Throw Back Thursday - The Teapot Edition

These are from last year’s visit to The Charleston Museum, in Charleston, South Carolina.  It’s America’s first museum.  You can read more about it here, and I’d highly encourage you to take the time to visit it if you’re ever in the Charleston area. 

The Charleston Museum has so many great displays, but the teapots really caught my eye.  I think these two are so pretty. 

The pineapple one was definitely my favorite.  The pineapple is a symbol of welcome, and pineapple decor features heavily in Charleston.  As I’ve said before, offering guests sweet tea is a huge part of hospitality in South Carolina, so I loved the pineapple teapot as the ultimate symbol of hospitality.

We Have Blackberries!

We were able to pick blackberries from our own backyard over the weekend.  We planted the bush last year, and were fairly certain that Duke destroyed it, but to our delight it came back this year.  And now we have blackberries.

We had more berries than this, but we both ate while we picked, so this is all that made it for the picture.  We have lots more berries that aren’t ripe yet, so it looks like we’ll be enjoying blackberries for a while.

I’m ridiculously proud of these.  It’s our first time growing berries, so I’m pretty excited.  It still amazes me when we plant something and it grows and produces food.   There’s just something so satisfying about walking out into your own backyard to pick what you’ve planted and grown yourself.  And I love blackberries. 

We plan to add another blackberry bush next year, and maybe try a raspberry bush, too.  You can’t have too many berries, right? 

Are you growing any berries?  What’s your favorite berry?  If you have an abundance of blackberries, and are looking for a way to use them, here’s a recipe for Blackberry & Mint Green Tea. 

Green Tea With Blackberry & Mint

It’s finally blackberry season here in western North Carolina (also in the upstate of South Carolina). The roadside stands are open, and blackberries are on everyone’s mind. They’re just perfect right now; so plump, sweet, and juicy.

Blackberries also happen to be my friend Crystal’s favorite berry, so of course we had to visit a roadside stand to get fresh blackberries. Some of them went into the meringue cake experiment, more than a few were eaten fresh, some made their way into the freezer, and some became part of this incredible tea.

Crystal loves tea at least as much as I do, maybe even more, so we tend to drink a lot of tea when we’re together. I was getting ready to start another batch of sweet tea during her last visit when I decided that iced (sweet, of course!) green tea might be good. Crystal agreed, and suggested adding blackberries since we had so many. I thought that sounded great, and thought mint might also make a nice addition. Mint grows wild all over our yard during the warm weather, so we have plenty available. We thought it all sounded good and decided to give it a try.

Here’s the recipe:

1 gallon of water, divided

6 green tea bags

1/3 cup fresh mint leaves, shredded

2/3 cup fresh blackberries, crushed with a fork

1 ½ cups sugar

Place tea bags (any tags/papers removed) and six cups of water in a medium sauce pan over high heat. Bring to a boil. Cover and remove from heat.

In a small bowl, combine blackberries (along with all of their juice) and mint. Pour the mixture into the pot with the tea. Cover and allow it to steep for 4 - 8 hours.

Place sugar in the bottom of a gallon pitcher. Using a fine mesh strainer, slowly pour the tea mixture into the pitcher. (This should prevent any chunks of berries or mint leaves from ending up in your glass of tea). Stir well. Add hot water to fill the pitcher, stirring constantly. Stir for another minute. Cover and leave the pitcher on the counter for a few hours, until the teas has cooled back down to room temperature. Refrigerate. Serve cold, over ice.

This tea was absolutely delicious! We used (and I highly recommend if you can get it) Charleston Tea Plantation Wadmalaw Island Green Tea. Otherwise, just use your favorite green tea. It’s a great, refreshing summertime tea.

English Breakfast Tea Latte

I love tea, and lately I’ve really started enjoying English Breakfast Tea. I also really like lattes, though sometimes they’re a little too strong for me. I’m just not much of a coffee drinker. I only like the coffee or espresso drinks made with lots of sugar and milk, and even then they can sometimes be just a little too strong or bitter. So I decided to experiment with making a tea latte at home.

I decided on English Breakfast Tea since it’s currently my favorite hot tea, and I already like it with milk added to it. I like my tea pretty sweet (just in case you missed that from the name of my blog), so you may want to reduce the sugar if you like your tea a little less sweet. I think it’s delicious exactly like this:


English Breakfast Tea Latte:

1 English Tea Bag

1 cup water

1/3 cup milk

2 and 1/4 tsp sugar

Put sugar in the bottom of a large mug. Pour water and tea bag into a small sauce pan; bring to a boil over High heat. Boil for 90 seconds. Pour tea, with the bag, into the mug (over the sugar), cover and allow to steep for 1 - 4 minutes, depending on how strong you like your tea (I steep mine for four minutes). Meanwhile, pour milk in sauce pan over Medium heat; whisk the milk just until it begins to boil. Remove tea bag from mug and pour in milk. Stir well.

Enjoy!