This Ain’t Your Grandpa’s Earl Grey
The first time I had Earl Grey black tea, I was not impressed. The bergamot flavor was flat and obscured by the bitterness of the black tea. It tasted stale, like somebody’s stuffy parlor. So, when Allison first told me that I had to try her Rooibos Earl Grey Tisane, I was skeptical. 
But, because I trust Allison’s good taste, I tried it, and was delighted! Red Rooibos, a caffeine free fair-trade tea alternative from South Africa, has a naturally sweet, nutty flavor that is the perfect compliment to the delicate notes of bergamot citrus. Steeped to perfection, with a few drops of stevia and a splash of rice milk, it has become my favorite fair-trade tea year-round. Hot or cold, this tisane sparkles! It’s wonderful iced with a lemon wedge on these hot summer days, and in the winter, we drink it hot almost daily in the AG office, when it’s warmth and sweet citrus flavors taste equally delicious.
Refreshing Mint Delight
We call it After Dinner Mint Tisane (Herbal Tea) because it contains Spearmint, Peppermint, and Licorice, three herbs which help with digestion and make your stomach happy as well as your taste buds. 
However, after dinner is by no means the only time this light and refreshing tisane may be enjoyed. We especially love it iced on long, hot summer afternoons. You can either brew it the traditional way, then put it in the fridge, or you can make it as sun tea, then ice it. Either way our After Dinner Mint Tisane is a delicious and refreshing stomach soothing beverage hot or cold.
For a cool tart treat any time of day, try this “min-tea” smoothie:
What to use…
1/2 cup ice
1/2 cup frozen raspberries
1/2 cup frozen pineapple chunks
1/2 frozen banana
2 T loose After Dinner Mint Tisane
8 oz water
fresh mint leaves (optional)
…and how
1. Boil water, pour over loose tisane and steep for 5 minutes. (Alternately, make sun tea by placing loose tisane and cold water in a glass container in direct sunlight for several hours.) You may want to make extra tea for drinking.
2. Strain tisane and refrigerate until cool.
3. Place frozen fruit, ice and chilled tisane in a blender and blend until smooth.
4. Garnish with fresh mint leaves and serve immediately. Makes about 2 cups.
Simple Chocolate Bliss
We’re going back to basics for our vegan fudge flavor coming up in August. Simple flavors can often be the most delicious, and we think our simply elegant Original Fudge is the best thing this side of heaven. Plus, it makes a great chocolate gift for someone you love. 
All our vegan fudge is gluten-free by nature, as are many of our other chocolates, including vegan peanut butter cups, peppermint bark, and peppermint creme patties.
For summer-safe chocolate gifts we recommend double chocolate chunk cookies, classic and peppermint flavors of drinking chocolate, and individually-wrapped chocolate caramels for decadent chocolate flavor without the melt-ability factor.
Iced Chai Tisane
We all know that most foods are way better homemade than from the store. Have you ever thought about drinks in that same way? If you like iced chai from Starbucks, imagine how good it could be homemade! 
Here’s Allison’s recipe for perfect chai tea, which I highly recommend iced on these hot days. It’s easy to make, creamy and perfectly spiced, and if you use our Rooibos Chai Tisane (Herbal Tea), it’s caffeine free, so you can enjoy it any time of day or night.
What to use…
2 Tablespoons Rooibos Chai Tisane
12 oz filtered water
6 oz non-dairy milk of your choice
Your preferred sweetener
…and how
1. Place tisane and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then turn off and steep for 5 minutes.
2. Add the non-dairy milk and steep for 2 more minutes.
3. Strain, sweeten to taste, ice and enjoy!
Gift Baskets: Super-Deluxe Samplers in Pretty Packaging
Check out the gorgeous new packaging we finally have for our vegan gift baskets! Instead of different flavors of one kind of product, as you get with our Organic Tea or Just Cookies Samplers, our vegan gift baskets offer an elegant sampling of many of our products and are perfect for larger groups or for those who want to try a wide variety of our products. 
