Tea With A Heart, Part 2

In the rat race to coin the hottest new food descriptor, terms of substance are quickly eroded by the corner cutting of corporations quick to jump on the bandwagon. Take the kind of "free range" chickens that have a door to the outside but whose legs are too weak to carry their enormous, genetically modified breasts. Among these organic snake oil salesman, Tetulia Teas stands out as different and refreshing as a breath of fresh air or nice cup of green.

Tetulia has chosen to label their tea "garden direct sustainable," but that's just the beginning. They're also a co-op whose membership benefits include getting a cow. This cow is paid for not with money, but in milk and dung (for fertilizer), and any offspring may be kept by the owner. The co-op also includes health programs and education both for young people and for area farmers interested in growing organically. The one room schoolhouse in which these classes take place, plus the playground equipment, are all built from bamboo donated by the community. Unlike a quasi-liberated chicken, this company's ideals can stand on their own two feet.

Tetulia is also the first and only organic tea garden in Bangladesh. While that's a far cry from being "local" for U.S. residents, tea is exactly the kind of provision worth using some fossil fuels to import, because you can't really get it here. The only commercial tea garden on the entire continent is in Charleston, is owned by Bigelow, and grows hundreds of varieties of tea only to sell them in one blend. It's a simple black tea that ices well, and the garden is an extremely pleasant place to visit, but it's also proof that you can't always get precisely what you want in your own backyard.

Despite the carbon footprint incurred in shipping, there's a case for using our first world purchasing power to make change in less developed countries. See Michael Pollan on buying asparagus from Argentina:

"You can make a good argument that my purchase generates foreign exchange for a country desperately in need of it, and supports a level of care for that country's land -- farming without pesticides or chemical fertilizer -- it might not otherwise receive."

(Though he adds that it tasted "like damp cardboard.")

Tetulia offers standard black, green and white as well as herbal blends featuring "ayurvedics." These are harvested from the very trees used to shade the tea plants and are used in such exotic flavor combinations as the Tulsi Infusion, with holy basil, and Vaska Laka, with malobar nut and ginger. Then there's Neem Nectar, which their website describes as "a purifying drinking experience from the magical Neem tree or Azadirachta Indica."

The tea bags and containers? Biodegradable and compostable, respectively. Tetulia is no pipe dream either, as it's been around since 2000 and the co-op has over 1,000 members, a figure they plan to quadruple within the next few years. As if it's near angelic qualities weren't convincing enough, they're also offering a 10% discount through the website. Now you really have no excuse.

For every time you walk into Whole Foods and get overwhelmed by the half truths of their many seemingly progressive labels, remember that there are companies like Tetulia out there who are only full of shit in the sense that their members pay their dues in dung.

Tea With a Heart, Part 1

Once upon a time, I thought the kosher laws represented the pinnacle of all things edible. As a young adult, "organic" became my new guiding light as it did for others who had previously thought "gourmet" was tops. In the new post-organic era, producers and consumers alike continue the struggle for that golden fleece, the latest and most potent food related buzz word catch phrase.

When I got hip to the shortcomings of Big Organic (see The Omnivore's Dilemma, especially the part about weeding with blowtorches), I was once again left searching. Fortunately, "local" then made it's debut, or rather the term was newly popularized for what is actually the oldest form of procuring food besides hunter-gathering. To this day it quite literally remains my bread and butter.

But sometimes I want a banana, and that's when I look to "fair trade," having finally realized that the lives of the people who grow my food are at least as important as that of the fruit. Now there's a sign up at the Diesel Cafe that says in big letters (and I paraphrase) "The Coffee You're Drinking Is Not Fair Trade... ...It's Direct Trade!"

As labor practices now enter our criteria for selecting food, the art of labeling marches forward, lead by people with good hearts and even better marketing directors. I'm normally deeply suspicious of marketing, but here I see its power to do good, as it takes a lot to make people forget all the other marketing that they've been pumped with over the past half century. Fortunately, many of us are now swayed by images of genuinely ethnic, smiling women over their cartoon predecessor, Miss Chiquita Banana.

Enter Tetulia, a Bengladeshi tea garden on the very cutting edge of how righteous something edible can be.

(photo courtesy of tetulia.com)

Teatulia's Tulsi Tea

I've had a few readers complain that Tea and Food is much more food than tea, and they're right. One reason is that it's more important to eat food than drink tea, so one tends to overshadow the other.

Another reason is that I might focus on the same variety of tea every day for a month, but I'm not going to blog about it more than once. But rest assured that when I try something new, unless it's Lipton French Vanilla, you'll hear about it. For instance, Teatulia's Tulsi Infusion Tea.

You might recall Teatulia (then known as Tetulia) from my two-part post back in June, but if you're too lazy to click on the hyperlink, here's the short version: they're an extremely socially and environmentally conscious company, and they make great tea. Support them.

This morning I finally had the chance to try their flagship blend, an infusion of the Ayurvedic herb tulsi with their standard black tea, both sustainably grown. It's a tea unlike any other that I've tasted, and its unusual flavors drew me right in. Tulsi is also known as holy basil, and in some parts of India it is considered to have almost magical properties, as this excerpt from the blog Health is Wealth will attest:

A few leaves dropped in drinking water or food-items can purify it and can kill germs. Even smelling it or keeping it planted in a pot indoors is said to prevent the whole family from infections, cough and cold and other viral infections. It has been an age old custom in India to worship it twice daily, water it and light lamps near it, once in the morning and once in the evening. It was, and still is, believed that it would protect the whole family from evils and bring good luck.

On this ten degree day, it certainly did have a warming and uplifting effect that went beyond the usual warming and uplifting effects of c.m. The flavor of the herb was similar to that of the sweetest, most licorice-like Thai basil, and it was nicely balanced with the earthy pucker of the black tea.

There are so many cloying herbal blends out there (again, Lipton French Vanilla), so it's refreshing to taste one that has some real umph. Think I'll go brew a second flush right now.

If you'd like to try some for yourself, see here. And yes, I know I need to oil my cutting board.