Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea
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So I tried this again today. The steep is a light yellow color. It tastes very delicious, light, and mild floral green. Yummy! Not bitter at all, not that I’ve steeped it as instructed! The scent is very faint. I’ve always liked dragonwell teas. A nice daily green tea. I had more steeps with lunch!
Preparation
I opened this tin today! Feels good to open one up! The leaves look so fragile, long, and flat! They are larger than I expected. I’ve had dragonwells where the dry leaves are shorter. The aroma is very VERY light. A little vegetal and green.
I couldn’t rate this one because I was distracted and let it steep for longer than suggested. sigh I ran to the kitchen when I realized it was in for too long! The leaves opened up very nicely by then and smelled floral to me. The steep was yellow. I took a sip and it wasn’t bitter at all! Wow very forgiving! But alas, after a few sips, it became more bitter as I reached the bottom of my glass.
Still very good tea indeed. Darn if only I had gotten this one right!
Preparation
Gosh. We have fleas. Or rather the kittens have fleas. Not many, I think, but I have seen a number of live ones. Killed them on sight, of course, but the thing about fleas is they jump. And when they’ve jumped, they’re gone.
Have therefore been on a super-detailed hoovering mission in the lounge and in my room. When the boyfriend comes home, he will find himself nagged into doing his room as well. Under the furniture. Not just around it. Every nook and cranny and all the cracks between the floor boards. Kittens acted kind of like if getting rid of them involved that sort of racket for hours on end, they would rather prefer the fleas, thank you.
I’ll do the rest of the house tomorrow and am considering a second dose of Frontline even if it hasn’t been four weeks yet since the last one…
I’m knackered now. What better in this situation than a tea that says GRAWRRRRR!!!!
I have even deliberately steeped it twice as long as I normally would have, and it does indeed both roar and growl.
Funnily enough, getting twice the steep has made it change character altoghether. Where’s the hay? Yunnans always taste heavily of hay, so why is the hay suddenly missing?
It’s drier now, more wood-y than hay-y, and it reminds me a bit of dark chocolate and not-too-strong coffee. It has never done that before. I think I quite prefer it this way.
(I’ll trade you all the fleas we’ve got for one piece of dark chocolate.)
Well I do have more than enough dark chocolate (if there is such a thing) and my current collection of fleas is not overly impressive. So from a supply in demand perspective this seems like a good trade, I can’t, however, shake this nagging feeling that I’d be getting screwed.
By me??? Would this face lie? :D
You can give a second dose of Frontline as long as it’s more than 7 days apart from the first dose. But I don’t think you want to give them a third dose within the same month. As for the fleas in the house, you have to fumigate, spray everything, and/or pour powder all over the carpet. The thing that worked best for me was a product called Flea Stoppers. Not sure if you can get it in Denmark, but it has a year money back guarantee and worked perfectly. Don’t just treat the kittens. You have to treat your house too or they’ll just keep coming back. Another good trick is to vacuum all the floors every single day for 30 days. Throw out the vacuum bag every day too ‘cause it’ll be full of fleas and their eggs. It’s a pain, but it usually has pretty good results. Good luck with the fleas. I understand how much of a nightmare it is. :(
We got a lot of fleas in our house after a possum had babies under our outbuilding in the backyard. I didn’t want to use pesticides because my godson is a frequent guest and he is autistic and we all keep a pretty “green” environment around him. We set up and light in the dark house at night with a bowl of water under it. The fleas hop to the light and fall in the water and drown. It took several nights, though, and we still did the uber-vacuuming.
For the yard, we spread diatomaceous earth to cut their little flea exoskeletons so they die of dehydration. We can’t use pesticides out there because we have a pen full of two kinds of box turtles! But it worked, hallelujah, because I HATE FLEAS! :). Best of luck getting rid of them!
The Flea Stoppers carpet powder may not be technically “green” but it’s left in the carpet for about a week. It doesn’t hurt you or your animals, and it works fast.
