chez pim

Bite This!

Yes, bite that!

Just telling you about a neat little new side bar item chez moi. Look to your right, a little lower, yes, there! That's where I keep ten or so links that -for one reason or another- strike my fancy. The links will be pretty dynamic, with old ones riding off into the sunset as the younger and hotter ones replace them. Such is life, no?

Happy biting!

For the love of tea!

So, a few exchanges on the blog in the last couple days got me thinking about teas. There is something I really don't understand about this. Every time I mention that I don't touch tea bags, I hear snide comments about being a pretentious bourgeoise, a snob, or any number of variations on that theme. That is so not right. Not that I am not a snob or anything, but I hardly think it's due to my choice of teas: my penchant for red-soled shoes, perhaps, but certainly nothing to do with loose leaf teas.

It is such an effective myth created by tea bag manufacturers of the world, that myth that convinced you that tea bags were good, convenient, and even cheap. All of that, all of it, let me tell you now, is false. The entire world bought that lie, took the bait, hook, line, and sinker, the entire thing.

And why should you believe me? Well, I'm going to prove it to you. I'm going to channel Harold McGee and do a little tea taste, in honor -late though it may be- of Taste Tea, the cute little meme that instigated this new round of tit-for-tat for me. Because of this, my geekdom -which has taken a bit of a vacation since I left my nerdy job- has returned in full force in the last day or two. I spent yesterday gathering up evidence and did a couple of experiments. And this blog post here is the result. I am going to show you why you should stop buying tea bags and switch to using loose leafs. Well, or even if I couldn't convince you to switch, I'd at least make you understand that it's a choice, an aesthetic choice that has little to do with money, convenience, or reason for that matter.