Post by Nuala Byrne on Jan 26, 2022 19:54:05 GMT -5
Tea Day. Beginning of the season. Really, since Nuala had started Nonessentia, she'd found plenty of reasons for holidays. Especially if some were repeatable. Like Tea Day. The day when she tried new varieties of teas and tisanes. To be fair, it was mostly tea blends and tisanes. Not that she could complain. It was a whole day when her only job was to brew a cup, sit with it and evaluate its usefulness and palatial appeal. Like an interview for teas her shop would serve. Since she was a Fullbringer, that was a surprisingly literal phrase.
Due to her unusual powers, she was versed in high-precision soul communication with everyday objects. She could ask them where they'd come from or what chemicals they were mingled with. If something had a chemical on it that wasn't mentioned on the bag or jar it came in, it was suspect. She had called the distributor and picked a bone with someone a time or two. At her insistence, standards slowly improved across the sector because, well... she was a terror. It was like she knew just what to say to someone to strike a nerve. She didn't even do it intentionally, the behavior was automatic.
It was because she did. She had a deep understanding of the people and objects around her, even through a telephone. Even her own telephone was afraid of her, and that was just the messenger. It was her ability to read the spiritual energy signatures that surrounded a person, root around in them for the generalities of their histories, memories, and fears, and then wield those things against them. Why? Because that's what she was raised to do. Use things as weapons. The Urslers had taught it to her, and the Hollows had taught it to her. The illegal traders from who she'd acquired money since her re-arrival in the world of the living had taught it to her.
She had sold them. She didn't even lie to herself about it. The swords from the Arrancar of the Guadaña. The only one left was Ruinnish's, and she kept that one on display in her museum of invisible artifacts. A novelty joke or a meme for the norm, but a mind-bending display for the rare spiritually aware guest. She could always tell which ones those were by the looks on their faces or the surface thoughts that swam across the front of their minds. On display in one corner of the museum, under glass, was the shriveled, split-open husk that birthed Monroe years ago. It matched no known animal nor other creature's body but was clearly not a fake to the well-trained eye. That one got a lot of wide eyes from the initiated.
Sometimes, someone would get the wild idea to steal something from Nuala's museum. She moved like liquid lightning-- there in a silent flash, green eyes bearing down on them before they could even move for the object of their avarice. No one had ever had the nerve to continue that thought. But if you didn't mind the terrible company, Nonessentia was a fine place to be. It had an "ancient" and "mystical" vibe, like a setting out of a faerie tale. She would modernize it, but she hadn't obtained the building through entirely legal means, so she didn't need any officials poking their noses around where they shouldn't be. She was pretty certain that keeping whale sharks in the basement was also illegal. Or for that matter, most of the possible pets her basement contained.
That was probably enough musing. There was tasting to be had. A supposedly high-quality earl grey. A new chai with nutmeg. Chai, by the way, means "tea." There is only such a thing as "chai tea" as there is an "automatic teller machine machine." Black and orange blossom. Green tea with pomegranate. Ginger lemongrass and cinnamon blend. And then a few functional blends. If you want to promote cognitive function and decrease stress, a good tea blend is where it's at. This one will get you where you're trying to go, for instance: peppermint, Gota kola, rosemary, bacopa, and passionflower. Add blood orange and ginger if you want a powerful flavor. Be careful mixing peppermint with orange, though. The combination and the way the two flavors bounce off each other is not for everyone. Tulsi, lemon balm, passionflower, skullcap, and oat straw. Ah yes, the cap off for a long day.
Nuala sat at a table in Nonessentia, the front door closed. Seven new varieties of tea and tisane, a straight and heavy ginger tisane for palate cleansing, and a personal blend for a "happy liver" sat out in front of her. It was time to get started. She began with water-- tap is fine, as it turns out. Good clean tap water contains oxygen, which is good for water and contributes to flavor in a small way. If you wanted to be extra about it, you could get clear clean mineral spring water and aerate it yourself to be double-sure, but it doesn't create a big difference and leads to efficiency issues for a business. Each canister of tea or tisane blend was air-tight and filled with nitrogen, preventing the contents from oxidizing for maximum freshness and the best flavor profile.
Water temperature is an important part of preparing tea properly. If the water gets too hot, then when it is added to your leaves and herbs, it will burn the tea. This drastically changes the flavor of the tea, rendering it utterly undrinkable to the developed palate. When heating water for tea, always stop at a temperature that the most fragile ingredient in the blend can stand. If the ingredients use temperatures bands that are too disparate, it will ruin the tea or tisane. Nuala held brief conversations with her teas and tisanes, covering exactly which among them needed which temperatures.
