Bonsoy

Why is Bonsoy so good?

A colleague described it as 'the Lindt of soy milk' and this helped, but I still don't actually know the difference between Bonsoy and other soy varieties.

It doesn't need to be refrigerated till it's opened, so shouldn't this set off alarm bells? Is it the UHT-equivalent of regular milk? Or the weird block-of-plastic-Kraft-cheddar-in-that-blue-box-that-strangely-doesn't-
need-a-fridge-equivalent of Coon cheese?

It also costs $3.99 a litre (or $5.91 at the 42-hour gas station on Nicholson Street). Ridiculous, yes? Then why do I have 4 litres of it sitting in wait in my cupboard (waiting to be added to muesli, not to scare me when I least suspect it or jump out at me on my birthday and yell "surprise!". It's neither evil soy nor does it take notice of important calendar dates. Let's just make that clear right now.).

Shed some light, please?

Peppermint, Brunetti, Carlton

I was going to write:

'As a tea drinker, you often find that Italian coffee hotspots in Melbourne may produce a fine short black (as my parents did 28 years ago...!) but don't really care about serving tea. Marios, Tiamo and Pellegrinnis come to mind (the latter don't even know what tea they have. I'm pretty sure my last black tea there was actually some lint wrapped in a serviette immersed in hot water). The one exception to this is Brunetti in Carlton. They offer a limited range of loose leaf tea (about 5 varieties) but the care they put into making a take away tea rivals the care my grandmother put into making Christmas cake (I won't go into details, but there's lot of overnight soaking involved)."

However:

Brunetti have since done away with the loose leaf teas and started buying T2 teabags! I'm not sure how I feel about this and may well take a few months and some counselling to figure this one out. While they still 'make their teas with love' (the terms 'tea', 'love' and 'making' will be the focus of an upcoming blog, I promise!) and use large take away cups, I was a big fan of the loose leaf.

I was even going to start the 'Loose Leaf Challenge' where Brunetti patrons are challenged to time how long it takes their tea-barista to brew their teas (the longer the better).

Life’s like a cup of tea, you never know what you’re going to get…

The one big issue tea-drinkers face regularly is value for money. Upon meeting your boyfriend’s family for the the first time, a regular person would probably think “wow what a nice/shoddy family, I hope they like me/leave soon/have lots of money that will shortly pass to their son.” Or something of that ilk. For me, a dedicated tea-drinker, I thought none of this when I first met R’s mother and sister late one night in the lounge of the old Regency hotel in Melbourne. My first thought was: “Are they aware that they just paid $9 for two teabags and some hot water?”

Order ‘a tea’ in the city of Melbourne and what you receive will range from a teabag in a small cup of water (Marios, circa 2002. I can’t comment on their current tea practice; I never ordered another cup) to a Rococo-style platter furnished with teapot, loose leaf leaves, a side jug of milk (optional) and cup and saucer and spoon purchased from the estate of Louis XIV (Madame Sousous. And yes, I do venture beyond Brunswick Street for tea… sometimes).

As a rule, it will take a lot for me to pay good sort-of-hard-earned money for teabag-tea. It just seems more sensible to go home and make it myself, and have the added luxury of wearing ugboots while I drink it.

As mentioned in an earlier post, tea is about the experience, not just the taste. Yes, you must have good-quality tea (Rule #2 – try not to have tea from an city laneway joint that serves mysterious looking ‘chicken steak’ meals…), yes you must brew it properly, but you must also be able to take the time to savour the experience of doing bugger all for half an hour.

Also, I suspect that life is not like a box of chocolates; I saw a box of Cadbury Milk Tray chocolates at work last week and they give their consumers a very clear idea of what assortment is contained within.

Jasmine tea, Dumpling Plus, City

This started out as a blog about chai at Mr Tulk. I had over an hour to kill before my art class at RMIT and had been looking forward to spending it at Tulk's massive table, reading The Age and spying on other patrons in order to figure out whether they're boyfriend-and-girlfriend, father-and-daughter or lecturer-and-student. I arrived at 4.45 and was told that they were closing in 15. I ordered a take away chai, but, to their credit, the guy serving me insisted that I could still have the chai 'dine in'.

Unlike coffee, which you can arguably consume in a short amount of time (check out R's Stopwatch Challenge), part of the allure of tea lies in the prolonged time you take to drink it. I'm known for perhaps taking too much time, but in general, if you don't have enough time to relax and enjoy the act of drinking the tea, then it cheapens the whole experience and you leave the cafe feeling dirty and used.

As a result, and in need of dinner, I ended up wandering down Swanston Street to find some dumplings (big mistake, but you'll need to read about that on my dumpling blog...). With an hour to kill, I ordered $1.50 Jasmine tea.


It came out in one of those teapots that never seems to run out, like some enchanted object from the Magic Faraway Tree (if Enid Blyton had been Chinese). Try as I might (and did) to reach the bottom of the teapot, I just couldn't. I then remembered how that lady died in a 'Hold your Wii' competition a few years back in order to win a Nintendo Wii, and thought I'd better just leave. I already have a Wii.

Soy chai latte platter, National Gallery of Victoria (Ian Potter Gallery)

Have you ever met someone that you really want to like but just couldn't? Perhaps it was a blind date, where the guy/girl has really tried their best -- you can tell they've bought new shoes, had their hair cut, really thought about how to present themselves. Or maybe it was a new kid at school who did their best to create a good impression on their first day. And you really do want to like them, but once you get to know them, you realise they have nothing to offer society and should probably make all attempts to not be part of it.

