I Love My Tea

Never thought I'd be a tea lover.  It's just never been... well... my cup of tea.  I keep reading over the past year how good it can be for you.  So, I've been trying to find something I like.  My daughter and I were at the mall and she wanted to duck into Teavana.  I'd just been to China and knew good tea is expensive, but really didn't think about it when I fell in love with Youthberry White tea at the Teavana store.  My daughter and I really liked it.  So, I thought let's get some.  The salesman was very good and he talked me into buying a pound of tea and a tin.  It was all on sale you know.  He rang it up and said, "That will be $92."  I didn't want to embarrass myself or my daughter by yelling out, "NINETY TWO DOLLARS!!"  I just got out my ATM card and paid.

After I left the store I expressed my concern over the expensive tea.  My daughter got out her calculator and figured out that the amount of tea I bought would come out to 62 cents a cup.  I calmed right down, because really that's quite reasonable.

I've had the tea for over a month and I have 2 cups a day.  I still LOVE it.  I even bought more.  Every time my daughter talks to me I've bought more tea.  MOM!  She says knowing it's not cheap.  I only got 2 more flavors.  I got Opus Rouge for making ice tea.  It was very strongly grape flavored almost raisiny and I don't care for raisins too much.  So, I bought another flavor called Wild Orange Wulong to combine with the Opus Rouge.  The combination is so good.  So, good I started combining it with the Youthberry too.

That's where this post come from is my love of the Wild Orange Wulong.  It had chunks of dried orange.  I make sure a piece of it is in every cup.  I realized even with breaking them up I'd never have enough for the whole bag of tea.  I decided to dry my own orange.  A new fun experiment.

Fresh and ready to dry.

My dehydrator is in the garage as not to heat up the house in the summer.  That's when I use it the most.  Now that I'm thinking about it it's winter and maybe I should bring it in the house?  I got 8 Cara Cara oranges.  They are my favorite oranges.  Love their pink color and their great flavor.  Crossing fingers they'll be great in tea.

After a few hours of drying.

Anyhow I keep expecting to go out into the garage and have it smell like wonderful orange.  Nope.  My dehydrating book said, "Do not dry citrus fruit."  Not very encouraging.  I'm thinking they are saying you wouldn't want to eat it.  I plan on making tea with it.  I want it dry and crispy.  I started it at 130 degrees F and after a few hours it said to turn down to 125 degrees F.  They are pretty juicy.  I checked it after about 4 hours and I feel confident to leave it drying all night.  Hoping garage will smell great in the morning.

February 28th the next morning.  Garage never did get a wonderful orange smell to my disappointment.  What it lacked in smell outside it smelled fantastic inside the dehydrator.  I opened it up to see my little beauties dried to perfection!

I sliced up 8 oranges that weighed about 5 pounds. 

They dried up to weigh 1 pound.  They were the perfect size.  I sliced the fresh orange in 1/2 inch slices.  Then I quartered them.  They dried to 1/4 inch thick pieces just like what came in my tea from Teavana.  As I was leaving for my knitting meeting a threw a couple slices into my tea to go.  The extra orange flavor was delightful.

 Make sure to bag them up tight.  No telling what kind of vermin will try and get at them. :)