The mystery teapot

In the late 18th, early 19th century, a certain style of teapot came into fashion in England. It was modeled after a pot brought back from India by a Lady Cadogan and was made popular because George IV admired one. Thenceforth everyone absolutely had to have one.

I want one too, not because I am a follower of George IV, but because the teapot is just plain cool. This teapot has no lid. There is no apparent way to fill it.

The way it works is this: If you invert the teapot you see that running up into the pot from the bottom is a tube. You fill the pot through the tube, turn the pot rightside up and the water.....aaaah, too hard to explain. Look at this glass version of the pot and you can see how it works.

You can look for antique Cadogan pots (like the top photo) manufactured by the Rockingham works in England or you can buy the modern glass version shown here (called the Mystery Pyramid Teapot) for $30 from a site that also sells Klein bottles.

Just in case you don't know what a Klein bottle is, it's a bottle that, like a Moebius strip, has a continuous surface. Enough said. You can check out the Klein bottle site to learn more.

Floating duck tea infuser

There's really not much to say about this guy except, awwwwww, makes me wish I liked tea.

Made of silicone, so he doesn't mind getting into hot water, he's $9.95 from Perennial Tea•Room (whose brick and mortar location is in Pike Place Market in Seattle).





At left is a picture of Mr. Duck after a hard day's work, sitting next to his personal drip catcher.

Pig mug

From Japan, a country where Hello Kitty is a National Treasure, comes this porcelain pig. Now you can drink a giant mug of tea brewed in your piggy teapot.

You can get the pig (or one of its friends, a panda or a black cat) for $20 from fredflare.com, a website whose mantra is "Stay cute!"

P.S. Of course you know this mug is upside down, right?

P.P.S. The Japanese word for cute is kyuuto.

YiXing teapot

Zisha is a purple-red clay from China that is used to make teapots. The area most famous for this clay, and teapots, is YiXing (ee-shing), which is 120 miles northwest of Shanghai.

YiXing teapots are unglazed, which is what apparently makes them ideal for tea. The clay absorbs the flavor of the tea that's brewed in it, eventually "seasoning" the pot perfectly. This is why purist tea drinkers never brew different teas in the same YiXing pot.

A YiXing teapot is generally small, intended to brew just enough tea for 1 or 2 cups, which brings me to this piggy teapot. It's only 4 inches high and about 6 inches wide from snout to tail. It's $34 from the Dapper Frog.

And I want to brew my hibiscus tea in this

Potter Judy Jackson, who lives in New York City (actually I think somewhere near where I live) makes really cool pottery, and I absolutely love this teapot. I feel that its calm beauty could contribute to the blood pressure-lowering attributes of the hibiscus flower.

The teapots are dishwasher and microwave safe and come with a built-in infuser. You can find them at Salubra Teas for $44. The cream color is in stock, but with 1 or 2 weeks lead time you can get one of the other beautiful, muted colors like cobalt, grape, sea green and weathered green.

Hibiscus tea

Drinking hibiscus tea can lower your blood pressure.

The results of a clinical trial conducted by the USDA's Agricultural Research Service and Celestial Seasonings (who of course stood to gain by good results, but hey, that's how studies get funded) showed that the subjects who drank three cups of hibiscus tea daily lowered their systolic blood pressure by as much as 13 points.

Of course you already know you can find hibiscus tea from Celestial Seasonings, but if you get serious about this you can buy it in bulk from a place called Mountain Rose.

Whimsical teacup

Many years ago I discovered the "Jeeves and Wooster" stories** by British humorist P.G. Wodehouse. In one of the stories, the protagonist and upperclass twit Bertie Wooster is asked by his Aunt Dahlia to steal a silver cow creamer from a rival collector.

It had never occurred to me before reading this that a creamer could be in any shape other than a pitcher and I was amused at the thought of the milk pouring out of the cow's mouth and into a cup of tea. This set me on a course of collecting pitchers in the shape of animals. I have a sizable collection, ranging from pigs and cows to penguins.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I favor whimsy in my tabletop items. This is precisely what attracted me to this wonderful little teacup. This hand-glazed earthenware cup from Argentina has an itty-bitty chair in the middle. I'm not certain that I would pay $30 for a teacup for myself, but I would absolutely love to get this as a gift. It's from a website called LAMA, which stands for Latin America in the Modern Age.

