TeaGeek
by

TeaGeek

Check out the review from Glasgow Food Geek who sampled our March Teas of the Month – loose leaf tea doesn’t need to be difficult!

Glasgow Food Geek Blog | Restaurant & Food Reviews in Glasgow, Scotland

You will maybe remember my post a few months back about trying to stay caffeine free this year….as it turns out that is perhaps not as achievable as I might have imagined, but I have without doubt definitely cut down on my intake massively.

A decaf latte is something I have as a treat because it is loaded down with so many chemicals that I struggle to believe it can be any better for me than caffeine is. Sometimes I do buckle and have one as a little indulgence. On the whole now though I am powering through Green Tea, White Tea, Rooibos and Chai like it is going out of fashion.

The lovely Sarah over at Glasgow company TeaGeeks saw my plight on twitter and offered me a small selection of tea samples to try…which I was more than happy to try. I was very excited a few…

View original post 264 more words

by

Matcha!

Ok, so I’m a bit obsessed with matcha just now!  I’ve been mixing matcha with herbs to make some homemade iced tea goodness.  This picture below was a great mix of nettle, peppermint, white matcha & sencha.  I put it all in a 1L water bottle overnight and drank it throughout the day at work and I loved it!

https://instagram.com/p/t2dVdcmJi7

Making matcha is soo easy.  Once you have the powder you can add it to a cold drink and shake it to mix it up.  Or you can mix it up first and then drink it or add it to whatever you’re making.  If you don’t have a whisk you can use a spoon or a spatula to mix it up.  You can use it with all sorts of things and we’ll post more ideas and recipes as time goes on.  Do you have any recipes to share?

making matcha

making matcha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from http://www.chinaqualitytea.com/html-en/product-gNfKUpBFIkWm-matcha(Sencha-powder).html

 

We have 20% off our matcha on our website for the rest of the month, so pop over to teageeks.com and get whisking!

by

Business: websites – outside looking in

Sometimes, I’m amazed at how much work is involved in running an online shop.  Seriously!  I would never have imagined that it would take this much work, but it does and it’s not the simplest of processes.  It’s fairly easy to set up a basic shop and sell things online but to take it further than that is actually quite demanding and in light of what I’ve been up to this past few weeks, it is this area of business I want to talk about in this blog post.

Walter Scott monument - Edinburgh

Walter Scott monument – Edinburgh

This month I have done quite a bit of work on my website teageeks.com.  And while it might not look like it has changed much from the outside, I have spent a lot of my time learning about how to operate it from the inside.  Earlier this month, I went on a 3 day training course in Edinburgh to learn how to use the software from which teageeks.com runs.  This was a really great opportunity for me to learn a lot in a short space of time.  You see, no-one has taught me how to maintain or update a website.  I’ve been learning as I go.  This takes up a lot of time and means that if I decide to implement something (like the twitter feed on the home page) I have to search the web on how to do something before I can do it.  I find this information mainly from videos, forums and wikis and often I can’t find my answer, or I implement the change and it doesn’t work.  Back to the web.  This has been a laborious process so far and I’m really happy with the website so far, however it was my hope that by doing a training course and learning how to use the software that my website runs from, it would save time and money in the long run and will free up time to focus on other areas like marketing, sales or improving processes.

View of Calton Hill - Edinburgh

View of Calton Hill – Edinburgh

The course, which I would highly recommend, was run by Mage Training.  It was a 3 day course and the trainer (Deryck) was impressive with his knowledge of Magento.  It was informative and clearly explained, with an easy to follow structure.  And I even left with a bumper-size manual outlining everything that was covered in the classes, which will be priceless as a reference tool.  I would honestly recommend this course to anyone who has a Magento store and wishes to get it up and running.  The only thing I would say is that it covered a lot of ground, therefore being familiar with the admin area of Magento would be really useful and would, in my opinion, allow you to get more out of the course.

by

Kombucha

It’s difficult to say Kombucha, never mind know what it is.  I only heard about it a year or so ago while researching teas online.  Since then I have tasted it, read about it and now finally, I have a brewing kit to make some of my own!  As I’ll be posting pictures of my brewing process and its (hopefully) successes, I thought it might be useful to do a blog post about it, so that people can see my pics then read up about it too.

So, Kombucha is a fermented drink, made up of tea.  It is usually black or green tea used and the tea is fermented using bacteria and yeast (aka SCOBY).  Kombucha is claimed to have many health benefits such as aiding digestion, detoxification, joint care and boosting your immune system, however there is little scientific evidence for this.  While it is considered generally safe, there have also been some concerns.

It seems to have been present in many cultures for centuries, such as Russia and Japan and according to Wikipedia, Kombucha was popular in China in the 50s & 60s with many people making it at home.  It has recently seen a surge in Western culture as more people start to learn about it and brew it at home.

So, keep an eye out for my Kombucha updates both here and on the Facebook and twitter pages.  Here’s a picture below of my brewing kit, right out of the box (I love that it has a colourful muslin cloth with it!).  I hope that you enjoy reading about some more tea adventures!

Kombucha kit

Kombucha kit