Angela Webster McRae's Blog, page 157

My Country, 'Tis of Tea — West Virginia

West Virginia is known as coal country, but could it also be known as tea country? Hmm…

• West Virginia was home to a number of glass companies during the glass boom of 1900-1940, including the West Virginia Glass Specialty Company, maker of this tea pitcher and glass set with an iridescent rose design. Most of us own a tea pitcher or two, and if you're interested in looking up some info on the great glass makers of yesteryear, a good site to visit is here, the Museum of American Glass in West Virginia.

• Yes, you can grow camellia sinensis in West Virginia. I learned that from this 2013 article in the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail. I was happy to read that, like me, the author doesn't baby his plant at all, and it has proved quite hardy.


• In 1920, a West Virginia man became the new general manager of Thomas J. Lipton, Inc.  in the US. According to the book "Coffee and Tea Industries and the Flavor Field, Volume 43," Frederick W. Nash, who became the general manager on Sept. 1, was a man who, "becoming self-supporting at 17 … paid his own way through Wesleyan College, West Virginia, by teaching and secretarial work in school terms, and by selling subscription books and life insurance during vacations. Going to New York, soon after leaving school in 1897, he got his first position with B. Fischer & Co. as salesman of coffee, tea and spices to the grocery trade of Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia." Nash had also served in the Philippines with the Fourth U.S. Cavalry and helped organize the American public school system there.

Fireside Vanilla Spice Herbal Tea

When I was at that new Sprouts Farmers Market earlier this week, I spotted a flavor of Celestial Seasonings tea I hadn't tried before, this Fireside Vanilla Spice. The very name lured me right in, because what sounds cozier than a "fireside" with "vanilla" and "spice" scents?
I always hope that one day, I'll peek into a box of Celestial Seasonings and find that they've packaged the tea bags individually. But here they are again in a stack of twos. (Why are they in twos, friends? Why? I always wonder.) Such yummy teas, though.
This herbal tea definitely gets a thumbs-up. In addition to the vanilla and cinnamon (which I expected), it has a nice warm kick from ginger and cardamom. I often find cinnamon-flavored teas so naturally sweet that they almost taste as if they have sugar in them, and that was the case with this one. Are any of you fans of this tea as well?

My Christmas tea column in The Coweta Shopper

For those of you who live outside of Coweta County and have asked to read it, here is my latest column in The Coweta Shopper.

I hope you enjoy it!

Note: In case you're not familiar with the Issuu platform (and I am only because I'm a publications geek who has read a lot of things online), if you go to the bottom right of the image with the column, click on the icon that looks like four old-fashioned photo corners. That sends you to full screen in the "Issuu" platform, and then you click the similar icon (again at lower right) to exit.

Sprouts Farmers Market's Green Tea Mandarin Lip Balm

On a trip to Peachtree City the other day, I noticed a new natural and organic grocery store, Sprouts Farmers Market, has opened since I last drove that route. Of course I had to stop by and check it out since such stores often have great new teas and tea products. This time, it was a store brand of Green Tea Mandarin Lip Balm that caught my eye along with several new teas. I don't know about you, but I can never have too many lip balms at this time of year. I keep them in my desk, purse, all coat pockets, the car … you get the idea. 


So when I saw a new one in a tea flavor, that was a must-have item.

The lip balm has a great flavor, but best of all it has a light texture that feels moisturizing but not waxy like some lip balms can be. Do any of you have a Sprouts near your home? I think I just became a fan!

A gift of a New Country Roses tea mug

It is always fun to me when I receive as a gift something that I had wanted but resisted buying for myself. Do you ever find that happening? I can't tell you how many times I've picked up this New Country Roses pink mug at T.J. Maxx over the last year or so, but I always thought no, it's too expensive and you don't need one more tea mug. But when my stepdaughter and family visited for Thanksgiving and handed me a bag containing Christmas gifts, I was delighted to find this among the goodies inside!

I love all these "New Country Roses" variations on the classic Old Country Roses pattern. Old Country Roses was my mother's china pattern, and there's a reason it's the best-selling dinnerware pattern in the world. Oh, those lush roses!


Since it was a Christmas gift, I plopped a bag of Twinings Christmas Tea inside and enjoyed a mug full of this yummy tea, which of course tasted even better in such a pretty new mug!

The weekend's tea finds

I don't shop on Black Friday, but my aunt and I went shopping on Saturday, and I was pleasantly surprised at how very uncrowded it was at the shopping centers in Rome, Georgia. I have been looking and looking for new Christmasy tea things — teawares, tea infusers, tea giftwrap, ANYTHING — but I've come up short. Have you? But I did find two practical and inexpensive items that you might like to know about.

