Thunderstorm Green Tea

Need something to quench your thirst? Try Boston Harbor ‘s Thunderstorm Green Tea 

Thunderstorm Green Tea won’t be a disappointment when you come in to Boston Harbor Tea to try this fantastic tasting tea! Thunderstorms are on the horizon, skies darken, and a heaviness is in the air. You become weighed down with humidity and, suddenly, wind turns from a breeze into a gale. The air pops with electricity and a loud crack of thunder sends you running for cover. Lightning flashes can be seen on the periphery of your eyesight. Finally, rain begins slowly pummeling your head and then builds in strength and you are soaking wet. Relief!

Surprisingly, this is what you can experience with one taste of Thunderstorm Green Tea.

Green Scented Thunderstorm Tea

Scented tea is made from different types of finished tea leaves that are scented slowly with different fresh flowers to absorb aroma and flavor. Therefore, because tea slowly absorbs any flavor and aroma, it means quality scented tea will take at least 2-3 weeks to fully absorb the scent.

Made with green tea, lime, lemongrass, coconut, lemon bits and  calendula petals, Thunderstorm Green Tea will bring refreshment like no other, hot or iced. Furthermore, the lemon aftertaste soothes the tongue pairing well with the other ingredients giving you a lift and quenching your thirst.

Nutritional Value

Lemongrass,  a source of essential vitamins:

•  A
•  B1 (thiamine)
•  B2 (riboflavin)
•  B3 (niacin)
•  B5 (pantothenic acid)
•  B6 (pyridoxine)
• folate
• vitamin C

Also, it provides essential minerals such as potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, manganese, copper, zinc and iron.

Calendula, reduces inflammation

• the ability to speed healing
• protect oral health
• boost vision
• reduce the risk of certain cancers
• eliminate cramps
• aid in making your skin better

 

Harbor Tea – Boston Harbor’s Own New House Drink

Tea-Mates! We at Boston Harbor have created a new house drink using matcha green tea and we’re calling it Harbor Tea!

Matcha tea is traditionally, a ceremonial Japanese green tea which is ground into a super fine powder and is whisked with a bamboo whisk to a frothy consistency. This tea is filled with lots of anti-oxidants that help fight against heart disease, blood pressure, and regulates blood sugar.

Our Harbor Tea is an iced cool drink that has matcha layered over a Smoothie, or a blended lemonade. Once it is presented to you, you can stir it together and it is ready to drink!

This drink not only looks fun, but it tastes delicious and has some great benefits to it too. Stop by and try it. Let us know what you think.

Have a great Day everyone!

 

15 Random Facts About Tea

1. Camellia sinensis is the name of the plant that tea is made from and it closely resembles an evergreen shrub.
2. The legend of tea started in 2737 B.C. when tea leaves accidentally fell into the boiling water of Chinese Emperor Shen Nung.
3. There are four main types of tea: White, Green, Oolong, and Black.
4. The oxidation process is how you get the various types of tea. White is the least oxidized, then green, then oolong, then black which is the most oxidized.
5.  There are 2 ways the term tea can be used. Tea is technically the Camellia sinensis infused in hot water, but many people use the term “tea” to describe the drink of herbs and plants infused in hot water.
6. Out of all the tea drinkers in the world, Ireland drinks the most. Britain drinks the second most.
7. Damp tea leaves can be used as a mosquito repellant. Place the damp tea leaves around the area you want mosquito free.
8. Tea is the most consumed beverage in the world next to water.
9. Green tea is great for health and immunity. It’s high in antioxidants, can help reduce some forms of cancer, lower blood pressure, regulate blood sugar, reduce cardiovascular disease, and prevent tooth decay and gum disease.
10. A pound of loose leaf tea can make over 200 cups of tea.
11. Tea is the national drink of Iran and Afghanistan. They use green tea as a thirst quencher and black tea as a warming drink. Both of the beverages have lots of sugar added to them.
12. Using loose leaf tea will offer you more flavor, smell, and benefits compared to using bagged tea which, more often than not uses the “bottom of the barrel” or whats left from the broken tea leaves.
13. Yin Zhen and Silver Needles are highly prized. They come from China and are harvested before they are unfurled, and look like needles.
14. People in the South and Northeastern part of the United States have more tea drinkers than the rest of the U.S.
15. The most expensive tea meal can be found at the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong that costs $8,888 per pair.

These facts were found from the following websites
http://facts.randomhistory.com/tea-facts.html
http://www.tea-garden.eu/interesting.html
https://www.finedininglovers.com/stories/tea-facts/
http://www.notimeliketeatime.com/26-interesting-facts-about-tea/
http://theteaspot.com/loose-tea-vs-tea-bags.html

and
20,000 Secrets of Tea by Victoria Zak
If your interested in buying this book you can click here to purchase it.

