T Stands For Green Tea

Today begins with

what I will call "Craft Tea."  This is green tea I bought several years ago.  I got a box of 100 green tea bags for $1.00 (USD).  I cannot reiterate this enough.  This is craft tea, so keep your tea vessel in your craft area, not your cooking area.  I plan to use it in art and dyeing some book pages. 

Green tea has tannins, which are a type of polyphenol, a fancy word for substances naturally produced by plants.   A strong antioxidant, tannins are found in large quantities in green tea. Antioxidants protect your cells from toxins in the environment.  Green tea is among the teas with the highest amount of tannins.  The tannins in green tea help boost immunity and provide protection from many harmful toxins.  The University of Maryland Medical Center notes that drinking green tea can help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease and certain types of cancer.  Tannins in green tea bind to iron, something useful in crafts, but not in the human body, especially anyone prone to anemia.

For those of you who follow my blog on a daily basis and not just on T day, this will be useful information when I create crafts from this tea later in the week.

 more : http://www.ehow.com/about_5084474_polyphenols.html. A strong antioxidant, tannins are found in large quantities in green tea. Antioxidants protect your cells from toxins in the environment

Again, this is NOT a cooking blog, but I made some gingerbread muffins Saturday, in an attempt to stay warm now that daytime temps have dipped well below freezing.

This was a really simple recipe, and clean-up was a snap.  Combine 1 egg, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup molasses, 1/4 cup (one stick) melted butter and 1 cup water.  I used the 1/2 cup measuring cup to wash the sugar and molasses out as I added the water.  Mix these ingredients well. In a large bowl, stir together 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 teaspoons ground ginger, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.  When thoroughly stirred, add the molasses mixture. Beat until everything is well mixed.  Line your muffin pan with paper baking cups.  My pan holds 12 muffins.  

EDIT: Dianne is correct in her comment and I typed the information wrong about the butter.  This is from the original recipe: 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature   
Thanks for catching my faux pas, Dianne.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in a preheated oven at 375 F (gas mark 5, 190 C) or until a tester inserted in the center of your middle muffin comes out clean.  Although the recipe called for using an ice cream scoop, I used my stirring spoon and added the mixture until it was nearly full.  My muffin batter was quite thick, and I wondered if I had done something wrong. 

On the contrary, the recipe yielded moist muffins with extra keeping power.  I took four to Sally and kept eight for myself.  I ate two as soon as they were cool enough to handle.  Little piggy here!  The next two were consumed early Sunday morning and the next two late Sunday night.  These are the final two.  Wish I had saved them all and photographed them as I was making the batch, but I wasn't thinking about that, since my fingers were cold then and have been ever since the heat electricity was out in my neighborhood for nearly a day.

As an aside, for those of you who do not live in the U.S., many single dwelling homes, especially those in the midwest and central states, have central heating and air conditioning, like mine.  When the electricity is off, the electric starter, which controls the pilot light on the heater, keeps the heat from turning on.  So the adage "freezing in the dark" certainly applies to many who experience power outages in the U.S in the winter.  As another aside, I don't know about other cities in the U.S., but in my city, neither the electric nor (natural) gas company (where many get their heat) can turn off your service in the winter.

This started out as "Craft Tea" and turned into a diatribe on cooking and home heating.  However, I'm sure your T post will be far more interesting, so please link any post below that involves some form of drink.   That drink could be made from art, sketched, digital, hybrid, or traditional.  It can be a time when you were out and about, or a drink you had at home.  It could be in the form of a book you read, a postcard you received, scrapbook page you created, or a movie you watched.   It doesn't matter as long as you can, in some way, tie it back to a drink.  After linking your post below, Bleubeard (Squiggles seems to be hiding), the T gang, and I will be by to visit and enjoy whatever you choose to share.  And remember, as Bleubeard would say, your photos may be taken any time, not just on Tuesday.