First, I grabbed a hot candle and burned my left index finger. I have to work today. My typing is a series of ows.
Second, look at my fancy tea.
Blue tea is the latest craze. The color comes from Butterfly Pea flowers. I bought a box from Tea Forte, because someone sent me a gift certificate. The tea colors in the sampler range from pale blue to indigo, turquoise and peridot green. Having obtained the lovely tea, I boasted to Gordon.
Me: Look at my blue tea.
He: Looks like liquid in the commercials for feminine hygiene products.
Thanks, honey. Just what I needed.
The tea from Tea Forte was okay. It makes a great novelty gift, but it’s pricey. Just for fun, I searched Amazon for blue tea and apparently you can buy a big bag of Butterfly Pea flowers for about $10. I am thinking, just a regular green iced tea with a few of these flowers would provide the same color.
Third, the cover for German Magic Stars is provided by the German publisher and sent to us as an FYI. We had no say in it. 😛 Stop asking me questions about it.
Love your tea pots! But seriously, how are you going to pack & move with an owie finger???
I think the tea is very pretty.
Sorry about the ouchie
Haha! G’s comment reminds me of my husband when I came home with what I thought was a delightfully scented candle. He took one whiff and cried, “Agh! Urinal cake!” How rude! lol
I love that teapot!
I’d get the same sort of response from my husband hahaha
The colors of the teas are beautiful. The blue reminds me of Star Trek’s Romunal Ale but in my defense the “ale” was on a recently aired episode of the Big Bang Theory.
Big BAng Theory and Ilona Andrews… what do these two things have in common? I wait with bated breath for each new offering from both of them.
I love your blue and green teas! They look so cute with your glass teapot.?
Ewww
Gordon it does
Pretty! Does it taste as pretty as it looks?
And poor fingers. I sawwy.
For a while there was a trend for lovely miniature floral arrangements that bloomed in the pot as the tea steeped. Glass teapots were popular for this. Did you try any of those?
XX (Kisses for the burned finger)
Poor dear. Nothing worse than losing the full use of an index finger, though, hopefully, you are not a lefty. My right index finger has a bad case of sore joint (arthritis?). It is a real pain until it loosens up in the morning.
The tea is beautiful, both blue and green. I’m not sure I could bear to consume anything that gorgeous. It sounds from your review that it’s all pretty and not so tasty. You could probably mix regular tasty tea with the blue tea, though I fear you might get anything from green to olive drab…
At least someone in Germany seems to have read your books and “Derek” is not totally a pretty boy model. I hate it when the cover illustration says “I am a stock cover image. It was too much trouble to see what the book was about.” (Example: the heroine is constantly mistaken for a teenage boy and swords are mostly too large for her. The cover model is 30 and busty and what is she swinging? Right.)
Phhhbt!
The tea is very pretty. How did it taste?
I enjoyed some lovely blue coloured tea at Haywire on Darby.
When you squeezed a few drops of lemon juice into the teacup – the liquid turned a glorious pink.
I can see Dina serving this tea at Gertrude Hunt.
Hope your finger heals quick. I am glad to see your reaction to the tea, was curious. I may now give it a try.
I wish I liked tea. Some of the flavors sound like they’d be great, but I never developed a taste for it. Guess I’ll have to get my blue drink from booze. 😛
I always did the find and replace for double spaces, but now it depends on what font is used. Some of the thin fonts, like Calibri, make it difficult sometimes to see the period when it follows certain letters.
So just out of curiosity, what font do you use for your manuscripts?
Oops, kind of combined my responses for both of today’s posts.
Love the tea, I’m a big tea drinker and got hooked on Oolong teas after our trip to Japan.
I once got a new hip that was black sheer with flowers on the front and big flowing sleeves (think bell bottom pants size for the sleeves). I loved it and when I first wore it I put my arms out and twirled around. My husband said I looked like a bat. For some reason we are still together…
New shirt…. not hip (although i got a new one of those too this year), darned auto correct…
My sister finally got a cell phone and is learning the “joys” of autocorrect.
I love the idea of a black sheer with flowers hip, though.
Learned long ago not to ask anyone else’s opinion on certain things. You just might get it.
Hopefully you have some of that burn stuff they sell in the pharmacy. It isn’t perfect but it helps.