What!? Marshmallows made with Marshmallow root?!

Over the 14 years that Boston Harbor has been running in Billings Montana, we’ve had many people come in and tell us that they were going to try to make marshmallows out of marshmallow root. As you know, marshmallow root in one of the main reasons why this shop exists. You can read more about the amazing benefits of marshmallow root from our past blog here https://www.bostonharbormt.com/?p=539. After hearing about these treats being made and knowing how great marshmallow root is, we decided to give it a try ourselves!

There were a couple different recipes that we tried and they both had very different outcomes.

The first recipe that we tried came from the website New Life on a Homestead. The website and recipe can be found here http://newlifeonahomestead.com/how-to-make-marshmallows-from-marshmallow-plant-root-recipe/.

The article gives two recipe options. We went with the one with less sugar and less ingredients. It was a pretty simple recipe.

2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup raw cane sugar
1 tbsp powdered Marshmallow (root)

Whip egg whites until almost stiff. Add vanilla and whip until stiff. Then whip in the sugar, 1 tsp at the time. Finally, add Marshmallow and whip again. Place by teaspoonful on cookie sheet. Bake in 325 oven for 1 hour.

Now when you think marshmallows, you think the white fluffy sweet treats, right? Well with this particular marshmallow recipe, you end up baking the mixture and it makes a meringue in the end. So they turned out to be more like a cookie instead. They tasted good and you could actually taste the marshmallow root in these “marshmallows”. But we didn’t stop there. Just out of curiosity we took that same recipe and instead of making the blobs like we did in the first trial, we poured the mixture into a pan and baked it just to see if doing it this way would make them fluffy. Essentially it turned out the same as the blobs, but the center of the meringue was kind of chewy. The taste was the same. Some actually liked the second trial better than the first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We taste tested these marshmallow marshmallows to a customer of our and she suggested we try another recipe that she found online. That recipe came from http://learningherbs.com/remedies-recipes/how-to-make-marshmallows/ where you can see the full details on how to make these marshmallows. This was the second recipe that we tried.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup rose hydrosol
1/2 cup water
1 Tablespoon marshmallow root powder
1-2 Tablespoons of hibiscus flowers (these make the marshmallows pink!)
1 cup honey
1 packet of unflavored gelatin
1 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Although this recipe calls for hibiscus flowers, we decided to leave those out and used a full cup of water instead of adding the rose hydrosol (rose water). And we ran out of vanilla extract so we used peppermint extract instead. By the time everything was finished with this recipe, we ended up with the sweet fluffy marshmallows that one would ideally think of. As for the taste, you could definitely taste the peppermint and the honey. The marshmallow root flavor wasn’t as distinct as it was in the first recipe that we tried, but it was still very good and very sticky!! Since we used the peppermint extract in these, we thought they would pair very well with hot chocolate. We also thought about mixing the recipe up a little and trying it with a flavored gelatin of some sort and an extract that might pair well with the gelatin flavor would be fun to try later on. Really you could make them any flavor you wanted to. 

We hope everyone enjoyed reading about our experiment making Marshmallow Marshmallows and if you try it let us know how it went and what do did to yours!

-Lauren

Marshmallow Root

I opened up Boston Harbor to share marshmallow root with everyone. It is one of my favorite herbs because everyone benefits from this plant.  Althaea officinalis is its latin name.

It helps with many different things like reducing inflammation, immunity, anti-aging, disease resistance, kidney weakness, lowers blood sugar levels, shrinks and softens growths, and had protein to build muscle.

Marshmallow is also filled with many nutrients like vitamin A, B1, B2, B3, B5, C, oxygen, calcium, iron, potassium, and magnesium. The list could go on and on.

This plant is amazing!

Marshmallow grows in yards all over. Growing to around 4 feet in length with stems that have jagged edged leaves that are covered with fine hair. The flowers that can grow up to 2 inches wide with colors the vary from white, light red, or purple. You can harvest marshmallow yourself and use all of it’s parts. The roots can be dried and used for tea, the flowers are good for dry chapped skin, and the leaves can be put into a salad and eaten.

Caution:

However, if you use chemicals on your lawn, you do not want to use those. These plants have been tainted by the chemicals. If you do decide you want to start harvesting the marshmallow plant, wait two years after your last lawn treatment and you should be able to harvest them the third year.

When marshmallow root is dried it can be white and fluffy or chunky with a little bit of fluff. It all depends on how it is prepared. When making the tea, it has a faint yellow color if any at all. Marshmallow does not have much of a flavor, it’s not sweet or bitter so if you mix it with another tea or flavor it’s not going to ruin the taste of your drink.

Here is this fun rhyme to help you remember the uses of marshmallow:

Dry places are moistened
Hard conditions are softened
Inflammation goes away
Tissues resist decay.
-Cathie-