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I fell in love with tienchi tea when I tried it at an expensive restaurant recently. It has an intense bitterness to it that just keeps me wanting to drink more.

I’ve been looking around for tienchi tea leaves ever since. Either I haven’t been looking hard enough or it’s not easily available. So I ended up buying this packet of tienchi floral tea pellets from a Chinese medical shop.

As you can see, the color of the resulting tea is very dark and it even stained the side of my mug. When I drank it, I got another shock because the tea tastes sweet. I checked the contents listing and it says it contains cane sugar. No wonder!

I’m not used to Chinese tea being sweet. I can understand if it’s English tea and it’s meant to have sugar added to it. So I’m wondering what to do with so many packets of this tienchi floral tea left .

I received a box of tikuanyin as a gift from an aunt who knows how much I appreciate a good cup of Chinese tea.

There are so many different kinds and brands of Chinese tea that it’s hard to know which is good until you actually taste it.

It was love at first sip for me with this Anxi brand. It leaves a bitter aftertaste which I really like.

It takes two of these shrink-packed packets to brew one big pot of tea. Only problem is she doesn’t know where to buy this brand of tea since she got this as a gift from her friend!

Tikuanyin is considered to be a cooling tea. According to the elders, older folks, new mothers and those who are weak and under the weather should avoid drinking (too much) tikuanyin because it may trigger rheumatic aches and pains due to its cooling effect on the body.

I bought this shiny new pack of tea leaves yesterday and brewed it this morning. This is the first time I’m buying Pu Erh tea. So far, almost all of the tea I have in my cupboard are gifts from friends returning from vacation in China or Hong Kong. Great to have friends like that .

I made a thick brew, as you can see from the very dark color of the tea, almost as dark as coffee, I’d say. But surprisingly, it doesn’t taste bitter or clouded as its color suggests. It’s actually pretty tasteless.

Chinese teas are differentiated not only by their taste and quality but also have different herbal and medicinal benefits. Pu Erh tea is supposed to be good for lowering high blood pressure and increasing energy.

It’s too early to tell. I’ve only had two or three sips of the tea. Gimme, say, an hour and let’s see if I feel like break-dancing .

The kind of patchy weather we’re having usually brings the fever and flu bug. It’s blazing a 90+ degrees outside right through midday and then the skies cloud over, bringing the downpours and cooling down the nights to the 70+’s.

My three kids were all down with the fever and flu recently. Between the hot days and cool nights, it’s the ‘heatiness’ (internal body heat) that causes the fever, coughs, runny noses and sore throats.

Honey soothes sore and scratchy throats and cools the body system. You’ll be surprised how kids who won’t drink water can so easily be sweet-talked into drinking honey instead.

And to perk things up, you can add a squeeze of lemon or lime and some ice for a cool, refreshing drink. One of my favorites .

Then there’s this cooling herbal ‘hor yan hor’ tea that I used to drink as a kid whenever the weather got hot. It used to be something that had to be boiled. Now it comes conveniently in tea bags for busy moms like me.

It’s black and bitter and kids have to be threatened or bribed into even going near it. I made myself a cup to drink this morning just as a precaution, in case I caught the flu from my kids.

Then of course, if you prefer to imagine you’re laying on the beach under a palm tree sipping a fresh coconut instead, this is the very thing.

Here’s the convenient huskless (or commonly called the ‘bald’) version where the grocery guy has done all the donkey work of hacking away the hard husk and artfully scraping out the silky white sheet of meat for you.

If you buy the one in the original coconut husk, it feels more authentic, sure! But you have to reach into the husk and scrape out the meat yourself and then dispose of the coconut shell when you’re done drinking.

Cheers and may the Flu Fighter be with you!

When you eat at Chinese restaurants, tea is typically served in a pot and poured into small cups. After a few rounds, the tea is bound to run out. So what do you do?

There’s no need to catch a waiter’s eye and flag him down. Here’s the trick. Simply tilt the pot cover like this to signal that you need your teapot refilled. A passing waiter will notice and top up your teapot.

And when someone fills up your cup, simply tap your right index finger on the table next to your cup as the unspoken way of saying ‘thank you’.

Raine suggested we stop by Juice Works for a drink on our way home from our morning errands. We have coupons for a breakfast combo of Toasty and Fruity which sounded really good to a couple of empty tummies.

Raine chose the Lychee Fruity blended drink and the Tomato Cheese toasty which turned out to be Mango Ham. Obviously the girl working the counter didn’t have a clue how to make a Toasty because right after we placed our order, she crawled under the counter and started making phone calls in hushed tones to find out what it was. Duh!

The toasty that was served to us looked like this. I took this picture with my PDA camera which was the only thing I had on me. Granted it’s not the clearest picture in the world but you can still see how wimpy and soggy that toast looks… and tastes. The next time we go to Juice Works, we’d better stick to their juicy blends.

Not satisfied with the toasty we had, I stopped by the grocery store on my way home and bought the ingredients to make my own toasties. In my next post, I’ll show you how to make robust and mouth-watering toasties that pack a crunch!