Oh, boy. Thanks for the laugh.
Just the type of response my brother would give to me.
To give an example: texting back and forth on our phones because that is his thing:
Brother: You need to go run an errand for me.
Me: I am busy doing stuff right now
Brother: 9 out of 10 of older women like to wait on older guys.
Me: what? (my brain is going huh? older? who’s older?)
Yes… it was his version of humor and the texting conversation went more stupid from there.
Gordon’s response gives me hope my brother is not from an alien species.
There’s a woman on Instagram, her name is saltyseattle, she does crazy things with pea flowers and pasta (and so many other colourful things).
Romulan Ale! That’s what the beautiful blue color is. 🙂
Sympathy on the finger, hope it gets better fast.
“Sana, sana, colita de rana
Si no sanaras hoy sanaras mañana”
Just a little saying we Mexican moms say to our kids boo-boos. With a little kiss on the boo-boo.
Hope it heals soon!
Oh, yeah, I did just double space after all my periods. Sorry, force of habit from my high school typing teacher.
Such a coincidence! I just had butterfly pea tea too!!! If you add lime to the tea, the colour changes from blue to purple! I liked it better with lime. 🙂
Hahaha. I don’t think I’ll be able to look at blue tea now without thinking of those commercials. I love green tea so I may try your idea of just adding some blue pea flowers to it.
Cheers!
The tea is a lovely color. But how does it taste?
About that burn. If you put a (nonalcohol) solution of St. John’s Wort on the burn several times over the course of today, the pain will be all gone tomorrow. I warn you that, today, you will wonder just why you are bothering, but you will know why tomorrow. I usually get my St. John’s Wort at Whole Foods or Sprouts.
Gordon! Really? You would say that about something your wife is about to put in her mouth?
The tea is lovely. I am a tea fanatic, but I haven’t tried the blue one yet, I will have to order it. I have a tall, slim, very fluid looking lead glass pitcher that I had commented to my mother needs a deep blue liquid in it to look just gorgeous. This tea would rock in it.
Sorry to hear about your finger. Hopefully it gets better quickly.
Good luck with the move. Moving is always stressful. I just got a promotion at work and was given 4 weeks to report up to South Dakota. /shivers. I am going to let the govt come and pack me up and move my stuff this time. It will be all I can do to get everything else arranged and done before I go as is. Hopefully they don’t destroy anything.
How can you look at that tea and not think potion??
Incidentally, the blue coloring in the butterfly pea flowers are used a lot in Southeast Asian cookery to color rice, desserts and all sorts of other edibles.
both remind me of mouth wash
At some point, get an aloe vera plant and plant it near the house, or get a smallish one and keep it in the kitchen. If you burn yourself, icewater first, then slime yourself with some of the aloe plant. Repeat the smearing every 30 minutes (or just tape a small piece to the burn.) It will eliminate the majority of the pain and speed healing as if Hugh were there. I give them as Christmas presents, and kept the plants at all the restaurants I worked at. Very very effective.
The tea is interesting. Wonder how it tastes. I drink mostly oolong, but white, grren and the occasional black make it in. Can’t say I’ve had a blue tea before.
If you add lemon to the butterfly pea flower tea, it turns pink/purple depending on how much acid you add.
Oooo…..pretty tea! Good to know about your opinion of the Tea Forte teas. I am a tea snob and proud:) I purchase from a local shop and the proprietor goes to expert tea knowledge classes as well as tasting all her teas herself. She has all the answers to questions and all her teas taste how they are suppose to without any weird aftertaste. She is maybe my BFF, but she doesn’t know it:)
I just tried some flavored rock sugar and have had fun adding a hint of caramel or lemon or vanilla to my teas.
oooOOOOoooo!!!! Fancy!
I thought the tea was very pretty and I ordered some as Christmas presents. Then I thought I should look up what flower exactly is the tea from. Then I saw the latin name for it and laughed laughed.
For hot days, we steep about 20 butterfly pea flowers in 2 cups of boiling water for 15 minutes. Let it cool then pour it over lemonade with crushed ice. The ph slowly changes the drink to purple. If you google galaxy lemonade you can find quite a few recipes (including a few mixed drink versions). It’s a lot fun to watch a bunch of adults get so excited over chemistry. 🙂