It’s been a rough year. I won’t go into that here but I have to say it’s good to be back! I’ve missed blogging the last 6 months or more. I have been sipping on teas here and there but I really have to get back into the swing of things.

I thought an interesting way to do that was to get thru some of my really old teas that I didn’t have the heart to throw away but really need to do the old ‘sip down’ with if you know what I mean.

I thought I would share some of my BLEND AT HOME Tea Recipes with you all.

Today I have combined two of my old Teavana tarts with a random black tea. What I did is take 3 teaspoons of Raspberry Riot Lemon Mate, 1 teaspoon of Pineapple Kona Pop, and 1 teaspoon of a straight-up black tea and threw the loose leaves into a tin and shook it ‘real good’. From that, I then took about a tablespoon and cold brewed a cup.

With what little black tea I did use (and with all of the other ingredients involved) you could barely tell the black tea was present. Other ingredients included: Apple, Marigold, Orange, Pineapple, Rose, Raspberry, Lemongrass, Yerba Mate, Hibiscus, and rose hip peels.

Since you can see most of the other ingredients are sweet, fruity, and citrusy – I found this BLEND AT HOME to be pretty yummy iced. I haven’t tried it hot, to be honest, but it ‘hit the stop’ this late summer and early fall.

It smelled more like a mellow raspberry followed by pineapple.

The post-infusion color was a light brown with hibiscus-type hue. The flavor combo upfront seemed to follow suit with the raspberry and pineapple combo. But in the middle of the sip you could taste the lemon and orange and shortly after that the apple came into play. There was a fruity yet gentle floral flavor to round it all out at the end.

For one of my first official attempts I thought this was a goody!