Yippee! Today is Tea Tuesday! I am going to focus on some special teas this week. Have you heard of Sip for the Cure? The Republic of Tea has a collection of teas they use to create donation monies for The Susan G Komen Foundation. The funds help breast cancer research. The teas I am offering today are in this collection. Please choose from:
- Pink Lady Apple Green Tea
- Pomegranate Vanilla Rooibos Tea
- Pink Lemonade Green Tea
- Red Cherry White Tea
- Pink Grapefruit Green Tea
- Strawberry Hibiscus Tea
If you aren’t familiar with Tea Tuesday, then let me fill you in. I like to send cards and letters, I also like to drink tea. I combine both of these activities by sharing a hand written note with you, our customers, during these special visits. This week you can submit many different topics to me so I have something to write about. The simple process is this: Please go to our Contact Us page and choose the Community Pursuits radio button. Tell me anything you would like to share, ask a question or comment about the blog. Include your address AND the tea you would like to try from the above collection. I will send you a tea bag, a hand written note and a cool postmark from MMS. No cost. No commitment. No anything but sending your address and comments to me. How simple could that be??
You are probably wondering about the HARVESTS in the subject. Well, you might be aware that we have a company garden. Long time readers will know we have used the extra ground around our building to put in a wonderful company garden. We planned the seeds, harvests and timing of all the items in our garden. We planted, hoed, weeded and Mitch watered our garden. I would like to say WE on the watering, but the reality is that Mitch took good care of us over the summer. Our last garden projects were salsa and chili sauce. On Friday September 23 we sliced and diced and made 302 pints of salsa. These jars are for all the staff and a few special people who came to help. Before our canning season started, each staff member signed up for the jars they wanted. When salsa day arrived we decided it would be a 1 day project. It was! We finished with 302 pint jars!! Tonya, my sister, brought her friend, Cinda, from Salt Lake City for our special day. Jerry, the twinkle in Andee’s eye, came too. We worked hard and we got this whole project finished. WHEW! The following week we made 96 jars of chili sauce.
So, now that you know about our recent harvests, what about the CATTLE? Well, we all live in a rural area. Our office/warehouse building is in the small city of Nibley. Our neighbor had a loose fence post and Saturday morning his cattle came for a buffet breakfast. They had red corn, yellow corn, bi-color corn, watermelon leaves, pumpkin, green beans, and the corn stalks! Our summer garden projects dwindled into a disaster that only huge bovines could create. We found our watermelon plants were hiding 72 watermelons! We would have been lycopene high come watermelon harvest time. Anyway, the only things left to harvest from our garden are hot peppers and zucchini. After all the staff reviewed the garden we harvested one last zucchini, an 11.44 lb monster! I don’t know about you, but zucchini season is the only time of year we truly focus on locking our doors. Your car isn’t even safe at church from a drive-by zucchini deposit! Now we have come to the untimely end of our garden. We’re glad for the harvests we’ve had and the jars of sunshine that will be opened this winter.
So, my last thought of the day is a great foot-in-mouth comment I heard today. The comment was that this person couldn’t bring herself to “working with people who do NOT have a degree.” I don’t know about you, but, my opinion is that a DEGREE does not make an intelligent person. If you are out there reading, making soap, or even pondering our cattle incident, I want you to know that honest, hard-working people are the kings and queens of my world. You might have a degree, you might not, but your core morals and beliefs are far more valuable to me than anything else you possess.
To end on a happy note, I want to give away a few mugs. I will choose two people who comment on this blog post at blog.thesage.com and send them their style mug/cup. Tell me if you are a mug drinker at the computer, a cup drinker at the table, or a mobile drinker in the car, train or subway. I’ll arrange for a special treat to come your way.
Have a great week and a special Tea Tuesday,
Hi Tina,
Thanks for sharing your harvest story. I had fun reading it, especially the cattle part! An 11.4 lb zucchini he? I bet next Tuesday you will be sending a nice thick slice of zucchini bread along with your special tea!
I live in Canada so I am not expecting to be send a mug, but after reading your question about mug I had to run to the kitchen and make myself a nice big mug of hot chocolate. There is pottery sale every year in my hometown and every time I find a interesting big thick (not the dainty ones with breakable handle) handmade pottery mug I buy one. I have a few in my collection so far and they make the best hot chocolate during those cold winter days. It is getting colder now and I have started making myself more and more hot chocolate. Since I still have a few herb in the garden I treat myself and add a few fresh leave of mint to my hot chocolate. Hummmm!
