Catch Up - Part II - Mrs. Kelly's Teas

In December (December 6 to be precise), I talked Eryn into going to Mrs. Kelly's Tea's annual tea tasting.  M.A. Rosko from Channel 9's morning news had talked about it during the week - Eryn and I watch the news together in the morning and although Fox isn't necessarily in line with my political sentiments, they have a good local morning show here in the Twin Cities - and Eryn is a pretty serious tea drinker.

I think we tried almost 30 teas each.  We got there early enough to lock in a little table and two chairs, so one off us would go off and create three tea bags and bring them back with water, we'd spend a few minutes talking about our first sips, and then the other one of us would go find three different teas.  It was a tea assembly line.



There were several areas to fill your tea bags with a theme to the areas - fruity vs. black vs. oolong vs green.  This was one of several areas.  You just grabbed a few open-topped bags and scooped a plastic spoon of tea into each one to put in a small styrofoam cup.


Water stations were in the hallway so you could refill your cups.  While it might seem very un-eco-friendly to have all those styrofoam cups, it did make for less of a mess and Eryn and I were able to reuse the six we had (our 3/3 rotation cups) for everything we drank and there were collection and recycling spots all over the place (although I'm not sure if you can recycle styrofoam cups yet).


So here's our official set up with our tea list and cups.  We tried:

1. Africa Fruit Bowl
2. Cozy Chamomile
3. Fairy Tisane (smells like grass, the fresh cut outside kind, not the Colorado kind)
4. Tisane (Hibiscus)
5. Peach Mango
6. Spearmint
7. Honeybush
8. Strawberry Fields
9. Sunrise Surprise
10. Vanilla Orange
11. Strawberry Surprise
12. Cherry Green
13. Citrusnap
14. Chamomile (not cozy)
15. Gunpowder (weird)
16. Jasmine Pearls ($40 a bag and looks like little rolled flowers)
17. Jasmine Ginger (ewww...tasted like vasoline)
18. Emon Green (? or something like that)
19. Minneapple Green
20. Pear
21. Butterscotch
22. Creme of Raspberry (tastes like a scratch and sniff from my childhood)
23. Chocolate Mint (ick)
24. Spiced Orange
25. Banana Foster
26. Assam
27. English Breakfast
28. Russian Smoky (tasted like Bacon)
29. Peach Oolong
30. Holiday Decaf
31. Holiday not Decaf
32. Malted Chocolate or something like that

There might have been a few others.  Both Eryn and I were reeling from caffeine overload by the time we left.  Holiday, Vanilla Orange, and Minneapple were the three we took home, in addition to some gourmet chocolate and a bracelet for my wife from a custom jewelry boutique, Azra Jewelry.  We also doubled down on everything but the jewelry for my mother for her Secret Santa gift.



Here's Eryn before the caffeine hangover kicks in.


A few of the teas including Banana Foster which we snapped a picture of for my sister who refuses to talk about how she once made us Bananas Foster as a dessert.


After Mrs. Kelly's we did a neighborhood tour - this is right next to the warehouse Mrs. Kelly's abides in - and found some lunch at Maeve's Cafe and some books at the local used book store.  Eryn picked up a novel based on Halo, the video game, and I just this week found her three others at the library (although she's currently in the middle of Mort(e)), so our tea and book experiences are still front and center 4 months later.


Maeve's was a nice place to slowly unwind over iPad Fluxx and get some food on top of all that liquid.


I particularly liked this painting, although for most of our visit I thought it was a chalkboard you could write on without damaging the picture.  Fortunately, there was no chalk so I was saved from inadvertent vandalism.


Maeve's also had a wall of poetry, some of it an homage to squirrels.  I wonder if there are tulip bulbs in the sun (XKCD)?


And finally, this has NOTHING to do with the trip to Mrs. Kelly's directly, but it's part of Eryn's tea mini-obsession.  When my wife and I went to The Lagoon to see the animation Academy Award nominations recently, we wandered around Kitchen Windows ogling all the shiny coffee makers and toys.  We left with little for ourselves, but picked up this manatee tea steeper for Eryn (she has a thing for manatees after our first trip to Florida, and a stuffed manatee named Sally).

Blue Springs and the Manatees

Our last full day in Orlando, we rented a car and went to Blue Springs State Park. When I was younger, let's say it wasn't 25 years ago, Kyle, Ben and I did a summer trip from Minnesota to Washington, D.C., then down the coast to Florida, and back to Minnesota.  We were poor and operating mostly out of a car with a tent and some bicycles, so we did a lot of camping at ad hoc locations.  One place we stopped was Blue Springs, renowned as a wintering area for manatees.  Around mid-November they shut down the swimming because hundreds of manatees swim into the spring area to enjoy the relatively warm 72 degree water coming from the spring.  But on November 1 swimming was still open and there was a chance we'd see a few.  You're supposed to stay away from them as the rangers have had problems with teenagers carving their initials into them (yes, really) and pushing the babies away from their mothers, but even when you don't go near them, they like to come give you a shove and swim under you, and roll around in your space.

There are alligators in the area as well, although for the most part they seem to stay away from where the manatees are.  I suspect they lose to the manatees in any shoving match.  And the water in the spring area is so clear you can see everything in your space.  Over the "boil", the spring, which is like 120 feet deep and has a constant stream of scuba divers going to and from it even on a slow day like the day we were there, you can see down to where all the water is welling up to push you around which is a bit creepy.

Near the entrance to the spring area, where it joins the river and the water is more brackish and full of weedy places to hide, there are many warnings about the alligators.  They don't want you to miss them.


Although Eryn's not scared of any damn sign.  I think I see some eyes in the water to her right.


The water is even clearer than it looks in this picture.  All those brown things are big three foot long gars.


The staff pointed us at a geocache that doesn't seem to be in geocaching.com.  Perhaps it's because it's full of two kilos of cocaine?  I jest. Those are two bags of rock/sand, and the cache was some sort of Sea World cache.  Eryn grabbed a coin and bracelet, but there was no way to log the find.


Let us get to the actual manatees.  Here are the two that were swimming with Eryn and I.  A mother and her pup.


It's not well known that manatees are particularly susceptible to mind control.  Here I do my best to start my manatee army of evil by implanting the mental suggestion that they go forth and do my bidding.  If you're an enemy of mine, I'd stay away from any temperate waters and avoid any manatees dressed as mermaids.


They seemed to particularly like Eryn and would follow her around.  She was a little nervous when she was out in the open water where she couldn't touch the bottom, but there was a nice set of steps you could sit on, as well as some shallow areas with rocks.  In this picture she wasn't going under to look at them first.  They were definitely coming over to stare at her.


Go forth!  Do as I command!  In this picture do I look as cold as I felt?  72 degrees isn't freezing, but it's not exactly swimming pool warm, and there was a good breeze blowing branches out of the trees that added to the chill and called up goose bumps on my pasty white Minnesota skin.


Pooteewheet checking out the manatees.  They made it a point to wander back and forth underneath her.


The steps I was referring to and the manatees getting a close look at Eryn.  She says this was her favorite part of vacation.  Even better than the roller coasters and Harry Potter world.


My favorite picture was one I could have taken in Minnesota.  SQUIRREL!!!  I think it lends itself to putting a word bubble on it so I can add silly captions.