Tea

CHOW: CHOW Pick
Our favorite products, gadgets, restaurants, bars, wine, beer, and food websites and blogs.

• Baskerville-Font Coasters
  

  If I could, I would cover my entire apartment with typeface and words. Here’s a place I’d start: bamboo coasters made out of a Baskerville font. At $45 for four, they aren’t exactly recession-friendly, but web window-shopping won’t cost you a penny.

  Bamboo Type Coasters, $45 for a set of four

• Harvest Spirits' Core Vodka
  

  Made in my hometown of Valatie, New York, Core Vodka is distilled entirely from apples. It’s made by pressing them into sweet cider, fermenting the juice into hard cider, then distilling it a few times.

  The resulting flavor is subtle, not overpoweringly sweet like some apple-infused vodkas. Served over ice with a splash of soda, one bottle of this won’t last more than a night.

  Core Vodka, $21.99.

• MYO Fizzy Water
  

  We all know that drinking water from the tap is better for the environment than buying bottled. But what if you like the bubbly stuff?

  Well, now you can make your own carbonated water with the Soda-Club home soda maker. Simply fill one of the supplied bottles from the tap (or a filter jug, if you prefer), place it in the machine, press the button a few times to add CO2, and voilà! Your water now sparkles.

  The beauty is that you can add as much effervescence as you like. Granted, it won’t taste quite the same as a fancy frizzante naturale water imported from Italy, but it is cheaper, more convenient, and a lot better for the environment than buying it from the store. You can even add sweet syrups to make sodas.

• Classier Coffee
  

  If you’re making drip coffee, chances are it’s with a filter in a plastic holder sitting over a generic glass coffee pot. I was. That setup has always delivered good coffee, but I thought it was ugly. Now I have a cute porcelain setup from Melitta. My mom scored one of these at a secondhand store, and I was holding out for my own thrifting luck, but I finally broke down and ordered one from Melitta’s website. I did manage to find a single-serve ceramic filter-holder at Goodwill, but for serving at a dinner party this is the way to go. It looks good going from stove to table, and serves six. I appreciate the well-designed pouring spout that doesn’t drip everywhere, and I like that I’m not running my coffee through any plastic whatsoever.

  Porcelain 6 Cup Manual Coffeemaker, $39.99

• Stale Cookies ... Yum!
  

  While I was waiting in line to check out my groceries the other day, I spotted a bag of Bahlsen Gingerbread Pretzels that were calling out to me. I hurriedly ripped open the bag and popped a pretzel into my mouth to discover a soft gingerbread cloud that melts away and is immediately followed by a slightly bitter cocoa creaminess. It was good, but a little too soft. I wanted them to be a little firmer. So I was pumped that when I reached for another pretzel the next day, they had become a little stale and this made them even better!

• Sweet Tooth Utopia
  

  I wouldn’t call myself a sugar fiend, but when a sweet tooth hits, I turn to chocolate—bonus points if there’s a good balance of sweet and salty flavors. So when the Berkshire Bark’s “Pretzelogical” chocolate bar crossed my desk, I had to give it a try. This chocolate bark met all of my requirements, having milk chocolate, salted caramel, and pretzels, but upping the ante because of the vein of peanut butter running through the middle. I tried to keep it my little secret to savor through the week, but nothing this good lasts at CHOW HQ for more than a day.

  Berkshire Bark Pretzelogical, $5.99.

• Goji Chocolate Goodness
  

  It seems lately the only respectable chocolate to eat is dark chocolate; milk chocolate may as well be garbage. Although I do enjoy a hearty dark, my sweet tooth usually prefers a milk chocolate, like Vosges’ Goji Bar. With chewy goji berries and shards of pink Himalayan salt, it has the salty-sweet appeal. The 41 percent cacao keeps the bar far from the neighborhood of bitter, but not as sweet as other milk chocolate. And, after the rich chocolate has melted away, the best part is the crunch of the salt mixed with the sweet pieces of goji berries. Sweet tooth satisfied.

• Fresh and Fruity
  

  After a recent sushi dinner, my check arrived with several tiny boxes of this bubblegum from Japan. In each pack were four little gumballs packed with sweet, fruity flavor of grape, melon, strawberry, and orange. I ate one after another, savoring the intense fruitiness while blowing tiny bubbles with each piece. The gum didn’t give me fresh breath, but it was cute and way more fun than any old after-dinner mint.

  Marukawa Bubble Gum Sampler, $1.25 for eight packs

• No More Red Wine Stains
  

  Just in time for holiday dinners and lots of red wine drinking, I spied this great invention. It’s called Drop Stop, and it’s a simple circle of shiny silver plastic-y stuff that you roll up and stick in the mouth of an open wine bottle for pouring. It acts like the metal versions you see in restaurants, so that when you set the bottle back down, the wine doesn’t dribble out the side. No ruined tablecloths.

  Drop Stop, $5.95 for two

• I Like It Salty and Sweet
  

  I love brine and have since I was a little girl. Whether it’s ume boshi or a Filthy Martini, anything that is vinegary, salty, and sour is a snack for me. Rick’s Picks Mean Beans have proven particularly dangerous, because not only are they perfectly pickled but they’re spicy too. They make a great snack, but are even better in a Bloody Mary. As an added bonus you can use the leftover brine to pickle carrots.

  Rick’s Picks Mean Beans, $10.99

• This Tea Is Love Incarnate
  

  During my trip to Paris I was lucky enough to visit Mariage Frères, one of the most renowned tea companies in France. The store is absolutely beautiful: dark mahogany wood walls displaying a very extensive tea collection—more than 500 varieties in all. I bought a small bag of the Wedding Imperial Tea, and my only regret is not bringing back a suitcase full. Made from golden Assam leaves, it’s a light-bodied tea with creamy notes of chocolate and caramel. Mariage Frères describes it as “a paean to love,” and I can see why.

  Mariage Frères Wedding Imperial Tea Bags, $20 for a box of 30

• A Look into Sugar's History
  

  At a recent CHOW editorial meeting, we were chatting about the holidays, and invariably, all the upcoming sweets. I was reminded of a book I read a few years ago about sugar, called Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. It’s a good read if you are into food history (though it’s fairly British-society-centric), and documents the evolution of sugar consumption and production. One of the more interesting aspects of the book is how the author, Sidney Mintz, connects sugar to the rise of industry and move away from agrarian lifestyles. It’s an older book, so some of you may have read it. If not, it’s worth taking a crack at.

  Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, $16

• They Make Me Want to Skinny-Dip
  

  I didn’t grow up in a chip-eating family. Aside from my father, who puts Lay’s potato chips in his turkey sandwich for extra crunch, the rest of us consider chips merely a vehicle for dips. But to every rule there’s an exception, and mine is Have’a Corn Chips.