So someone recently told me to try a “Shaken Iced Tea Lemonade” from Starbucks. I was skeptical, to say the least. To me, it’s sort of like saying “Go try the Asian Sesame Chicken at Applebee’s.” It just doesn’t seem right! Although, I will give Starbucks props for their (somewhat) clever marketing. The “shaken” part of the name probably sells that drink 99% of the time. 

Anyway, despite my skepticism, I did try to have an open mind. After all, I used to think Starbucks had the best coffee (long before I discovered all the great local roasters!) That is an absolutely embarassing admission, I realize.

Here’s the description of the drink from their web site: Chinese green tea blended with mint, lemongrass and lemon verbena, lightly sweetened, with lemonade and shaken with ice.

 It sounds lovely and refreshing, doesn’t it? However, after my first sip, I will admit I felt pretty smug. How could they get away with calling this beverage “iced tea?” Not only was the tea undetectable, the drink itself was way more than lightly sweetened. In fact, according to their nutrition information, it contains 33 g of sugar.

After a few more sips, I figured out why it tasted familiar. I finally realized that it reminded me of Countrytime lemonade, which I’ve never been fond of. Mostly because it leaves your mouth coated in sugar, and you feel even more thirsty than before!

I don’t mean to blast Starbucks (wait, yes I do). I just find it appalling that they are serving this stuff and trying to call it tea. Unbelievable!

Anyway, outrage aside….ask any nutrition expert about why we are such an overweight country. Sugar is one of the top culprits. Why is everything so full of sugar? At Macha, we are absolutely proud of the fact that most of our iced teas require little (if any) sugar. We believe that properly brewed, high-quality tea does not need a bunch of extra things to make it taste good. We tell people to try their tea before automatically adding sweetener. It is a slight adjustment in habit, but this applies to anything you consume. Good food prepared well shouldn’t need extra salt. The same goes for sugar and your beverages. And if you’re trying to lose a few pounds, break the habit and drink pure tea. You will be surprised at how good you will look and feel.  

Bento and onigiri boxes! Now if I only had time to make myself lunch everyday….hmm…..

This is the question we will attempt to answer this week, as Anthony recovers from his ankle injury, sustained at the teahouse Memorial Day weekend. If you’d like to know how this happened, stop by the Macha and he’ll tell you all about it. Although…the story has been embellished now to include “ninja training” so be prepared.

You’ll note that our “tea wisdom” quote on our website comes from Albert Einstein: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

I find this quote very interesting.

I spend most of my day in front of a computer, and it’s ok really because I like designing. However, when it comes to the internet, I’ve grown a bit tired of spending time just looking around…mostly because I just don’t have time to anymore. But when I do have a break or when I leave the office, it feels really nice to go to the teahouse and have some tea and talk to some of our regular customers. It’s that basic human interaction that’s necessary to fill the void in my day.

And before I get too far into this post, I should say that I love technology. I think it’s great that we can connect to people faster, and in more ways than ever before. But at the same time I wonder if we’re losing some of that basic humanity that existed before cell phones and all our fancy gadgets.

One thing that we sometimes notice at the teahouse is impatience and a lack of common courtesy for others. I wouldn’t say that this is a huge problem, but every now and then we get a customer who wants food immediately like we’re a McDonald’s drive-through, or someone stands in line talking loudly on their cell phone. Those are the moments that are especially trying for us, because it counteracts what Macha is all about.

The people who get the most out of Macha are the ones who understand that tea, art, and good food are best enjoyed slowly.  And many of our best customers tell us that they always leave Macha feeling rested and peaceful. After hearing this a number of times, I realized that I had underestimated the power of what we’ve created at the teahouse.

So we recently had a theft at the teahouse on Gallery Night. Someone stole a couple of small works of art by Nina Bednarski, and it was a very disappointing ending to the evening. The Capital Times posted a short article on their website, and community comments were listed beneath the article. As I scanned through them, I was completely appalled at the attitude of some of the commentary. Instead of  being outraged that this is happening in our community, people chose to criticize the work and question why someone would steal it in the first place.

My response to this: WTF?

To me these comments were arrogant and selfish, but as I was thinking about it further, it ties into my concerns about a lack of humanity in our contemporary world. How is it that we’ve become so small-minded and, at times, complacent?

When I go to CNN.com and scan the world news, I find it very difficult to feel like anything I do as an individual can really matter. And maybe this is part of the problem. We’ve become so desensitized to war, poverty, and disaster, that we feel helpless and detached. Is this what causes us to not care about others? I don’t know.

Here’s what I’d like. I wish people would give a shit…about anything. I don’t want this to sound like I’ve lost all hope, because I haven’t. I meet people everyday who amaze me, and many of them spend a lot of time at the teahouse. I wish people would care about their communities enough to participate by supporting local businesses, or getting involved with ANYTHING that improves the place where they live. I don’t feel like people should be allowed to complain if they aren’t choosing to act, even if in the smallest way.

