I’m looking at a wonderful thing — a real live errand-free Saturday. Maybe I can relieve the gentle pressure on my brain by getting out all the blog posts that have been backing up in my head. Maybe then I’ll know which ones were worth the trouble of expressing and which weren’t. Maybe I’ll be able to make some chicken soup and put leftover cream in it to make it smooth and milky, because September has started off a little chilly here and I’ve been really wanting some. Maybe I’ll do laundry.

But first, I really have to talk about the tea I’m drinking these days …

My morning start-up tea isn’t so much an option as a necessity, and so a sensitive tea would be lost on me. I’ve been really liking the Harney & Sons teas. They used to be available through Amazon, but for some reason they’re not as much anymore. But a trip off to the Website proved handy and started me off on a little expedition of tea goodness. All three had different things going on:

Wake up with a flower behind your ear: Supreme Breakfast. I’ve been making my way through different breakfast blends for years. I thought I’d always love English Breakfast the best, and then, … I don’t know. Did I change? Did the tea change? It was seeming a little rough, not as aromatic. A quick jaunt over to Irish Breakfast only resulted in a rougher flavor and by the time I got to Scottish Breakfast, I might have just been too confused to know what I thought. So away with the British references altogether and just a Supreme Breakfast blend. Good tea, and as aromatic as I like — strong enough to stand up to milk and sweetener without losing its way. And it has a hint of something that I thought was bergamot, since it reminds me of Earl Grey. But Harney & Sons say that it’s actually Hao Ya ‘B’ Keemun. Sounds like a name from a Chinese fairy tale or something. Anyway, very tasty.

A taste of honey: Elyce’s Blend. For some reason, you can’t get directly to the black tea blends on the Harney & Sons web-site, but if you go HERE you’ll see that the page has enough lovely possibilities to stop a tea-lover like me dead in her tracks. Which way to go? Palm Court Blend? Queen Catherine’s? Historic Royal Palaces? How much more time do I have to live? Can I get around to all of them and give them the month it takes to really know your tea? In the end, I figured I needed to aim for the simpler proper name teas (Stanley, Brigitte, Malachi McCormick(?) ) and just went with Elyce’s and Elaine’s. Elyce’s Blend has been an experience. When I first gave it a whiff, I was nonplussed — it had a slightly funny smell I couldn’t put my finger on. When I brewed it up and took a sip, I couldn’t identify the taste, and I was about to put it in the category of “interesting” teas that I don’t care for, like Lapsang Souchong with its distinctly smoky flavor. But then I re-read the H&S blurb and realized that that flavor was honey. I don’t know how they did it — I don’t think they infused the tea leaves with honey or anything. But it’s true — it absolutely tastes like tea with honey, and an improvement on any time I’ve tried to get that result, since the flavor of honey is hard to detect in tea unless you add about a cup of it. I admit I’m still mulling over the final effect. This probably is a “special occasion” tea. But I don’t know. Once you know what the flavor is, it does kind of grow on you.

All I ever wanted: Elaine’s Special Blend. I think the reason I had to try this one is because of the intriguing detail on the H&S blurb that Elaine wrote a letter to the New York Times in 1983 about the lamentable lack of decent tea in restaurants. She became a hero to disenfranchised tea-drinkers and a friend to John Harney, who was just starting up his business. This is Elaine’s particular blend of Darjeeling, Keemun, Ceylon and Assam teas, and it so perfectly embodies everything I want tea to be that I can’t even describe it. I have to just make primitive little noises and move my fingers over the keyboard hoping that that will magically do the trick. It has the delicious sweetness of Assam without being fruity like Earl Grey. It’s full-bodied but not rough. It just seems perfect.

Sigh. My resolve fails. I’ve just finished up a little teapot of Elyce’s Blend, but now I have to brew up some Elaine’s Special Blend to make sure that it’s still that good. I’d hate to lie to my loyal readers (all four of them or whatever).

So I’ll make my tea. And then I have to try to get through all the other bloggy things I wanted to say. And there’s soup to cook and laundry to do, and probably something else I can’t think of.

But first there’s tea.