I drink a pretty flower

A new and awesome coworker, employer, twitterpal, and friend, who knows who he is, sent me this beautiful teapot that I must have had on one of my wish lists or something. (Whistles innocently)


The reason why I wanted this particular teapot is that it is clear glass. And in a clear glass teapot, you can brew "tea flowers", or "blooming tea". Actually, you could make blooming tea in any ol' teapot, but you wouldn't be able to see the tea bloom. And that would defy a tea flower's purpose. Here is a video of how it works:

(EDIT: since writing this, the video I had embedded became "no longer available" on YouTube. I had to substitute it with this one, which is much more of an advertisement, and much longer, and honestly, I haven't even finished watching it, but it does show the blooming action.)



Here is my first tea flower. Delicious green tea with jasmine:


It's hard to get a good photo of a tea flower in bloom. But trust me, it was pretty.

I've always been interested in tea ceremonies, but being ADD-wannabe, I've never taken the time to learn about it. But for me, having my once-teabag bloom into a flower before my very eyes while it steeps is a ceremony in itself. By the way, here is what my tea flower looked like at the beginning:


I love this kind of weird, neat stuff.