Bird & Blend – Wedding Cake
Happy Valentine’s Day to all those of you who celebrate it. Does it work like that? Can I just send out Valentine wishes to the whole internet, or does it sound like I’m romantically propositioning? Frankly, I don’t think I’ve got the time to get into a relationship with all of you.
I am not, as you may have gathered, a big celebrator of the festival of Valentine, the Patron Saint of beekeepers and shoplifters. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for love and romance and all that malarky. I just think that romantic gestures are a lot more romantic if they happen on any day other than Dedicated Love Day.
The most romantic gift I’ve ever received was a lump of cold haddock wrapped in foil. My partner and I hadn’t been together long, and I mentioned that cats with vegetarian owners miss out on a lot of non-cat-food food opportunities, like getting the giblets from the turkey or having a bit of fish, if there’s any extra.
The next time I saw him, he brought round the haddock. He’d specially cooked some extra when he made his dinner so my girls could try it. That’s romance. Also, it was a very smart move on his part. He clearly figured out that the way to my heart was through my cats.
Despite my reservations about Valentine’s Day, I have decided to honour it by seeking out the most romantically themed tea in my stash, which is this here Wedding Cake tea from Bird & Blend. I bought it last summer when my daughter got married, and there was a whole lot of weddingness going on. Then, I either forgot about it or simply failed to find a way to shoehorn it into the matrimonial proceedings.
Wedding Cake tea is a rooibos blend containing coconut, fenugreek, heart-shaped sprinkles, toasted rice, rose petals and natural flavouring. The coconut and rooibos give it a sponge cake vibe, which isn’t the way I’d’ve gone if I’d been put in charge of making a wedding cake tea. I would fashion a fruitcake-inspired black tea, fruit and spice brew along the lines of Bird & Blend’s Christmas Cake tea. (But without the baffling addition of the pine needles that that blend contains. But then I wouldn’t put them in my Christmas Cake blend in my imaginary tea blending workshop either.)
I must say Wedding Cake is not the nicest rooibos tea that Bird & Blend have ever come out with. In fact, it’s not even in the top ten. The fenugreek was probably a bad move. That stuff, to my mind, really does smell and taste like boiled celery, which rather distracts from the rooibos, coconut, toasted rice, rose petals and whatnot. The fenugreekery side of things does settle down a bit if you leave the tea to go a bit cold, so maybe it’s best to do that.
It was probably for the best that I didn’t decide to break out the Bird & Blend Wedding Cake tea at my daughter’s actual wedding. It seems inauspicious to start one’s married life with the overpowering smell of overcooked celery soup.
Today’s book pairing is Love by Susan Morris.
