Showing posts with label food and drink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food and drink. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

The Greatest Little Teapot: IngenuiTEA

The 16oz
Adagio Teas Ingenuitea Teapot
making me some tea.

The tea is Harney & Sons
Hot Cinnamon Spice Loose Tea
The IngenuiTEA 16oz Teapot is my favourite teapot of all the teapots. It's not the prettiest, it isn't made of fancy china or painted interestingly, or curved like an egg, or absolutely perfect at steeping tea.

But it is still my favourite teapot. It's my favourite because whenever I use it, people get overexcited and want to watch it pour over and over. It's my favourite because I can use loose leaf tea or tea bags, without any mess or burnt fingers. I can leave my tea in the pot for a second cup (I'm one of those people that gets two or more cups out of every teabag), and it's really easy to clean. It's also very portable and would be pretty nifty for camping with or just generally travelling (sure, teabags are even more portable, but if you don't want to give up loose leaf tea, this is a great backup option).

Now, some context: I'm British, which means tea. And I don't drink milk much these days, which means a lot of herbal teas. And bulk loose leaf tea is a lot cheaper (and has less packaging) than teabags. I did mess around with those silly, aggravating tea balls and other strainers, but I just burnt my fingers a lot and wasn't able to change the tea until they cooled down. And they made a mess lying around on the counter. So I'd been looking for a good teapot to magically solve this problem for a while, when I stumbled over the IngenuiTEA (and by 'stumbled' I mean "obsessively browsing the ThinkGeek website looking at the coffee paraphernalia a month before my dad's birthday).

I bought mine in 2012 from ThinkGeek, and the very next day it was featured on The Walking Dead! And promptly sold out. So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I have since bought the coffee version (the Incred-a-brew Direct Immersion Coffee Maker: rounder and wider, more suited for sitting on giant coffee cups, and comes with a plastic coaster, but essentially identical), and a couple more teapots as gifts, and talked a coworker into buying one. I use mine pretty much every day (often several times in a row as I make an endless series of cups of tea).

Delicious tea pouring down into the glass below.
The glass is an Iocane Powder Pint Glass and
I do not usually drink tea out of it.
t just made for a good photograph.
It works through a pressure plate system; you rest the pot on a cup, the base is pushed up, and a hole in the centre opens up (and only in the centre, no splashing or spilling allowed!), and a graceful flow of delicious hot tea pours down into the cup. It's somewhat hypnotic.

It has a detachable lid and a removable filter; I can just about get my hand inside the 16oz one to remove the filter, so if you have particularly large hands you might find the 32oz easier to manage. People with smallish hands will have no trouble, though.

It comes in two sizes; the 16oz and the 32oz (one or two cups, basically; that's the downside, it's not good for multiple cups of tea at once). There's a coffee pot that is basically the same thing, and you can read the comparison between them here: The Easiest, Most Fun Coffee & Tea Pots Ever 

It is made by Adagio, which is a fancy tea company with some very nice teas and things (that I can't order from as I can't import foodstuff; I get my fancy teas in bulk from Harneyteas.co.nz, a subsidiary of Harney & Sons).

Harney & Sons Fine Teas
Hot Cinnamon Spice Loose Tea
Harney & Sons make absolutely fantastic tea - I first tasted it in a little restaurant and had to find out where it came from. They create custom teas and sell them in bags, sachets and loose leaves.

The one in the photos is 'Hot Cinnamon Spice' (their most popular). I love this tea. It's incredibly sweet - like sugar - but only has black tea, orange peel, sweet cloves and cinnamon. You only want a half to one teaspoon a cup, or you risk cinnamon burn if it steeps too long, but it's absolutely delicious. And sweet!


Get Your Own!

Buy from ThinkGeek

Amazon.com
Note: a friend ordered directly through Amazon, rather than ThinkGeek and it came with some tea inside as a free sample. Which is awesome, but NZ Customs would have had a fit!

Amazon.co.uk


More suggestions for tea drinkers from ThinkGeek!

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Thursday, August 1, 2013

Swashbuckling BBQ Sword

Stage a raid on the barbeque!

Arrr, pirate cat!
I originally threw this into an order as a gag gift for someone, but when it arrived... well, I'm having trouble giving it up.

It's pretty small, but surprisingly well made. Of course, when I say small, I mean it's small for a sword. It's biggish for an actual skewer! As for the "well made part", I didn't read the description properly and expected something cheap, but instead it's a solid wooden handle and a solid metal part, which is actually better quality than... well, pretty much everything in my kitchen.

Would I buy this again? I think I'm going to have to, because I still need it as a gift and I want to keep it so very much. Apart from the double prong (which come with plastic safety tips, by the way), it's a perfect costume prop and have it hanging on the wall over the fireplace with the Minecraft sword.

Ahhh, pirate cat!!
It's sturdy enough for a semi-decent swordfight, and works very well for toasting marshmallows. I don't really eat much meat, so I may never use it for actual barbecuing, but it works perfectly well.

 It also comes with a 'free mask' - a cardboard domino mask set into the packaging (Clearly the most exciting thing of all possible things).. Fun for a party, not really going to last very long otherwise.

Buy From ThinkGeek (US$24.99)

Buy From Amazon.com (Price approx US$20-25)

Buy From Amazon.co.uk (Price approx £10-20)


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