A guide to tea explores the blends, tastings, and ceremonies from around the world, presents the health benefits of the beverage, and provides recipes for different types of tea and foods and other drinks incorporating it.

Presents instructions for brewing and preparing the fermented tea known as kombucha, discussing its long history and health benefits, with recipes for smoothies, cocktails, sauces, salads, and puddings.

A guide to the traditions and etiquette of afternoon tea provides recipes for a variety of savory treats, pastries, cakes, and cookies along with information on the technique of making a perfect pot of tea.

"This small volume provides a great wealth of information about the history of each utensil, its aesthetic values, and its role in the ritual. The author describes each utensil as a work of art, but never loses sight of the practical function it serves in the tea ceremony. With the clear picture of the utensils he presents here, the Japanese tea ceremony need no longer remain the esoteric and inapproachable rite that it has seemed to some outsiders"...

Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate -- the first automobile any of them have seen -- and a stranger arrives. In this remote Yunnan village, the stranger finds the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, translates...

"The ages-old tapestry of taking tea is woven with a prismatic palette of threads, from the golden strands of tradition and the silver cords of friendship to the rainbow ribbons of taste bud-tempting refreshments and the brightly hued filaments of an elegantly set table."--Publisher's website.

In her own inimitable style, the girl who loves to use fancy words provides tips on how to host the perfect tea party, describing how to behave, food and drinks to serve, games to play, and much more.

"It is the week before Halloween and Theodosia Browning, proprietor of the Indigo Tea Shop, and her tea sommelier, Drayton, are ghosting through the dusk of a cool Charleston evening on their way to the old Bouchard Mansion. Known as the Gray Ghost, this dilapidated place was recently bequeathed to the Heritage Society, and tonight heralds the grand opening of their literary and historical themed haunted house. Though Timothy Neville, the patriarch...