Some teas take more or less time to steep, too. There's no sense in making a tisane with a bark if you're going to steep it for a leaf-length of time, and vice-versa. It has to do with permeability and nutrient extraction. Leaves are more permeable whereas barks are less. Depending on the leaf, a bark will be fuller with nutrients, and those take time to draw out. This is primarily important when dealing with functional tisanes, those are consumed less for their wonderful tastes and more for mood-lifting, the easing of digestive distress, and the alertness-enhancing effects. Do yourself a favor on that front. Don't make an everything-tea. Specialization is better than generalization. You won't always need something that can fix your stomach, and combining tisane blends that make you more mentally alert with ones that calm your nerves can be counter-productive.
Speaking of which, she was curious how the effectiveness of the mental functions blend would go. For that matter, how far could it go? She tried that one first. Nuala used a tea infuser in the shape of a ball for these. Silicone, so that there would be no transfer of impurities to the flavor. She added the water, steeped it for the time the canister told her to (four and a half minutes), and pulled the infuser. She checked the tea periodically for temperature until it was just cool enough to drink. The combination of scents was already pleasing to her nose, and she could detect why it was made for mental clarity. Taking the ceramic cup by the side, Nuala lifted the tea to her lips and took the first taste of her evening...
* -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- *
Her day started like most. Wake up, ready herself, check in on the fish, ready her shop, and be doing something when her first customer of the day came in. It was the day after Tea Day. Her most enthusiastic regulars arrived. She made sure the shop was as clean and presentable as possible for when they arrived. A row of the tisanes and blends that had made it through her testing sat out for their perusal. She welcomed them in with a smile and a bow. She raised her voice to a friendly register and greeted her first guests as intimately as the social protocol allowed for, as if she had been eagerly awaiting their personal return, but not so friendly as to imply great familiarity.
They came in, chatted pleasantly, and looked over the options she had prepared. She explained what each one was for, how the ingredients in them acted on the body and drew out an example in chalk on the slate behind her with cute characters. Her drawing prowess prompted a giggle from her guests, and she blushed appropriately. A little money exchanged hands and they left happier than when they had arrived. The trend continued throughout the day, with only a few hiccups, as was expected in any service industry.
At the end of the day, Nuala closed down the shop, still smiling to herself. One good day after a Tea Day. Her first truly good day since she had come back to the Mortal World. Maybe things were looking up for her.
Due to her unusual powers, she was versed in high-precision soul communication with everyday objects. She could ask them where they'd come from or what chemicals they were mingled with. If something had a chemical on it that wasn't mentioned on the bag or jar it came in, it was suspect. She had called the distributor and picked a bone with someone a time or two. At her insistence, standards slowly improved across the sector because, well... she was a terror. It was like she knew just what to say to someone to strike a nerve. She didn't even do it intentionally, the behavior was automatic.
It was because she did. She had a deep understanding of the people and objects around her, even through a telephone. Even her own telephone was afraid of her, and that was just the messenger. It was her ability to read the spiritual energy signatures that surrounded a person, root around in them for the generalities of their histories, memories, and fears, and then wield those things against them. Why? Because that's what she was raised to do. Use things as weapons. The Urslers had taught it to her, and the Hollows had taught it to her. The illegal traders from who she'd acquired money since her re-arrival in the world of the living had taught it to her.
She had sold them. She didn't even lie to herself about it. The swords from the Arrancar of the Guadaña. The only one left was Ruinnish's, and she kept that one on display in her museum of invisible artifacts. A novelty joke or a meme for the norm, but a mind-bending display for the rare spiritually aware guest. She could always tell which ones those were by the looks on their faces or the surface thoughts that swam across the front of their minds. On display in one corner of the museum, under glass, was the shriveled, split-open husk that birthed Monroe years ago. It matched no known animal nor other creature's body but was clearly not a fake to the well-trained eye. That one got a lot of wide eyes from the initiated.
Sometimes, someone would get the wild idea to steal something from Nuala's museum. She moved like liquid lightning-- there in a silent flash, green eyes bearing down on them before they could even move for the object of their avarice. No one had ever had the nerve to continue that thought. But if you didn't mind the terrible company, Nonessentia was a fine place to be. It had an "ancient" and "mystical" vibe, like a setting out of a faerie tale. She would modernize it, but she hadn't obtained the building through entirely legal means, so she didn't need any officials poking their noses around where they shouldn't be. She was pretty certain that keeping whale sharks in the basement was also illegal. Or for that matter, most of the possible pets her basement contained.