Have fun giving out those tea and mug!
Julie ^_^
I am so sorry the cows got to your garden, but at least you know the produce didn’t go to waste, they obviously enjoyed it! Better luck next year! I am a mobile tea drinker, in the car, cleaning house, or out and enjoying my 9 year old daughter. Especially lately, as I was diagnosed with kidney stones and told i have to triple the amount I drink in a day. So LOTS of tea for me!
What a shame to lose so much of the company garden to your neighbors’ cows! At least they didn’t get to enjoy everything.
As for the comment your heard on not wanting to work with people that don’t have a degree – wow. All I can say is that school isn’t for everyone. I am proud to say I worked hard for my Bachelor’s degree and I wouldn’t change that for anyone, but I have never and will never look down on someone who doesn’t hold a degree. My husband is a highly intelligent man, but school isn’t his forte. He reads a LOT on a wide variety of subjects and can hold his own in pretty much any conversation. I feel sorry for people that feel that degrees define a person. I’ve also known highly educated people that are book smart, but not street smart in any way.
Guess I missed Tea Tuesday, but I cannot believe that a person would actually make a comment like the person who didn’t want to work with someone who didn’t have a degree…that’s just such a stupid statement that I had to comment. I’ll have to keep my eyes open for Tea Tuesday more often…I loved the story too. I’m an afternoon tea drinker at my desk at work. I love tea in every way shape and form! I have many teas from The Sage and I love them all. Thanks for the fun story!
Roxene,
Tina sends out Tea Tuesday letters at any time! You should request one and she will be more than happy to write you a letter and send some tea. All Tea Tuesday requests will be honored at any time. We may have to substitute a tea if we are out, but those requests are honored.
Hi, I want to cheat to get the mug. Is cheating allowed? I am the past Utah State Fair Champion Canner for the year 2000. Why is that important? Because I am posting my blue ribbon Ginger Pear Jam recipe so you can all enjoy it too.
Ginger Pear Jam
5-6 lbs. ripe pears (peeled, cored and cut into 1/4 inch sized pieces)
2 cups sugar
3-4 Tbsp. finely chopped crystalized ginger (I buy the brand Nutty Guy from Smith’s grocery)
2 tsp. grated lemon peel
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped out (I cook it in the jam first to soften it, then scrape out seeds and return to jam)
(If you want it to be blue ribbon delicious, do not substitute any ingredients, this is high quality jam and low sugar too)
Place all ingredients in a heavy bottomed pot. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer and cook for about 1 hour. Stir frequently, especially towards the end, do not scorch. It is ready when thick and the pears appear translucent and are soft. Remove remaining vanilla bean husk. Pour into sterilized 8 oz. jars with lids and screwbands and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. If you are not familiar with canning, buy a canning guide by Kerr or Ball and follow their procedures. Makes approximatey 6, half pint jars.
As for the education snob, maybe her time would be better spent volunteering to help young disadvantaged kids learn to read. Receiving a formal education is a privilege and is becoming very costly. Hear, hear for self study, hard work and compassion.
What a great cow story, except for the less than fairy tale ending to your garden. The degree comment is a bit like overhearing a customer say they hope their daughter never has to wait tables, and gets a real job. Respect is earned, not given. I have a lot of respect for hard work and honesty than anything on a piece of paper. That said, most people work very hard for their degrees too. It’s just about what you choose to learn and how you learn it.
There’s a bright side to the cattle destroying your garden – you probably won’t have to till as much and also got lots of free fertilizer in the process. MMS sounds like a really fun place to work.
I am sorry to hear of your cow adventure. Having grown up on a farm in the midwest and having worked on ranches in the west as an adult I understand your cow delema. Those gals can undo more work in a moment than any other critter I know.
I am a coffee mug person, as a potter I appreciate the feel of a good solid mug in my hands. I am a computer, table and mobile drinker. I have my first cup before I go to work in the morning in front of my computer, I have a second cup on my hour drive to work and then I have a cup at work during morning meetings.
I love zucchini stories!! They are a wonderful bountiful and versatile veggie but at times overly productive even in the Montana summers where the days are often dry and nights are cool.
I am not sure why some folks feel that a college diploma has anything over on life experience, hard work and dedication. Our values as a society seem to be changing and not for the better.
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