Tea party

The things that went into the Taiwanese tea

Today I got up unbelievably early (8:30, which is early considering I usually work until 5 a.m. on Saturdays) and went to a tea party with a magician friend. This turned out to be quite nice.

Grinding the tea

We got to try some rare to find teas, and we got lots of cookies and things too. It was also interesting to learn how to use all the myriads of tools that apparently go into drinking tea properly.

Grinding tea and peanuts

I was told that they have this type of event once per month, and every time they try out different teas. Today we got to try a Taiwanese green tea and a Chinese brown tea.

The final result

First we got a small mortar and started by grinding the tea. Then we added peanuts and sesame seeds and something else and ground this up too. Then we added sweet beans and some other nut and kept grinding. Finally, some sweetened milk was added, and the paste was read to be added to boiling water. After mixing it up in water, we also added some crouton-like things. The result was more like soup than tea, but it was very good.

The tools to make and enjoy Chinese tea

We also got freeze dried mushrooms, which were kind of like cookies. There was also dried fruits, Moomin shaped cookies, and Finnish chocolate available.

Roll cake

Next, we were taught how to properly heat up cups and other things with hot water before using hour glasses to time things for the Chinese tea. There was one cup for drinking the tea, and another cup for experiencing the smell of the tea.

A Moomin cookie on a baumkuchen 

Things like coconut roll cake and other fairly heavy foods showed up too. Much more food than I normally have at 10 in the morning, but very nice.

The cafe were the event took place had lots of interestingly designed things, like this bottle opener