I’m afraid this post has gotten a bit out of hand, and for that I apologize. I think my thoughts were clearer in my head before I started writing. But for some reason, I feel very riled up this week. Perhaps I just need an hour in the zen cave…

Anthony and I are frequently surprised at how little patience we seem to have as a society. And we’re guilty, too, since it seems like we’re always running behind. In fact, we were just noticing this morning that we frequently yell at cars to GO! during rush hour. Shame on us, we know. However, we feel that our impatience is contained within our vehicle, so it’s ok.

We understand that life moves fast, and with technology enabling business to move at an even faster pace, it’s easy to see why there has been a drastic change in our ability to simply wait. 

One of the purposes of the teahouse is to encourage people to slow down. Sit with your tea…look at some art. Take a little bit of time to decompress. Everyone needs that. 

So we just wanted to take a minute to remind everyone that good things take time. Tea takes time. Fresh food prepared artfully takes time. Please be understanding of that when you stop by the teahouse, and we guarantee you’ll have a wonderful experience! 

Well, I think it’s safe to say that we are terrible at this blogging thing. Part of it is time, and most recently because we’re having all sorts of problems with our internet at the teahouse. We had TDS come out to help fix, but apparently there is no easy solution at this point. They are baffled by why things simply stopped working, and the only advice we received was to pay more money (of course) to have a direct DSL line added to the house. Just the news we were hoping for!Anyway, back to how our terrible blogging skills….another issue is that I (Rachel) clearly have far too many passwords for things, and cannot seem to EVER remember my password for this. However, I frequently think of things to write about as I go about my day, so I really want to be a bit better at logging in and writing. Hmm…perhaps by logging in daily I will remember my password! Yes, it is one brilliant moment after another from your friends at Macha Teahouse.  

So last night Anthony and I partied it up a bit for our evening at the Madison Addy Awards show, where we were happy to have been awarded a *gold* Addy and also a Judge’s Choice for our Macha Teabag ad. I’ll try and put the poster on the blog sometime this week so everyone can see just what I’m talking about.

Anyway, since most of our social life revolves around the teahouse, we sadly do not get out as much as we’d like. This was quite evident in our extreme hangovers this morning.

So after much complaining/discussion about who was suffering more, we decided this might be a great opportunity to see how well tea works on a hangover. We’ve been doing a lot of research about pu ‘erh black tea, and one of the primary benefits of pu ‘erh are it’s detoxing side effects. The Chinese believe pu ‘erh helps to lower cholesterol and remove toxins and oils in the body. One of our pu ‘erh packages (from China) states “can decrease alcohol levels in the bloodstream”. Hmm…why not give it a try?

It’s always difficult to determine what is actually helpful when it comes to a hangover, because we had also been drinking a lot of water, but I have to say I did feel considerably better after drinking the tea. And maybe it could have been any type of tea, really.

One thing the pu ‘erh did not do, however, was give us mental clarity, as we proceeded to make the mistake of thinking McDonald’s breakfast was a good idea. Needless to say, by the time we got to the teahouse we were in need of a digestive aid. Lucky for us we had plenty to choose from!

Check this out:
“Montage-a-google is a simple web-based app that uses Google’s image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user.”

I created the above image using “macha teahouse” as the keywords.

http://grant.robinson.name/projects/montage-a-google/

Cold update
So I have managed to kick the nasty cold I had about a week ago. It was definitely a short one (about 3 days), which I was very thankful for. What role did tea play? Well, I was drinking A LOT of tea (more than normal, anyway). If nothing else, it sure felt good on my sore throat.

Diet update
On the diet front, I have to admit this one’s been tough. And not for any specific reason other than that I will drink oolong or pu erh tea all day long, but then go have a beer and burger for dinner. Pretty sure that shouldn’t be part of the plan. I’m going to try and be more vigilant about this in February though, so I can actually report something worthwhile!

We all know tea is a warm & tasty beverage. But who would’ve thought tea could have been a legitimate part of MacGyver’s arsenal…right next to the paper clips and fishing wire!

A couple of mornings ago when it was -30 degrees outside, Anthony and I arrived to find the back door to the teahouse completely frozen shut. We have one of those storm/screen doors with the push handle, and after several failed attempts to depress the button (and believe me, we have the bruises on our hands to prove it), we thought we might be out of luck.

Or WERE we?

One thing you can always count on with us in the morning is that we never leave the house without a mug of hot tea. After a few failed ninja kick attempts, which I’m sure didn’t look nearly as cool as it felt, we decided to sacrifice some freshly brewed Pu erh in the interests of actually opening up for business.

Anyway, it obviously doesn’t take a genius to realize that hot liquid will melt ice, but we thought it was funny that tea saved the day. Although now the frozen streaks of amber-colored tea all over the door reminds me of something entirely different…I will only refer to it as the “rum and coke” incident of 1997.

Tea: Warm and tasty. Will also thaw things that you do not want to be frozen. The end.