I need ideas for throwing a tea party for 7 year old?
August 30, 2010
decorations
recipes
tea party ideas
games
dress up?
need a lot of differnet recipes.
thankyou.
With my daughter and her friends we’ve done this:
creating your own party hats/crowns/purses
arriving in dress up or doing a dress up party there
We had the girls dress EACH OTHER up, and we adults did makeup/hair/curls
Shrinky Dinks (no kidding!)
Large poster size coloring activity
Decorations–wands, glitter, frogs (for princes!), tulle (fabric shop), cheap velvet (clearance-fabric store) to cover the tables, chairs or make a ‘red’ carpet. Fake flowers (dollar store) for hot glueing on white party hats (adult help required!!), or for the table, white gloves, pearls, etc–dollar store.
Food: cream cheese and jelly sandwiches–use cookie cutters to cut out shapes, tea–cranberry juice and sprite, chocolate mini cupcakes with hershey kisses inside sprinkled with fairy dust (powdered sugar), angel food cake with strawberries, we did fondue one time-angel food cake, brownies, fruit. More substantial–rollups: cream cheese, tortillas, ham, cheese. Roll up, chill to firm, slice into rounds.
Health benefits of regular tea?
August 30, 2010
I drink regular, freshly brewed tea with lemon, natural caneTurbinado sugar, and ice EVERYDAY! I often hear about the benefits of drinking green tea, but what benefits does regular tea have?
So do the positive benefits off set the caffeine?
First let me begin by saying that tea does NOT contain more caffeine than coffee.
8 oz. – Coffee, Brewed contains 80-135mg caffeine
8 oz. – Tea, brewed, European brands (avg.) – 60mg caffeine
8 oz. – Tea, brewed, U.S. brands (avg.) – 40mg caffeine
vs.
8 oz. – Tea, green – 15mg caffeine
That being said, there are debates about what properties of tea may contribute to health benefits, if any.
If you are under the agreement that tea does tout benefits, then it is not only green tea, but black (basic everyday drinking tea) or red (oolong) tea as well. Green tea simply is less processed.
For further reading about this topic I suggest going here:
http://www.teabenefits.com/
What are some good tea recipes.?
August 20, 2010
What are some good types (such as green tea) and brands of tea that taste good without puting in sweeteners or anything in the tea mix. Also what are some good tea recipes. Thanks and please comment your answers.
Matcha is heavenly if you can find it. (it’s rather expensive too) and eat them with daifuku, those little rice cakes that are usually pink or white and squishy. Here’s a recipe for daifuku and how to make matcha:
Ichigo daifuku (If you don’t like Bean paste, then use another filling. Jelly is delicious)
1 1/2 cups mochiko (rice flour)
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups of anko (sweet red bean paste)
About a dozen small to medium strawberries
Wax paper or a cutting board
katakuriko (potato starch though corn starch works too) for the cutting board
Mix the flour, water, and sugar in a pot. When it’s good and mixed, put the heat on as if you were trying to bring it to a boil. Cover. After a few minutes it will thicken alarmingly at the bottom. Stir it up, and keep stirring every minute or so until you have what looks like a pot full of white chewing gum. Take the pot off the heat and leave uncovered.
Flour your working surface with the potato starch, or if you don’t have that more rice flour, because this stuff is *sticky.* Using a wooden spoon or whatever, pull out globs of goo, about as much as you want to use for each daifuku (golf ball size is a good point to aim for, though it’ll be difficult to judge because of how stretchy it is) and set them on the potato starch. This will help them cool faster. Otherwise you’ll be waiting forever. The pot will keep a layer of the gluey stuff no matter how hard you scrape. Don’t worry about that, just set it aside to cool.
Wash the strawberries and cut the leaves off. Smear anko all over them. (The recipes I’ve seen show them rolled up in neat little anko balls. Hah! If anyone knows how to do this trick, tell me!) It doesn’t have to look pretty, as this will all be covered up.
When the dough is cool enough that you can work it without burning yourself, flour your fingers, then work the dough balls into rounds. It’s stretchy stuff, so this is easy. When you’ve got a good round place an anko-covered strawberry on it, then draw the dough up over the filling and pinch it together so it sticks. Pinch it all off and you have an ichigo daifuku! Resist the urge to eat it right there and make the rest.
Caution: don’t stretch the dough too thin. If you do, the thing won’t have much structural integrity and can tear.
Oh – remember the layer of crud in the pot? When it’s cool you can just peel it out and eat it, maybe even make another daifuku with it, although the texture will be a little weird. If there’s some papery stuff hardened on the sides, peel it off and eat it. It’s tasty
For the Matcha (non traditional preparation, for tradional you’d need to look up tea ceremony)
6 oz hot water
3 heaped teaspoons Matcha
Just whisk these together and drink. Very yummy.
I know that green tea is good for you and has lots of major health benefits, but what about chai tea?
August 20, 2010
Specifically chai latte? It’s just so good I can’t keep my hands off it. But is it good for you at all? Does it have any health benefits like green tea does?
First off, Chai is not a type of tea in the same way that green is.
Green, red, black tea all refer to the various oxidation stages of the leaves used.
Chai tea is tea (usually black, but not necessarily) to which spices and sugar and sometimes milk or creamer have been added.
Sometimes there is a fairly large amount of sugar/sweetener added to bring out the flavor, so you’ve lost some net health benefits there.
With a chai latte, you have quite a bit of sugar/sweetener and milk/creamer added, which I agree definitely tastes good, but the combination of the sweetener and creamer counts against you.
To summarize, it certainly won’t hurt you, but you’re getting alot o tasty but unhealthy additives along with the tea. You still have some of the anti-oxidant benefits that come with black tea. But you definitely don’t have the same health benefits that green tea offers.
My recommendation:
Have one every so often if you like them, but cultivating a taste for green tea would be better for you!
Green Tea and Health
August 17, 2010
These are no new discoveries where green tea and health are concerned as even the ancient Chinese knew about it’s healing and regenerative properties long before us. Many such health claims concerning green tea still hold true today and numerous studies worldwide have attested to the benefits of drinking tea.
Perhaps the most important health claims its being linked to in modern times involve diseases of our modern age, which includes Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes and conditions like Obesity. This article will take a brief look at some of the information being put forward with regard to that last point
The weight loss industry is certainly big business and whenever a new product seems to offer us a way of shedding those unwanted pounds we eagerly try it. It seems that the properties in green tea help to increase our bodies metabolic rate, which is how we burn those calories when carrying out our daily lives. By raising the rate at which we burn calories the theory is that you burn more by doing the same, normal things you do anyway.
No one is saying sit back, drink several cups of green tea a day and watch the weight vanish as with most things, weight loss is part of a much bigger picture. Lifestyle, food choices and exercise need to be considered plus medical advice where necessary.
Interestingly enough, certain studies involving groups who drank green tea, in some cases for as long as three months, have shown conclusive, positive results so that looks promising
The actual substance within green tea that seems to influence weight loss is something known as Catechins, and there’s also additional evidence to suggest that this can reduce the levels of bad cholesterol
So, go ahead and see for yourself, but before you rush out to the kitchen for your teapot you can also get green tea extract within some multi-vitamin supplements, which is how I prefer to take my cuppa.
Peter Foremski
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/green-tea-and-health-737262.html