That was probably enough musing. There was tasting to be had. A supposedly high-quality earl grey. A new chai with nutmeg. Chai, by the way, means "tea." There is only such a thing as "chai tea" as there is an "automatic teller machine machine." Black and orange blossom. Green tea with pomegranate. Ginger lemongrass and cinnamon blend. And then a few functional blends. If you want to promote cognitive function and decrease stress, a good tea blend is where it's at. This one will get you where you're trying to go, for instance: peppermint, Gota kola, rosemary, bacopa, and passionflower. Add blood orange and ginger if you want a powerful flavor. Be careful mixing peppermint with orange, though. The combination and the way the two flavors bounce off each other is not for everyone. Tulsi, lemon balm, passionflower, skullcap, and oat straw. Ah yes, the cap off for a long day.
Nuala sat at a table in Nonessentia, the front door closed. Seven new varieties of tea and tisane, a straight and heavy ginger tisane for palate cleansing, and a personal blend for a "happy liver" sat out in front of her. It was time to get started. She began with water-- tap is fine, as it turns out. Good clean tap water contains oxygen, which is good for water and contributes to flavor in a small way. If you wanted to be extra about it, you could get clear clean mineral spring water and aerate it yourself to be double-sure, but it doesn't create a big difference and leads to efficiency issues for a business. Each canister of tea or tisane blend was air-tight and filled with nitrogen, preventing the contents from oxidizing for maximum freshness and the best flavor profile.
Water temperature is an important part of preparing tea properly. If the water gets too hot, then when it is added to your leaves and herbs, it will burn the tea. This drastically changes the flavor of the tea, rendering it utterly undrinkable to the developed palate. When heating water for tea, always stop at a temperature that the most fragile ingredient in the blend can stand. If the ingredients use temperatures bands that are too disparate, it will ruin the tea or tisane. Nuala held brief conversations with her teas and tisanes, covering exactly which among them needed which temperatures.
Some teas take more or less time to steep, too. There's no sense in making a tisane with a bark if you're going to steep it for a leaf-length of time, and vice-versa. It has to do with permeability and nutrient extraction. Leaves are more permeable whereas barks are less. Depending on the leaf, a bark will be fuller with nutrients, and those take time to draw out. This is primarily important when dealing with functional tisanes, those are consumed less for their wonderful tastes and more for mood-lifting, the easing of digestive distress, and the alertness-enhancing effects. Do yourself a favor on that front. Don't make an everything-tea. Specialization is better than generalization. You won't always need something that can fix your stomach, and combining tisane blends that make you more mentally alert with ones that calm your nerves can be counter-productive.
Speaking of which, she was curious how the effectiveness of the mental functions blend would go. For that matter, how far could it go? She tried that one first. Nuala used a tea infuser in the shape of a ball for these. Silicone, so that there would be no transfer of impurities to the flavor. She added the water, steeped it for the time the canister told her to (four and a half minutes), and pulled the infuser. She checked the tea periodically for temperature until it was just cool enough to drink. The combination of scents was already pleasing to her nose, and she could detect why it was made for mental clarity. Taking the ceramic cup by the side, Nuala lifted the tea to her lips and took the first taste of her evening...
* -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- *
Her day started like most. Wake up, ready herself, check in on the fish, ready her shop, and be doing something when her first customer of the day came in. It was the day after Tea Day. Her most enthusiastic regulars arrived. She made sure the shop was as clean and presentable as possible for when they arrived. A row of the tisanes and blends that had made it through her testing sat out for their perusal. She welcomed them in with a smile and a bow. She raised her voice to a friendly register and greeted her first guests as intimately as the social protocol allowed for, as if she had been eagerly awaiting their personal return, but not so friendly as to imply great familiarity.
They came in, chatted pleasantly, and looked over the options she had prepared. She explained what each one was for, how the ingredients in them acted on the body and drew out an example in chalk on the slate behind her with cute characters. Her drawing prowess prompted a giggle from her guests, and she blushed appropriately. A little money exchanged hands and they left happier than when they had arrived. The trend continued throughout the day, with only a few hiccups, as was expected in any service industry.
At the end of the day, Nuala closed down the shop, still smiling to herself. One good day after a Tea Day. Her first truly good day since she had come back to the Mortal World. Maybe things were looking up for her.
