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I. Am. A. Huge. Tea. Snob.

Honestly.

I probably keep around 30 different kinds of tea in the house at any given time. I drink it everyday for breakfast and after dinner. Sometimes before and after lunch too.

I like all different kinds. White, black, green, herbal, oolong. You name it. One of the coolest places I think I’ve ever been was a tea plantation in the Sri Lanka highlands where I got to sample SUPER fresh tea, grown right on the field. It was a magical experience, to say the least. (though despite the very Asian cultural environment in Sri Lanka, most everyone only drank English breakfast tea loaded with cream and sugar. Go figure.)

We visited the vastly impressive Ceylon plantation. Fields like this stretched on for what seemed like forever, especially when it took 4 hours on a wobbly old train through rain forests and up and around misty mountain peeks to get there. And what’s sort of funny is you’d think this would generate a ridiculous amount of tea, right?

Nope.

Each single bush is only able to produce a single tea leaf. They only ever pluck the very topmost leaf, which is why these plantations covered so much land. I have a whole new respect for the workers who harvest it, because jeez. That’s a lot of work.

Anyway, I just recently took a trip out to one of my favorite tea shops here in Austin, Teavana, and picked up some crazy delicious Peach Momotaro tea balls. Their scent is impeccably fresh, and taste incredibly potent. Best peach tea I’ve ever had, hands down.

Plus, after around 3 minutes of steeping, the balls bloom into pretty little flowers~

A creative take on a painting we picked up while on honeymoon in Sri Lanka. Artists details to follow…

IMPORTANT THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW if you are watching the WC Qualifiers in Rizal on July 3: