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Date Posted: 01:44:38 12/13/07 Thu
Author: SS
Subject: 12132007

Imaginary Voyages & Liquid Wisdom Two Degrees Above Just Right
By: Noah Eaton

Japanese scholar and the author of "The Book of Tea", Okakura Kakuzo, said: "Tea...is a religion of the art of life."

Which is why, tonight, I have premiered a new regular feature to my profile: "Now That's My Cup Of Tea: Noah Eaton's Tea Diary", where I will regularly promulgate the selctions of my current tea stash, as I go through my tea inventory about as fast as world-famous competitive eater "Humble" Bob Shoudt goes through nine pounds of Shoofly pies. :)

http://www.boulderteahouse.com/

Each year as I grow older, I've found that my infatuation with tea becomes increasingly manic. When I was temporarily attending school at the University of Colorado at Boulder, one place I especially enjoyed spending much time was at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, at 13th Street & Canyon Boulevard just south of the Pearl Street Mall. It was designed by over forty Tajik artists to mirror the cultural beauty of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where the mayor of Tajikistan came to Boulder in 1987 to announce the presentation of a tea house to the city in celebration of established sister city ties, for in central Asia, teahouses have always served as gathering places where friends come to talk, play chess, etc, many of them designed with Persian art, with patterns and motifs from nature and color. And right in the middle of the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse is this large pool which features seven hammered copper sculptures, all based on the 12th century poem "The Seven Beauties" in which a princess from each of seven different nations narrates a fable that expresses important cultural values.

My personal favorite order I enjoyed having there was the Pleine Lune: a premium Ceylon based tea blended with vanilla smoothness and almond notes with a lingering finish of mountain blueberry, which I could get a whole kettle of for $2.75. Two special honorable mentions I ordered frequently there were the Pi Lo Chun; which translates as "Green Snail Spring" and is a green tea that is planted amid peach, apricot, and plum trees so that, when they are blooming, the tender new shoots unfold and absorb their aromaspring-picked buds, and a white tea called the Silver Needle ”Yinzhen”, which is prepared by laying out on a mat where it is air-dried.

The Dushanbe Teahouse is one of three things I miss most about Boulder, with long walks along Boulder Creek and the Pearl Street Mall, as well as the annual Memorial Day 5K race, the Bolder-Boulder, being the other two. One of the few drawbacks about Portland is that they just don't have a teahouse quite like the Dushanbe Teahouse. My sister Noelle acquainted me with quite a decent tea lounge called "The Tao of Tea" practically right next door to her current residence at "The Moose Lodge" at 34th Avenue & Belmont Street, but in terms of the ambience, it's much more constrictive and dim-litted and doesn't offer the same sort of aesthetic supremacy of a tea-drinking experience Boulder's Teahouse does.

Despite the move, I'm more besotted with tea than ever before, and am also a proud sipping, simpering stalwart of Facebook's #1 tea group "A Cup Of Tea Solves Everything".

And we're not making hay either when we say we're "drinking to our health". Researchers have continued to find time and again that all teas (white, green, oolong and black teas from the Camellia sinensis plant) aid in achieving a long and healthy life, for they contain high amounts of flavonoids, compounds that have antioxidant properties and work to neutralize free radicals, which can damage the body and contribute to chronic diseases (White and green teas contain the most antioxidant properties because they are the least-processed teas)

http://foodconsumer.org/7777/8888/C_ancer_31/121201232007_Green_tea_helps_fight_breast_cancer.shtml

Just today, in fact, a new study was published in the Dec 2007 issue of the Journal of Cancer Biology and Therapy, led by Dr. Radha Maheshwari, professor of Pathology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and Rajesh Loganathan Thangapazham, a graduate student, who found that "green tea inhibits the invading capacity of breast cancer cells by both inhibiting proliferation and induce apoptosis, a programmed death of cells that lacks in cancerous cells."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071207/hl_nm/green_tea_dc

http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/071010/tea-helps-toughen-older-womens-hips.htm

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071002/LIFE/710020308/-1/LIFE03

http://www.stashtea.com/tea_symposium_press_release.pdf

http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/anto/607169.html

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=c892c234-94f8-48bb-b1f1-f76fc6e283e9

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050419094700.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/05/040526070934.htm

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006977B-77B2-1ECA-8E1C809EC588EF21

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6502399.stm

Moreover, from 1) warding off colorectal cancer, to 2) toughening the hips of aging women, to 3) thwarting the development of lung cancer and significantly reducing the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, to 4) treating psoriasis and other inflammatory skin conditions, including dandruff and lupus-related skin lesions, to 5) protecting the endothelium, the lining of the artery, and allowing the blood to flow better to lead to lower blood cholesterol and better blood pressure, to 6) preventing diabetes and cataracts, to 7) fighting human pathogenic viruses, to 8) improving oral health to 9) possibly even keeping HIV at bay in sufferers, according to a March 2007 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, tea is truly the all-around miracle brew, and probably explains better than anything why I'm one of the healthiest young Americans with no real health problems whatsoever.........which I owe heavily to that mere chink of cups and saucers that George Gissing understood all too well in his publication "The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft", which indeed tunes my mind to happy repose.

*

Ergo, without further ado, I'm proud to herald this gala opening of my new regular blog feature: "Now That's My Cup Of Tea: Noah Eaton's Tea Diary". Now, allow me to divulge what I'm currently lavishing my indoor picnics with! :)

*

1) Stash Premium Fusion Green & White Tea: "Unique blend of rare and expensive white tea and top quality green tea. Full of antioxidants."

2) Stash Premium Green Tea Sampler: "Two tea bags each of Jasmine Blossom, Moroccan Mint, Organic Green, Green Chai, Fusion Green, and Lemon Spice, and three tea bags each of Premium Green and Sushi Bar Mild Green."

3) Tazo® Lotus™: "A decaffeinated tea with the subtle essence of lotus blossoms,"

4) Tazo® Berryblossom White™: A delicate white tea, with enticing hints of blueberry and white cranberry.

5) Zhena's Lemon Jasmine Gypsy Tea: Organic, Fair Trade green tea, Australian lemon myrtle & jasmine flower

*

XOXO,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)

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