It's About Time!

A few of my friends already know that there are some aspects of the big city life that I've missed since moving to Brandon, one of which is fine dining. In a sense, this isn't a bad thing since I've encouraged myself to improve on my cooking, but even with dining at home my abilities to experiment are limited by what can be purchased in town or, in rarer instances, in nearby Winnipeg. Fortunately, since the opening of this one particular store in town in August, I can now enjoy some drinks from the comfort of my own home.

"It's About Tea" specializes in selling a whole range of looseleaf teas from all over the world, everything from "pure" teas (e.g. Longjing/Dragon's Well, Rooibos) to blended varieties. Considering the size of the city I was impressed with the number of varieties the store offered, a handful of which are more on the expensive side, and during my first visit to the store a week before the Christmas long weekend I ended up poring over the selection list for over 20 minutes. In the end I decided to stock up on just two varieties, partly from wanting to get an idea of what this store offered, and partly since I still had some other teas, namely Longjing and Huangshan Maofeng (both Chinese green teas), left in stock. I have a particular weakness to Genmaicha, so naturally I bought some of that. I also wanted to have at least one kind of "sweet" tea that could be sipped after a meal or during a relaxing evening (compared to the more vegetable-toned East Asian teas, which I personally associate with during the day or during a meal), so I bought myself some Masala chai. I recently steeped some of the chai, which made for a good drink for a Tim Tam Slam.

Brandonites at least can now enjoy a whole host of teas properly, shipped in looseleaf form and home-steeped, without having to rely on cities elsewhere in Canada to stock up one's cupboards back home. "It's About Tea" is located at 728 18th St.