**In the Jeeves and Wooster stories, lovable numbskull Bertie is always rescued from misfortune by his exceptionally intelligent (and patient) valet, Jeeves. Although many actors have played the parts of Jeeves and Wooster, my personal favorites are Stephen Frye (as Jeeves) and Hugh Laurie (as Bertie). I thought that since there are undoubtedly a lot of "House" fans out there, you might enjoy seeing a clip of Hugh Laurie playing the ineffably stupid Bertie. Watch it to the end to hear a reference to the cow creamer.

Valentine's Day breakfast in bed

Breakfast in bed is one of the most charming gifts you can give someone, but why not really put on a show?

1 This Chef's Choice 830 WafflePro waffle iron makes 5 heart-shaped waffles. It sells for $50 from Amazon.
2 Or keep it simple with this cute toast stamp for $4 from Perpetual Kid.
3 For a mere $6, you can express your love with a heart-shaped egg. The nonstick form from Archie McPhee can also be used to make heart-shaped pancakes.
4 And to drink? A nice cuppa brewed with this wonderful little tea infuser. $4 from Anna Tea Shop.
5 Don't stop there. Serve the tea (or coffee) in this great heart-shaped cup and saucer from Molla Space. The cup and saucer are $18, but you can also get a mug for $16, a juice class for $13 or, if you really want to go crazy, there's a whole heart-shaped tea set for $140.
6 And what to spread on the waffles, or toast, or pancakes? Why a heart-shaped pat of butter of course. This pink silicone mold from Fauchon in Paris makes 20 little butter shapes. The mold can also be used to mold chocolates or for baking. It's $15 from Sur La Table.

A mug for every mood

I have a huge collection of coffee mugs at home. Each one has a little history to it (various souvenirs from vacations), and each one has a slightly different feel in the hand (the clunky cafeteria-style mug or the delicate porcelain cup). I find myself picking a different mug in the morning depending on the mood I'm in.

I'm always on the lookout for new mugs, even though I really don't need any more. Here are a few I've coveted recently.

1 The designer Stephen Reed surrounded this Radiator Mug with "heat sinks" that keep the exterior of the mug cool to the touch, even though the coffee within can be scalding hot. The mug is $26 from Charles & Marie.
2 The name of this mug alone makes it worthy: Celestial Mocha Mug. This glass mug holds 14 ounces of mocha and comes from a restaurant supply company that sells a set of six for $22. Good deal.
3 I love the look of this handmade stoneware mug. It's designed by Michael McDowell, a Denver-based artist who sells his stuff on Etsy. This "White Crawl" mug (which costs $20) sadly sold out just as I was writing this blog entry, but this will give you the opportunity to visit Michael's Etsy store and maybe you can twist his arm and ask him to make more.
4 Though you can't see all of them in this shot, the stick figures by the artist Jeffrey Metzner wrap all the way around this mug. It's $12 from the MoMA store.
5 If you're feeling in a fundamental American-pottery mood, you should check out these stoneware mugs from American potter Todd Piker at the Cornwall Bridge Pottery in Connecticut. The mug is $20 and comes in 3 shapes and 10 designs.
6 Zojirushi, the Japanese company that also makes rice cookers, makes an insulated stainless mug called a D-Mug. You can buy the mug for $30 at VeryAsia.com, but here's the cool part. You can then go online and customize your own mug design at Zojirushi's D-Mug Studio.

Have a cuppa

When I was a kid, my Great Aunt Nan had a little tea infuser in the shape of a small teapot, which I coveted. This began my modest collection of tea infusers. I've got at least 10: little houses, small mesh balls, a silver ball with star-shaped holes, a teapot with a porcelain spout. I thought I had a pretty diverse collection until I started looking around at what was out there. It's a huge category.

Here's what I found.

1 Who can resist a dinosaur-shaped anything? This T-rex infuser is $4 from Fantes Kitchen Wares Shop.
2 An infuser in the shape of a lemon wedge, for those who belong to the no-milk-in-your-tea camp. The Jo!e infuser is $4 from Klinq.com.
3 A variation on the mesh tea ball, the pyramid infuser is $6.25 from Anna Marie's.
4 Tea for two. A set of 2 Cuisipro tea infusers from Target for $24.
5 Let's not forget silicone, the ubiquitous material of choice these days. This strawberry infuser, $7.50, comes with a lid (to keep your tea hot) that doubles as a saucer to catch tea drips.
6 My favorite. A pewter tea twig with a dragonfly perched at one end. The loose tea sits in a parchment bag and the bag is suspended on the twig. The dragonfly tea twig, which comes with 10 tea bags, is $15 from Stash.

