Chai with Vanessa from Nifty Thrifty Things

 

My guest poster for today is Vanessa from Nifty Thrifty Things. You should definitely check out her blog. Vanessa is a graphic designer, and that absolutely shows in her elegant blog design and her eye for all things beautiful. She regularly posts recipes, craft tutorials, and floral inspiration and takes gorgeous photos to boot, and all of this with a focus on being frugal.   Vanessa was kind enough to share one of her recipes. This one is for a chai tea concentrate, which will be wonderful to use during the colder  days here in the Northern Hemisphere. Chai is one of my favourite drinks in winter, and after trying Vanessa's recipe I can vouch for it's yumminess. It tasted like I imagine a spice market in India would smell.   But I'll let her tell you about it herself...

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When my mom and I meet up for our (almost) weekly crafting dates, we usually start off the day with a nice and warm cup of chai with steamed milk. It helps us get in the mood for crafting, and during winter, warm up from the cold outside.

While the store brand mix is already pretty delicious, it can get a little pricey and we decided to make our own chai tea mix.

Best decision ever! The homemade chai tea is DELICIOUS!

{chai concentrate}

• PREP: 5 mins
• COOK: 60 mins
• READY IN: 1 hr 5 mins

a delicious, spice infused tea! Yum!

INGREDIENTS

·     4 1/2 cups water

·     10 pods cardamom

·     1/2 — 1 tsp. ground pepper

·     1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

·     3 sticks cinnamon

·     5 pods star anise

·     10 seeds pimento

·     1 vanilla bean

·     1 stalk lemongrass

·     4 in. ginger

·     2 tbsp. brown sugar or honey

·     10 bags black tea

        

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Bring the water to a boil.
2. Add the spices and tea bags and boil at a low temperature for about 1 hour.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and strain the concentrate through a sieve.
4. Add the brown sugar or honey and stir to combine.
5. Allow the mixture to cool before filling it in little bottles or jars.
6.  Mix 1 part of the concentrate with 1 part of milk.
7. NOTES: Personally I prefer my chai latte with steamed low-fat milk. But you can use regular milk, almond milk, soy milk. Serve your chai hot or on ice. Also, play around with the ingredients to get it perfect for your liking. Stronger, weaker, more spicy.

© www.niftythriftythings.com

Tea Time

Quite recently, Erin from My Beautiful Disaster organized a tea swap that little ol' tea drinker me immediately signed up for, and on Saturday I received a very exciting package. My goodies from swap friend Amy of Fate Filled Times had arrived from across the Atlantic! Amy and I had already been emailing since we were partnered up, and I must say that Erin did herself very proud in matching us. 

The first thing I found when I opened the parcel was a beautifully stamped envelope. Inside the envelope there was an equally beautiful card with a message from Amy. She had carefully picked 6 different teas for me, all of which she loves herself. So with her card came personal notes on how she likes to drink each one, which was really thoughtful.

The teas Amy sent me are such fun! They are six different mixes with creative names and I can see myself liking them all. The very first sachet I unpacked contained a tea called 'Oh Canada', and if you read my blog, you will know that I have a wild love for this country, but am feeling a bit mopey about the fact that my husband is spending time there without me at the moment. So this tea brought a little bit of Canada to me that morning. Another blend contains cocoa, and yet another golden sugar balls. Amazing! I wanted to try them all at once!

I took some pictures of the tea to show on the blog, and suddenly the tea shoot turned into a cat shoot. My sweet, curious Mae came to see what I was doing, lured by the sound of tissue paper.

Mae took her time to sniff at every bag and would not let me take one more photo without her in it. So I decided I might as well make some tea! It will not be hard to guess which bag I ended up opening first. With the smell of syrup and caramel came tiny sugar maple leaves! I could not have been happier!

Thank you, Amy, for the wonderful new teas you gave me to try. I am looking forward to drinking each one of them! I am very glad that we made a connection through this swap and happy to discover that our love of tea is not the only thing we share. Thank you, Erin, for being a genius and organizing this! And if anybody is curious about what I sent Amy, you can go have a look here.

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).