I used a flea powder that I’m not sure killed the fleas, but did kill a vacuum cleaner!
The flea problem isn’t very large, really, they’re not completely flea riddled. But I need to get rid of them now or it will become large. I shouldn’t think large amounts of toxins should be necessary at this point. Considering we haven’t had the kittens for more than a month or so, I imagine they must have brought a flea or two with them when they came which we didn’t see. Those have gone through a life cycle here now and we’re getting the next generation. Flea eggs and cocoons can hibernate and survive for years so I thought it’s also possible that they were already here when we moved in, but I expect if that was the case it would have been a much much bigger problem.
The box of Frontline says that I should wait four weeks, because apparently there’s very little safety documentation on the product or something like that. Very reassuring, when you think about it!
No carpets here, though, so I’ve only got the cracks between the floor boards to worry about. I have a (danish) lead on a spray which I will look into, but as we have very few internal doors, I can’t really use anything that is super-noxious, because we can’t seal off the rooms until the fumes are gone.
We have one of those bag-less hoovers, so at least changing the bag straight away is not a problem. I always empty the container after use anyway. (That thing has been saving me a FORTUNE on hoover bags since we moved in together! It’s awesome!)
Advantage! That stuff works and is safe on kittens.
Frontline is more or less the same thing. It’s just a different brand.
I think the main difference is that Frontline is also protecting against ticks, which I gather from this review (http://www.epinions.com/review/Bayer_Advantage/content_70366367364) Advantage doesn’t.
Good luck with your flea slaughter! I’m battling what I hope is a small infestation from the lousy neighbor cat who rolls all over the door mat outside. My indoor cats have no idea what to think right now!
Ours are indoor cats too, but where we got them from they had been allowed to go outside. I don’t dare let them do that here, I’m to afraid they’ll get hurt in traffic. So, once we get rid of this lot, we shouldn’t have the problem ever again, hopefully. At least we don’t have to check them for ticks. :)
Goodmorning Steepsterites
I’m having the second steep of this this morning, having had the first last night (where it helped me to churn out 700+ words, yay! I know I have other writerly types among my Steepsterites, some published, some just writing for the drawer like me, but 700 words is a LOT for me. As is 500 which was my goal). I didn’t pay too much attention to it last night, I just wanted something forceful, sort of, while I was writing. If I’m determined to get something done, I need to have a tea that matches.
This morning, however, I’m having a cup full of honey and pricklyness. At the first sip I get a whole lot of the pepper-y prickly note. I have almost completely decided to give in to it being pepper, primarily, rather than smoke, although I do think there’s an undertone of smoke to it.
Once you get past the prickly pepperness, it’s so smooth and sweet as if there’s honey in it. It’s actually very nice on the second steep. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t paying attention to the first steep at all, but right now it seems to me that the second is superior to the first.
Let’s let Wombatgirl redeem herself with something a little more me-ish. And what better than A&D? With this one I have now tried every single A&D tea except Series 1. But that’s okay, because Series one didn’t have anything I was interested in anyway. I’m not particularly fond of Ceylons, don’t much care for Dragonwell, and have found the Nepals I’ve tried to be rather too Darjeeling-y. So this is the last of the ones that count for me.
The aroma of the dry leaves isn’t very strong, but it’s very nice. There’s spicy pepper-y very Yunnan note to it that makes me think I’m definitely not going to get disappointed by this one.
There’s something sweet in the aroma after steeping that I can’t quite pin down. (I saw that about everything, don’t I?) I’m leaning a little towards something semi-chocolateish. Maybe something to do with raisins as well. And that is of course all along with the spicy pepper that is typical for the region.
Aaaaah, this is good tea. Very typical Yunnan-ish to it, and actually, I’m shocked at how quickly I’ve come to recognise the typicalness of the type. It’s very Yunnan-ish, but there’s something else underneath. Something that tastes a bit like that note from before smelled. I really do think we’re leaning towards something to do with chocolate on that one, although I still can’t really pin it down.
