Over the past couple of years I've been adding dried flowers and
fruits to my teas. I've had best luck sticking with green teas that
in themselves don't have much to offer. Or teas with flavors you
don't like such as a kelpy sencha. Or get a good deal on green tea
but gets tiresome everyday like gunpowder. I've revisited commerical
green teas with rose,osmanthus,jasmine and the likes and discovered
the green tea is on par with what I use. I just don't see a tisane
being used as a substitute for necessarily inferior tea. Another
phenomena you can still brew after the green tea has given up. It
would be cheaper on a limited budget to stock up on tisanes and a
green tea than many green teas. I rank tea + tisane with cream and
sugar and chai. I got started on this path when my local tea shoppe
started offering it's own tisanes with oolong and black. The owner
was very enthusiastic about this approach and it has taken me awhile
to come aboard about once a week. You can end up with a whole that is
greater than the sum of the parts.


Jim

"Space Cowboy" writes:

Over the past couple of years I've been adding dried flowers and
fruits to my teas. I've had best luck sticking with green teas that
in themselves don't have much to offer. Or teas with flavors you
don't like such as a kelpy sencha.

Thanks for the word "kelpy", Jim! I think "kelpy" is now a permanent
part of my vocabulary for sencha.

Strangely, I just tasted a shu Pu'er (You Le Mountain, given me by a
friend) that had a bit of kelpiness to it.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html
recently updated: Dongfang Meiren

I'm sure BabelCarp has these entries:
kelp 昆布 Chinese
kelp ��� Japanese

I'm not sure if I was the first to associate the word kelp with
sencha. If I was then I got my association from the Internet where
the two are processed together.

Jim

PS If my characters get mangled then blame it on Google in this
particular case because I replied to a Ascii post. The new Google
doesn't allow me to set character sets as before in replies.

On Feb 15, 11:45Â*am, Lewis Perin wrote:
"Space Cowboy" writes:
Over the past couple of years I've been adding dried flowers and
fruits to my teas. Â*I've had best luck sticking with green teas that
in themselves don't have much to offer. Â*Or teas with flavors you
don't like such as a kelpy sencha.

Thanks for the word "kelpy", Jim! Â*I think "kelpy" is now a permanent
part of my vocabulary for sencha.

Strangely, I just tasted a shu Pu'er (You Le Mountain, given me by a
friend) that had a bit of kelpiness to it.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
recently updated: Dongfang Meiren

On Feb 15, 2:20 pm, "Space Cowboy" wrote:
I'm sure BabelCarp has these entries:
kelp 昆布 Chinese
kelp ��� Japanese

I'm not sure if I was the first to associate the word kelp with
sencha. If I was then I got my association from the Internet where
the two are processed together.

Jim

PS If my characters get mangled then blame it on Google in this
particular case because I replied to a Ascii post. The new Google
doesn't allow me to set character sets as before in replies.

On Feb 15, 11:45 am, Lewis Perin wrote:

"Space Cowboy" writes:
Over the past couple of years I've been adding dried flowers and
fruits to my teas. I've had best luck sticking with green teas that
in themselves don't have much to offer. Or teas with flavors you
don't like such as a kelpy sencha.

Thanks for the word "kelpy", Jim! I think "kelpy" is now a permanent
part of my vocabulary for sencha.

Strangely, I just tasted a shu Pu'er (You Le Mountain, given me by a
friend) that had a bit of kelpiness to it.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
recently updated: Dongfang Meiren


Hi.
just want to share with all the tea fans.. there is good blend
oolong.. it s called " osmanthus oolong tea" it is very good...

C

If anybody is paying attention, drop the last Japanese character.
That character is the first of the two Kana characters for tea.

Jim

On Feb 15, 12:20Â*pm, "Space Cowboy" wrote:
I'm sure BabelCarp has these entries:
kelp 昆布 Chinese
kelp ��� Japanese

"Space Cowboy" writes:

I'm sure BabelCarp has these entries:
kelp 昆布 Chinese
kelp ��� Japanese

Actually, no, but thanks for thinking of me. I don't see any evidence
that kun1bu4 is used by Chinese people in talking about tea. Maybe we
can get MarshalN and Danny to start using it, and then, who knows?

I don't generally put herbal terms into Babelcarp, but kun1bu4cha2
(kombucha) seems to be a bit hit on the Chinese Internet, so I just
inserted an entry for that brew so people who look it up will know it
isn't a "real" tea.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

On Feb 15, 12:19 pm, "Space Cowboy" wrote:
Over the past couple of years I've been adding dried flowers and
fruits to my teas. I've had best luck sticking with green teas that
in themselves don't have much to offer. Or teas with flavors you
don't like such as a kelpy sencha. Or get a good deal on green tea

Jim, I have in the past mixed dried fruit with the teas with mixed
success. Apple seemed to go the best (really dried apple) but
cranberries not so great (slightly wet) perhaps because of the
acitidy. Do you have specific fruits you liked more than others?

