Roobi Sipper

Thanks, Melissa, for naming our new Rooibos. Roobi Sipper will be the name of our new Pomegranate Cinnamon Rooibos blend. And Melissa won our gift certificate.

Some other names you offered were:

• African Bearclaw
• Autumn Breeze
• Gummy Bear
• Spice of Life
• Fruity Flower
• Absolutely Fresh
• Autumn Symphony in 'mmm' minor
• Name it Cinnamon Pomegranate Rooibos
• Breath of Fresh Air
• Spicy Red
• Sweet Fall
• Autumn Afternoon
• Babbles
• Wild Pacific

Thank you everyone!

• Orchard

Today at the Delmar Market

Today we're featuring some of our personal favorite teas:

• Organic Selimbong Darjeeling - 2nd flush
• Santa Fe Bizcochito
• Summertime Blue
• Tropical Fantasy
• Iron Goddess of Mercy
• Sweet Tart
• Very Strawberry
• Blueberry Bliss

as well as a nice little assortment of our sample tins

A Top Chef Master Used Tea ....

and lost this weeks 4 way master chef competition pretty much because of it. I'm talking about Bravo's Top Chef Masters; Top Chef is one of my favorite shows ever and I like this season's Master Chef competition. The food they are preparing is creative and beautiful and the contestants and critics are always respectful and well behaved Not typical reality TV. Anyway, Nils Noren, the head chef at the French Culinary Institute seemed to have this weeks win in the bag. For his main course he prepared a salmon that looked like it would simply melt in your mouth, and for his dessert course he prepared a chocolate and goat cheese ganache with cara cara orange gel, and Lapsang Souchong whipped cream.

Oh, how excited I was to see someone using tea as a culinary ingredient in a cooking competition! But for those of you who are unfamiliar with Lapsang Souchong, it is a smoked tea. I think I will dedicate a blog post to this tea shortly because I am a huge fan of Lapsang and use it frequently in cooking. Not everyone likes it, but it's definitely a tea to try or at least to sniff. In fact, a few years ago a list of 100 foods to try before you die was circulating on the web, and Lapsang Souchong was on the list. In terms of the taste of Lapsang, people describe campfire, bacon, the woods, Christmas, and occasionally burning rubber!

So, Nils infused his whipped cream with the not at all subtle smokiness of the Lapsang Souchong - with disastrous results. One taster was unable to take a second bite, and the program (edited of course) didn't show a single person who enjoyed the combination of chocolate, cheese, orange, and smoke as a dessert. He was commended, however, for his culinary chutzpah.

I was kind of bummed to see that tea was the ingredient that destroyed an otherwise close to perfect meal, but I was happy to see Michael Chiarello win the competition; he's awfully cute and charming and seemed to "need" the win more than the other contestants.

Help! We're stumped

We have a really nice new rooibos blend but we can't come up with a name. It's fruity, sweet, a little spicy, and nicely balanced. But that would be a cumbersome name.

So we're having a contest. Help us name our tea. Stop in and try a sample or take a sniff. Offer us the gift of your creativity and we'll enter you into a contest to win a $10 gift certificate. And you'll also earn our sincere gratitude.

The name our rooibos contest will continue all week. We'll announce our winner on Tuesday July 21st.

Thank you for your support during our time of need.

Sweet Treats

We now have chocolates from The Chocolate Gecko back in stock. In addition to the chocolate buddha truffles that have our Red Chai in the filling, we also have their very popular Komodo Krunch toffee, chocolate covered orange peel, peanut butter cups, grahams, and assorted truffles.

And in addition to the artisan chocolates, we are also carrying gourmet cookies from Park 19 cookies of Saratoga. We're featuring their Chocolate Chip Pretzel cookies and the ridiculously delicious Cinnamon Bun cookie. Park 19 cookies were featured as Rachael Ray's Snack of the Day!

With the addition of these delicious treats from local businesses, I will no longer be baking here at The Good Leaf. But I know you'll be delighted with these new items. And over the course of the summer, I will be looking for a few addtional local food merchants to expand your choices.

If you would like to place a special order for any of my baked specialties including the green tea cupcakes, red velvets, vegan nirvana, green tea or earl grey cookies, madeleines, brownies, or my chocolate chip pretzel cookies, just contact me a few days in advance, and I'd be glad to whip up a batch especially for you.

Delmar Market July 11

We're back from our fun roadtrip to Cleveland where we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is one of my favorite places; unfortunately the drive is not the most exciting one, but an interesting audiobook and a stop at the Dinosaur in Syracuse on the way home definitely helped.

We're preparing for the Delmar Farmer's Market for tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will hold out; I just looked online and saw those all too familiar lightening bolts on the picture of tomorrow.

In any case, we'll be featuring:

• Orange Pekoe Black Tea
• Earl Grey de la Creme Black Tea
• Tropical Fantasy Green Tea
• Moroccan Mint Green Tea
• Juicy Melon Oolong
• Rooibos de Provence
• Blueberry Bliss Tisane
• Harmony Herbal Blend
• Chamomile Sonata

We'll also be featuring our Red Flower Jasmine (pictured above). This is a jasmine flavored blooming tea. We'll have it at a special price tomorrow only. Normally, Red Flower Jasmine sells for $2/bloom - we will be offering it in packages of 4 for $6. If you haven't tried blooming teas, they are quite the experience. Blooming teas are made of up to 50 tea leaves all tied together, often a flower is tied into the center. When you infuse the bloom in hot water, the tea blossoms to reveal the flower within. Our flowering tea is scented with jasmine to enhance the experience.

As always, we would be delighted to take your orders for any teas we don't have with us, and we'll deliver them to the market the following week.

Delmar Market Tomorrow

Even though the Lark Street shop will be closed tomorrow on the fourth of July, we will be at the Delmar Farmer's Market with a nice assortment of our favorite teas.

Tea-Licious!

Today's tea pun is courtesy of the Albany Times Union.

I've been damp for the past two days. I swear, it doesn't feel like iced tea season. But according to the calender, it's summer and in theory, that's what we should be drinking. So, today's Times Union has an article all about the refreshing beverage. It offers thoughts on good choices for iced tea blends as well as a variety of ideas for how to brew a great cup of iced tea. I admit that the reason I'm telling you about it is because The Good Leaf was one of their sources of information. So I think you should read it, and then brew yourself a nice cup of hot tea, cause it's wet and chilly out there.

Those Summer Hours Stunk!

Those summer hours were just not working. We're going back to the old routine. For the remainder of the summer we'll be open Tuesday - Saturday 12-7; just like old times sans Sunday. In September we'll open on Sundays again as our busier season starts up.

We also have a few additional closings to note

July 4-8
August 4-6
August 18-22

If you stop in and ask why we're closing in early August, I'll tell you a really good story!