First, I had read on the Afternoon Tea Across America Facebook group about these 2-for-1 calendars at Dollar Tree.


Yes, they're flimsy things, but hey, even a flimsy teacup calendar for $1 is still a bargain in my book. Besides, I like to hang one of these small-size calendars on my refrigerator using magnets, so the lighter the weight, the better.


And at T.J. Maxx, I found some of the cutest heavier-weight tea towels I've seen in a while. These aren't terry cloth, but they're thicker and heavier than the flour-sack type of towels. And one thing I discovered while preparing my Thanksgiving meal this year was that I can never have too many good, thick tea towels, since I go through a ton of them while rinsing off the turkey plates, cooking, and cleaning up the kitchen.


Isn't this design charming? It was $5.99 for the set of two, and I looked through all the towels, thinking I'd nab a second set for a giveaway, but alas, it wasn't to be found. You may want to check your T.J. Maxx, though, if you like these tea towels as much as I do!

My Country, 'Tis of Tea — Washington

Washington is a state that's famous for its coffeehouses, but happily, it appears that there have long been some tea lovers in Washington as well.


• The Culbertson Tea Room in Spokane, Washington, was the place to dine for ladies shopping at Culbertson's Department Store. I don't really know much about Culbertson's, and an article in the Spokesman-Review said only that "Culbertson’s, which carried everything from furniture to groceries, was deep in debt when the Depression hit and went into bankruptcy in 1930." That may be, but the place sure looked swell at the time this postcard was sent in 1919, didn't it? The sender of the postcard called this tearoom the "best place in the city to eat."


• Judith's Tea Room and Rose Café once was a favorite of tea-goers in Poulsbo, Washington. I learned of the tearoom when I found this cookbook on eBay years ago, and I was inspired to make this soup as a result. It doesn't appear that this tearoom is in operation any more, but I enjoyed finding that another blogger shared her memories of this Washington tearoom (and a delicious-sounding cake recipe) here.

• Are you a fan of women's history? If so, you might enjoy watching the video of Susan Butruille's 2007 (I think) lecture at the Washington State Library, "Tea, True Womanhood, and Uppity Women." I liked this quote of hers at the beginning of the lecture: "Historically, when women have gotten together over tea, radical things happened." (Hint: The lecture, which is divided into four different segments and totals about an hour, is accessible here. If you want to skip all the welcome remarks, start at about the 6:30 point on Part 1.)

Highlights from Thanksgiving 2016

I meant to take photos of all the food, drinks, and desserts yesterday but, as so often happens when we entertain, I got too busy and forgot about it! So instead, I thought I'd share a few pix from my family's Thanksgiving celebration this year. In addition to Alex and myself, we had Daddy, Aunt Jane, my sister, Rhonda, brother-in-law Brad, and their children, Madison, Cari, Matthew, and Amelia, and Madison's boyfriend, Dylan, who was nice enough to take a photo of all of us when Amelia said she wanted a photo with everyone in it.

Rhonda, Daddy, me
Some of you who have been reading this blog for a while have pretty much watched my nieces and nephew grow up! Here are Madison, Cari, Amelia, and Matthew.

All the kids in our family get a Christmas ornament on Thanksgiving. Matthew got Star Wars.
 Amelia has been saying she wants a horse, so I got her one.

Happy Thanksgiving, Friends!

The Winter 2016 Upton Tea Quarterly

You just never know what you'll find featured in the new Upton Tea Quarterly. The Winter issue landed in my mailbox this week, and I was intrigued by the title "Tea and the Pipe Organ." I couldn't help thinking of my tea-lover friend Joy, who is a church organist, when I saw this article.
The piece tells about a man who has been restoring, maintaining, and building pipe organs for more than 50 years and how his business became a success by focusing on quality. It also discusses the quest for "concert hall sound" in a home sound system, all of which I found intriguing, but I kept thinking, "What does this have to do with tea?" The writer—and there's no byline on the article, so it's unclear who that is—soon got to it with this: "Besides the freedom to enjoy music at any time of day, a home sound system accommodates personal preferences that are impractical with most public performances. For the writer, that personal preference includes the combined tea and music experience."
The writer goes on to say, "Good music, accompanied by a great cup of tea, has been a passion of mine for roughly half a century. My interest in music spawned in the 1960s, about the same time that I became interested in tea." 
The discussion of good music was a welcome subject and took me back to all those enjoyable Music Appreciation classes in college. I found the article a departure from the usual feature story in the Upton Tea Quarterly, but I quite enjoyed reading about quality organs and quality tea! If you'd like to read the article for yourself, click here.