tea snob,” I replied. “I spend $18.00 for fifty grams of green tea at Teavana!”

Poor guy, I think he was horrified enough to call an intervention, but once I assured him that pricier chais have fallen far short of the Mumbai, he acquiesced. “I’ll have to get some bags in,” he fretted.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I have a tin at home. I’ll bring it in empty and you can fill ’er up.”

Problem is, I’m still working on 100 gms of “Saigon Chai” and my practice is to finish what I have before buying more. It may be my imagination, but there’s too much cardamom in this batch. It really isn’t very enjoyable …

Breakthrough

Seriously No Sprinkles

As per usual, the breakthrough with the new story happened 12 days into my holiday. I’ve written two false starts, thirty pages of backstory and a bunch of notes (unheard of for me) and finally, finally, yesterday I got traction. I still don’t know how it will go or where it will end, but it’s going and at last I am in a space where I’m able to go with it.

Same thing happened last May, with Jake. This one in no way will be finished before I return to work, but now it has teeth.

Phew.

My third chai latte comes from Serious Coffee, two blocks down from the Cook Street Starbucks. The shop’s on a par with Moka House in that it is also locally owned and the chai is equally as good as yesterday’s … sans sprinkles. That’s the one (trivial) complaint about Serious Coffee, a chronic condition that has led to us code-naming the place “No Sprinkles”. If I was truly serious about coffee, doubtless sprinkles would be frowned upon anyway. Their chai is foamier than Moka House’s and it cost .50 cents less than yesterday’s, which cost less than Bucky’s, so Serious Coffee is the better deal for a comparable chai ... if you don't care about sprinkles.

I also noticed while awaiting my drink that they have poetry/prose readings and open mic on the third Monday of each month. I know what Nicole would say: “Ru, check it out!” I just may do – coincidentally, the next session is this Monday at 7:15. Come early, get a drink and hang out in the back corner to see what evolves. I’ve got the email address at least; I’ll get on their mailing list for sure.

In other news, a nearly-100 year old message in a bottle was found on the beach in Tofino this week. It took almost a century to bob its way up from the San Francisco/Seattle shipping route (it probably came by way of Australia). The year is 1906 as seen through the glass, and the ship’s name and location was named, so research is in progress by the fellow who found it. I mention it mostly because Ter glanced at me and wryly quoted her own message to be discovered in 2113:

“September 2013 – Roberto Luongo is still a Vancouver Canuck!”

Bwahahahahahaha! A little hockey humour to warm us up for the 2013/14 NHL season, the exhibition series of which begins on Monday.

It’s been a long summer.

Chai du Jour

3.5 of 5

Moka House this morning, strategically located across from the Starbucks in the village. They don’t do a chocolate chai, so I sprinkled chocolate powder on top of a regular chai and proceeded to sip and scribble. They brew it from Mighty Leaf tea but they foam it up thick and creamy, so compared to Bucky’s and Teavana, I give it a 3.5. Tomorrow I’ll see how Serious Coffeeʼs stacks up against the competition. 

While I was sipping, I made notes galore about the angelsʼ realm. I had a blazing revelation yesterday and, as usual, nothing is as I suspect. I had to handwrite it, though, before I forget anything important. This story has got me in a bit of a tizzy given that a) itʼs coming out of sequence, which wrecks my neatly ordered method of starting at the start and writing through to the end, and b) the realm with which I am dealing is wilder than I imagined it would be. Not that I had much to go on before I began; angels donʼt get a lot of air time in Sunday school. Aside from delivering the occasional heavenly message or dropping off a set of golden plates for translation, they were pretty much left unaddressed … which frees me to write what my characters describe. All my children are interesting, but I am developing a special fondness for Shade. He is literally caught between two worlds and has been a party to this one long enough to become fearful of an inevitable outcome, yet his heart drives him toward Cristal in spite of it. I donʼt yet know what the point of the story will be, but I found this scrawled in my notes and it seems to capture the essence of the piece: 

They cannot be together

but they must be together

because they are lovers

from the dawn

of time

Chai Me a River

2 out of 5 :(

It doesn’t matter that I don’t drink coffee. I love coffee houses. Back when Starbucks shops were a novelty rather than staked on every street corner, I tested everything on their menu that wasn’t coffee-based and discovered the joy of chai tea lattes. Black tea, warm spices, steamed milk and a shot of nutmeg sprinkled on top, and I’m in sweet creamy heaven. 

There are at least eight options for coffee/tea within a two block radius of my office (two of which are Starbucks outlets). I’ve dropped coin at most of them; where I go depends on what I want and how I want it. Generally, I restrict my enthusiasm to some form of tea – not a latte, but hot water infused with something green, white or herbal. Now that autumn is coming on, though, I find myself leaning toward those warm, spicy, foamy, milky, sweet drinks that simultaneously expand my waistline while thinning my wallet. I can make them at home (sort of), but the big guns have launched a new trend: the chocolate chai tea latte. 

Yesterday, while on a photographic flânerie with my new camera, I stopped at the village Starbucks to try one of theirs. The bar has already been set by their tea-based affiliate, Teavana (that’s another post); I had one there before my vacation started and holy heck, was it good! All it needed was a honkin’ huge gingersnap to go alongside and even then, the sugar buzz would have been overkill had I dared to indulge. But back to Bucky’s … it was only okay. I tasted the chocolate (they use syrup), and I tasted the chai blend (they use their own Tazo brand, which was my staple for years), and the sweetened whipped cream on top was yummy, but it was not as good as Teavana’s. On a scale of 1 to 5 ... I give it a paltry 2 and suggest they stick to flogging coffee.

There are two other coffee places in the village and I have five more vacation days in which to pursue my quest. Tomorrow: Moka House!