But yes, this is much much much much much much much much much much much better.
I wasn’t really aware how inexperienced I was with assams until I tried this. I really have nothing to compare it to, so I am struggling a bit with how to describe this tea. Overall it’s very smooth, and light (many black teas coat the tongue, especially when steeped for a while, but this one doesn’t at all). Honestly, there’s not much to distinguish it as far as uniqueness goes. It’s just a really nice, kind of quiet morning or afternoon tea.
Preparation
I just, this minute, ordered the 4oz re-issue. CAN HARDLY WAIT … and shipping to Canada is 9-11 DAYS.
BLEND: one part A&D Earl Grey, one part A&D Caravan. 1 TB tea for 500mL water, bare, drunk while nibbling peppered nuts and strong cheese.
The Earl spent the night at the pubs and finally a coffeehouse at the docks and just stumbled in to his ancestral home, where his mother entertains various hoity-toities with tea and cookies. Breaking out some peppered nuts and strong cheese, the Earl adds his smoked self to the party. While his mother worries he might be suffering an identity crisis, the Earl himself rests confident — if bleary-eyed — that the mind-altering night spent with that mysterious woman who writes and sings and wafts out ancient yet spicy campfire smoke each time she adjusts her pashmina is worth each and every strange look from his mother. His mother’s friend continue discussing a shocking new novel … and the author photo reveals to the Earl yet another layer of truth: the smoky pashmina woman.
A startling blend, the A&D Earl Grey and A&D Caravan on a 1 to 1 ratio, but bracing and unforgettable. The bergamot ultimately surrenders to the smoke, but only in the sense of the smoke riding on top.
Preparation
BLEND: Caravan with A&D’s Earl Grey, 1 part Caravan, 2 parts Earl Grey. 1 TB tea for 500mL water, bare. Water just off the boil.
I’ve been mulling over a blend of A&D’s Earl Grey and Carvan for some time. I even open both tins side by side and inhale. I’ve been wary of experimenting with blend ratios, only because I have a limited amount of both teas and really like them — especially, to my surprise, the Earl Grey. And A&D’s Caravan is a very bright Caravan blend, not just crappy stale black tea doused in liqud smoke and then laid out to dry. (I’ve drunk Caravans which taste like that.) Both the Eargl Grey and the Caravan seem to lean very much to the China tea end of the spectrum, so the tea bases, at least shouldn’t clash.
Liquor: dark copper.
Aroma: bergamot and smoke, big surprise there.
At 3 minutes of steeping: Top notes of citrus and bergamot, with a savoury, almost salty bite. Smoky finish. Wish I’d upped the Caravn j4st a bit — maybe a equal parts, but I want a marriage here, not a brawl.
At 5 minutes of steeping: more depth, more ‘ting’ from the Earl Grey and more ‘tang’ from the Caravan. Sharp and smoky finish. Hot toast with a bitter marmalade would go soooo well with this.
Conclusion: A really good wake-me-up-after-lunch tea. Will try equal parts next time.
Preparation
Drunk bare — no milk or sweetener.
I did not think this tea would live up to the hype. I adore a good smokey tea, but too often, the smoke dominates.
So, I was wrong.
Caravan gives off a very strong smoke scent, but the steeped tea is almost sweet. The smoke is an accent, not a bully. There’s a wine-iness too, as you find in some Keemuns. (Keemun in blend?) Also something savoury, almost salty, that excites the sides of the tongue. Finishes clean, though smoke lingers in the mouth.
Damn fine.
Preparation
1.5 tsp for 300mL water @100C, steeped four minutes, drunk bare.
Assam bliss.
And it’s gone. All High Seas sets have been sold. I have maybe 3 servings left. I am weeping into my pillow, clutching my last love letter from the Captain, not caring that many other tea-lovers in various port are likely doing the same.