Mug magic

OK, I really don't understand the science of this mug, but it completely fascinates me. When the mug is empty (or when it has a cold liquid in it), it's a black mug with white letters that read COLD. But if you fill it with a hot liquid, the mug turns white (???!?), and the letters, which say HOT, are black.

As the level of your hot liquid goes down, the top turns back to its original black.

Like I said, I don't get it, but I want to get one. They go for $25 from Charles & Marie.

The perfect pitcher

My friend Meg mentioned to me the other day that her husband was on an iced tea kick, possibly inspired by the pitcher she gave him for Father's Day. This got me to thinking about how summertime is when you haul out your pitchers. But if you're like me, your "pitchers" may only be a ratty collection of plastic juice containers with broken or mismatched tops. So I decided to look around for some inspiration to bring my pitcher game up. I found lots of good stuff.

1 Here's a good example of a pitcher that's perfect for iced tea. It has a center chamber that you fill with ice, which keeps the tea cold but doesn't dilute it. The 2.75-quart Samoa glass pitcher by Frigoverre is $21.99 from Chefs Catalog.
2 Same idea, different method. The 2-quart DuraClear® (polycarbonate) Icing Pitcher has a removable insert that sits on the side of the pitcher instead of down the middle. It's $45 from Williams-Sonoma.
3 Ah, these Bormioli Rocco Gelo refrigerator jugs remind me of the iced tea jars my grandmother had. They're not elegant, just practical, because they fit in the refrigerator door. About $15 for a set of two.
4 Practical like the Gelo jugs, but bigger, this almost 2-quart Quadro glass pitcher from Luminarc is a reasonable $8.
5 Or go the old-fashioned route with a nice ceramic pitcher. This 2-quart Le Creuset ceramic pitcher is $34.95 at Broadway Panhandler.
6 The Bordalo green earthenware pitcher, made in Portugal, holds 1 quart and is dishwasher safe. It's $19.95 from Sur la Table.

Do you know what a bombilla is?

Well, since you asked, a bombilla is a metal straw, sometimes of gold or silver, that is used in South America to drink yerba mate. Mate is a tea brewed from the leaves of an evergreen tree (as opposed to the tea plant) and is traditionally sipped out of a carved gourd. The decorated gourds and bombillas are really quite beautiful. Take a look at the collection at Patagonia Gifts.

One reason that yerba mate has its own drinking paraphernalia and is treated with such affection and reverence is that it is astonishingly high in caffeine. One website noted that pre-Columbian Indians liked the tea because it provided "an increased resistance to fatigue" and it had "thirst and hunger mitigation powers." A fancy way of saying that it is astonishingly high in caffeine.

Anyway, this is just my long-winded way of getting to a book that has been recently published by Elvira de Mejia, assistant professor of food science at the University of Illinois. The book, which is called Chemistry and Flavor of Hispanic Foods (probably not a bestseller title), investigates the nutraceutical value of the Hispanic diet, from Mexican beans to Margaritas. One of the book's main focuses is on mate, which de Mejia says "has the highest antioxidant capacity of the ethnic teas we have studied in my lab. There is evidence that three to four cups of this tea per day could have a protective effect against chronic diseases."

It will be interesting to see if yerba mate gives white, green and black teas a run for their money in the healthy drink market, though frankly 3 to 4 cups of mate would have me bouncing off the walls.

German carafemanship

There is a German company called Alfi that specializes in carafes. In fact the motto on their website is "Home of Hot & Cold" (must sound more interesting in German).

What's cool about Alfi is that they have taken a fundamentally functional object and elevated it to art object by asking a number of international designers to come up with distinctive carafe designs. The results are beautiful and strikingly different. We had a really hard time trying to pick our favorite, but ultimately we were influenced by price.

We chose the La Ola Carafe (left) and the Avanti Carafe (right) because they were in the $30-$40 range. You can buy the carafes online direct from Alfi or through their toll-free number: 1-800-966-3009.