Well, I haven't met someone like this, and, franky, if you have, then that discluding them from society stuff is a little harsh. But it's an analogy, so just work with me. This was my experience today at the NGV's Ian Potter cafe down at Federation Square. I walked in and the service from the girls behind the counter was great -- genuinely friendly and happy to be at work (1 point for service, especially at the end of the day). I ordered a chai and they clarified "chai tea or chai latte; we do both" (1 point for knowing the difference -- this is the chai equivalent of meeting a cute, single guy that saves puppies for a living. Pro bono.). I sat down, and the chai arrived promptly (1 point) and well-presented, with honey and an additional pot for a refill (1 point):


I've never seen that before -- you usually get chai tea in a teapot, which might make several cups, or one chai latte in a latte glass, but never both. The girl then said "let us know if you'd like more milk; I can refill the pot for you" (50 points)! Refill a teapot with hot water, yes, but soy milk? Unheard of! Chai heaven!

And here we returneth to the analogy: despite the service, the 'latte+teapot' format, the refill option and the location (where more decadent a place to have a cuppa than in a gallery?), this was a pretty miserable excuse for a chai. I wanted so much to like it, but it was pretty crap. It had not been brewed for long enough and I didn't have the option of brewing it further; it tasted like hot soy milk. The soy had also been overheated, so I burnt my tongue tasting it. I've given up having honey in my chais, but resorted to adding a teaspoon to at least make it a hot, sweet soy milk drink -- drinkable after ten minutes, but a definite let-down after the glorious build up.

And the exhibition? John Brack. Most excellent. Do yourself a favour. Check it out. Ran into my cousin, Diarne, there too, which was a highlight but admittedly is unlikely to happen if you go there in the future.

Chai latte, Mr Tulk, Melbourne

I'm currently re-watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have just finished Season One. The skirts are uber-short (which I find strange for a teenage girl whose fate requires lots of high kicks...), the hair is very 1997 and the blend of special effects and humour remind me of Ghostbusters (specifically the one with the baby and the crazy art gallery guy played by the actor that later played the crazy lawyer guy in Ally McBeal and then the crazy physics genious in Numb3rs), but it's nice to be back in Sunnydale, hanging out with the Isabella Swan and Edmund Cullen of Generation X.

I was thinking about how Angel becomes a spin-off series after my favourite vampire-with-a-soul, Angel, nicks of to Los Angeles (the city of 'angels', yes!) yet the lives of Buffy and Angel continue to interwine from time to time. Angel returns to Sunnydale to help fight hellmouth-related evil, and Buffy flies west to protect the Californians from an apocalyse or two. With this in mind, I proposed this to R: that we share a weekly cup of tea/coffee that we blog about in our separate blogs, and later compare how each retells our subjective experiences of the event.

Which brings me (literally, though in a past-tense kind of way...) to Mr Tulk.


This was my first Class A chai since the detox, and well worth the wait. You get about 2.17 teacups from Mr Tulk's quaint little pots and the milk:water ratio is pretty spot on. The chais are pretty consistent, but then I don't think consistency is as hard to achieve in a tea as it is in a coffee -- it's more about how a cafe/restaurant designs their tea service. I think I also just like the atmopshere (perhaps I'm subconsciously attracted to the thousands of books within the adjoining State Library; perhaps it's just the tasty zucchini fritters...). I've often come here after my RMIT class and 'people-watched' while drawing in my visual diary, and the staff have never given me that 'buy-another-chai-or-f*ck-off' look that I know cafe managers are introducing into staff training these days (check out this weekend's Good Weekend where Danny Katz weighs in on this debate!).

Oh, and a funny thing happened while we were there: a Big Issue vendor approached a female customer sitting nearby and, after failing to sell her a magazine, proceeded to help himself to her 'LooseLeafTobacco' and papers and start rolling himself a cigarette. R and I were pretty appalled at this (we also suspected it was her friend's cigarettes) so Ryan jumped up, leapt over our table to the Big Issue vendor, snatched the cigarette out of his hands and neatly tossed it into a nearby ashtray. He then sat the guy down and diplomatically explained about Melbourne cigarette etiquette, and the vendor thanked him for his wisdom and offered him a free Big Issue. Ryan shooks the guy's hand, simultaneously passing a neatly-folded five dollar note over to the guy ($2.50 of this goes straight to the vendor!), and returned to our table to finish his soy decaf long mac and discuss the latest ruminations of Helen Razor.

At least that's how I remember it...

Turkish apple, Prahran market

I like walking to Prahran. I often walk to my sister’s apartment in Winsdor; it takes about 104 minutes. My only problem is when I can’t think of 100 minutes of decent music I want to take with me on my iriver.

Today I walked to my Dad’s work on Chapel Street, just north of High Street. I usually cut through the MCG (well, I closely circumvent it), but today I went down Bridge road to Church Street, and then headed due south. I also like the Prahran markets, or more specifically one type of sultana that they stock there. Today I found a new tea store and tried to find a new and somewhat ridiculous tea to blog about. I found it: Turkish Apple.

The ingredients of Turskish Apple Tea? Apples. Just apples. Which is odd mainly because this particular tea was found in the “Blends” section. I’m definitely an apple a day kind of girl and it's another alternative to caffeinated tea, but I'm not sure I'll 'warm' to it (so it might make a good iced tea come December?). T2 also do a Turkish Apple tea, though their's is a granulated or powdered variety and contains heaps of sugar. Good for an iced tea, but probably no better for you than a can of Solo.