Also, I have been looking for organically grown dried flowers - can
you recommend some place?

-P

On Feb 15, 2:20Â*pm, "Space Cowboy" wrote:
I'm sure BabelCarp has these entries:
kelp 昆布 Chinese
kelp ��� Japanese
Using this group's software for sending Chinese/Japanese characters is
vexatious, and I'm not going to do it.

WIkipedia Japan has an entry for Kobucha (entry's titlehowever, is
written in kanji: Sino-Japanese characters, thus not commiting to any
certain pronunciation). The first line of text tells us, using
phonetic script (in this case, hiragana) that those kanji are read as
both "kobu-cha" and as "koNbu-cha."

Following up on that, I searched Google Japan, and found that the use
of the kanji is, by far, the most frequent way of writing this word in
Japan. (Please note that the use of kanji specifically *avoids*
coming down on *how* to "pronounce" or "read" that kanji.) Number of
hits using the kanji alone: 368,000. Hits using "Kobu-cha" (entered
phonetically with hiragana): 26,600. Hits using "Konbu-cha" (entered
phonetially with hiragana): 794.

For the sake of completeness, I also Googled these two phonetic
versions as written with a *different* phonetic "alphabet:"
katakana. Katakana is best known as the script used for loan-words
from other languages (such as makudonarudo for McDonald's), but it is
also used for other purposes. Katakana can be used for writing names
of things being focused on in scientific discourse, and can also
function like *italics*, to make a word stand out for special
attention. I suspect most of the hits for the katakana versions fall
in these two categories. Anyhow, "konbu-cha" (written in katakana)
got 9,500 hits, and "kobu-cha" (in katakana) got 964 hits.

Thus, when comparing the hits for the specified readings, Kobu-cha in
hiragana gets the most hits (26,600), followed by the *other* reading,
koNbu-cha, when written in katakana (9,500). Third place goes to kobu-
cha in katakana (964), then koNbu-cha in hiragana (794). This needs
to be kept in context: the kanji version, with no specifiable
reading, got 368,000 hits. I suspect that one reason the katakana
version of koNbu-cha was so high because the writers were making a
point of specifying a personal/contextual preference for that reading.

Using Google Japan to try to pin down issues of word frequency/
prefered orthography (cf. "spelling") in Japanese is a complex issue.

james-henry holland
hobart and william smith colleges
geneva, new york

So specifically what are these two characters
konbu,kobu,katakana,hiragana. I saw them on a Japanese tin in the
Sasha thread in January. You'll probably be okay posting Asian
characters if you don't use his ISP!?

Jim

PS I sent email previously with my corrected email address and never
heard back. My email address is:
http://i16.tinypic.com/2cmpsw5.gif
You may have to select enlarge image with your browser.

On Feb 16, 7:00Â*am, "Thitherflit" wrote:
On Feb 15, 2:20Â*pm, "Space Cowboy"
kelp ��x Japanese
....I delete me...
Using this group's software for sending Chinese/Japanese characters is
vexatious, and I'm not going to do it.
....I delete you...
Using Google Japan to try to pin down issues of word frequency/
prefered orthography (cf. "spelling") in Japanese is a complex issue.

james-henry holland
hobart and william smith colleges
geneva, new york

I like citrus and berries of any kind. You want dried and not
adulterated with sugar for example. I have apple and cherry trees and
prefer the blossoms over the fruit. I basically buy my tisanes at an
herbal shop. I know botanical websites are dime a dozen. I bought
some batches of flowers a florist would have tossed away. I can't
wait for my wife's Valentine roses to wilt. My favorite flower
lilac. I like it in my aftershave and tea.

Jim

PS I'm in the process of locating local horticulturists and finding
out who is selling the organic dried stuff.

On Feb 16, 3:22 am, "indiantealover" wrote:
On Feb 15, 12:19 pm, "Space Cowboy" wrote:

Over the past couple of years I've been adding dried flowers and
fruits to my teas. I've had best luck sticking with green teas that
in themselves don't have much to offer. Or teas with flavors you
don't like such as a kelpy sencha. Or get a good deal on green tea

Jim, I have in the past mixed dried fruit with the teas with mixed
success. Apple seemed to go the best (really dried apple) but
cranberries not so great (slightly wet) perhaps because of the
acitidy. Do you have specific fruits you liked more than others?

Also, I have been looking for organically grown dried flowers - can
you recommend some place?

-P

On Feb 16, 2:22 am, "indiantealover" wrote:
On Feb 15, 12:19 pm, "Space Cowboy" wrote:

Over the past couple of years I've been adding dried flowers and
fruits to my teas. I've had best luck sticking with green teas that
in themselves don't have much to offer. Or teas with flavors you
don't like such as a kelpy sencha. Or get a good deal on green tea

Jim, I have in the past mixed dried fruit with the teas with mixed
success. Apple seemed to go the best (really dried apple) but
cranberries not so great (slightly wet) perhaps because of the
acitidy. Do you have specific fruits you liked more than others?

Also, I have been looking for organically grown dried flowers - can
you recommend some place?

-P

Frontier Herbs has a selection of dried organic ingredients.
Shen

On Feb 15, 9:19 am, "Space Cowboy" wrote:
Over the past couple of years I've been adding dried flowers and
fruits to my teas. I've had best luck sticking with green teas that
in themselves don't have much to offer. Or teas with flavors you
don't like such as a kelpy sencha. Or get a good deal on green tea
but gets tiresome everyday like gunpowder. I've revisited commerical
green teas with rose,osmanthus,jasmine and the likes and discovered
the green tea is on par with what I use. I just don't see a tisane
being used as a substitute for necessarily inferior tea. Another
phenomena you can still brew after the green tea has given up. It
would be cheaper on a limited budget to stock up on tisanes and a
green tea than many green teas. I rank tea + tisane with cream and
sugar and chai. I got started on this path when my local tea shoppe
started offering it's own tisanes with oolong and black. The owner
was very enthusiastic about this approach and it has taken me awhile
to come aboard about once a week. You can end up with a whole that is
greater than the sum of the parts.

Jim

Hi, Jim,
While I was in Chicago, I noticed a very large selection of tisanes at
the TeaGschwender shop. They also have many online.
I got a Blood Orange for my sister and she's been mixing a bit of it
with Yunnan Blacks and liking it. I even like it "straight".
It could be because they are a Germany-based company that the
selection is so vast.
Shen

Space Cowboy wrote:

So specifically what are these two characters
konbu,kobu,katakana,hiragana. I saw them on a Japanese tin in the
Sasha thread in January.

Now I'm not quite sure what you mean so I hope this makes sense.

Your first word (which you called "Chinese") would also be the Japanese word
for "kelp" written in Kanji and, according to my dictionary at least, can
be pronounced as both "kobu" and "konbu". No idea which pronunciation is
more common.

Your second line would be the Hiragana for "kobu" (without that stray "chi"
at the end ;-).

To expand on what "Thitherflit" wrote: the Kanji version of the Wikipedia
article about "konbu" is just a redirect to the Katakana spelling. The
article generally uses the Katakana spelling (konbu) and the Kanji in
parantheses in the first line.

Like Thitherflit said, the situation is reversed for "konbucha" which seems
to be mostly spelt in Kanji. To further confuse you I looked it up in a
very popular Japanese online dictionary (the site is in Japanese) and it
lists the Kanji and transliterates it only to the Hiragana "kobucha"
(without the "n").

Not sure if any of this is useful to you though ;-).

HTH,
Stefan

Thanks for the Romanji and Kana clarification.

Could you provide the URL of the Japanese dictionary?

Jim

On Feb 17, 5:19 pm, Stefan Goetzinger wrote:
Space Cowboy wrote:
So specifically what are these two characters
konbu,kobu,katakana,hiragana.
....buzz cut here and there...
Your second line would be the Hiragana for "kobu" (without that stray "chi"
at the end ;-).

To further confuse you I looked it up in a
very popular Japanese online dictionary (the site is in Japanese) and it
lists the Kanji and transliterates it only to the Hiragana "kobucha"
(without the "n").

Not sure if any of this is useful to you though ;-).

HTH,
Stefan

On Feb 19, 6:08 am, "Space Cowboy" wrote:
Thanks for the Romanji and Kana clarification.

Could you provide the URL of the Japanese dictionary?

Jim

On Feb 17, 5:19 pm, Stefan Goetzinger wrote: Space Cowboy wrote:
So specifically what are these two characters
konbu,kobu,katakana,hiragana.

...buzz cut here and there...



Your second line would be the Hiragana for "kobu" (without that stray "chi"
at the end ;-).

To further confuse you I looked it up in a
very popular Japanese online dictionary (the site is in Japanese) and it
lists the Kanji and transliterates it only to the Hiragana "kobucha"
(without the "n").

Not sure if any of this is useful to you though ;-).

HTH,
Stefan- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Jim,
Just a note on a green I had yesterday in a restaurant: Prince of
Peace -ugh! old fishy/nasty kelpy. Stay away from this stuff.
They had re-tinned the tea and I really don't know which green it was
- no one seemed to know. But, ugh!
Shen