We have two gourmet coffee gift baskets which include either a four-flavor organic coffee sampler or a 12 oz bag of our superlative Peruvian Femenino coffee beans, as well as several flavors of cookies, brownies, fudge and confections all in one beautiful basket. These gourmet coffee gift baskets are the ideal way to spice up a social event or get an idea about your family’s favorite delicacies before birthdays and holidays come around.
Fair-Trade Refreshment, All Day Long
We all know that it’s important to stay hydrated in the summer. One of the best ways I’ve found to do this is to drink hot and iced teas and tisane (herbal teas). They’re more interesting than water, delicious and flavorful, without being too sweet. 
Our Organic Tea Samplers are a great way to have a variety of teas and tisanes on hand for all day tea sipping.
8am: Wake up gently with a warm cup of Organic Rooibos Earl Grey Tisane. This refreshing herbal tea offers sweet citrus notes and is caffeine-free.
10am: In India, people drink chai all day long, and you can too! Our Organic Rooibos Chai Tisane is a delicious caffeine-free treat hot or iced, any time of day.
1pm: Although we call it After Dinner Mint, this refreshing herbal tea is the perfect finish to any meal. End your lunch and start your afternoon with a tall, cold glass of our refreshing organic mint tisane.
3pm: Beat the afternoon yawns with a caffeinated wake-up. Organic Mango Ceylon Tea will do just that with it’s combination of earthy and delightfully fruity notes.
Fair-trade teas and tisanes, whether in tins or sampler pouches, also make perfect fair-trade gifts. So, whether it’s for yourself or someone else, give a fair-trade gift of delicious all day refreshment to someone you love this summer.
It’s Summer, Drink Your Greens!
Photo courtesy of Eva Tobie at RawCulinaryWisdom.com
Our friend, Eva, is an amazing raw vegan chef. Yesterday, she sent us this picture of her latest cooling green juice. We thought it might inspire you to experiment with your own blenders and juicers on these hot summer days. Juicing is a great way to stay hydrated and get all the nutrition you need without having to cook anything.
If you don’t have a juicer, try using a blender to blend veggies and/or fruits with water, juice or fair-trade tea to make a green smoothie. It’s best to drink blended juices right away, as the blending process makes their nutrients break down more quickly. For more on juicing and raw food, check out Eva’s website: RawCulinaryWisdom.com
Some other of my favorite cooling summertime drinks include fruit smoothies with protein powder and iced fair-trade tea sweetened with stevia. What are yours?
Tips for Shipping in the Summer Heat
Ordering perishable items in the summer can be a bit of a pain. You either have to order chill packs and faster shipping, which means more money, or you risk receiving melted and/or spoiled products. 
However, you can minimize this hassle for yourself by ordering products that are less perishable and more hearty when it comes to heat exposure. Our Classic and Spiced Peanut Brittle, Classic Almond Toffee, and individually-wrapped Caramels, for example, will ship well without being adversely effected by the summer heat. Our fresh-baked cookies and brownies, are actually surprisingly good at enduring high temperatures as well. Sealed in their plastic bags they won’t go stale or spoil even with our slowest shipping method (which is only 3-4 days). Ordering flavors without chocolate chips also makes your life easier, although the chips and the cookies are no worse for some melted chocolate, just perhaps a bit messier. Coffee, Tea and Drinking Chocolate are other obvious choices for summer shipping, although you may need to remind your recipient that these drinks are as delicious served iced as they are hot.
For heat-friendly gift combos, look no further than our Classic Vanilla Lover’s and Spice Lover’s Gift Sets which include Toffee, Caramels and Peanut Brittle, or our Cookie, Brownie, and Beverage Samplers.
If you do decide to order a more perishable item, especially one containing chocolate, we strongly encourage you to include the recommended chill pack in your order as well as choosing FedEx 2-day air shipping, as our chill packs only remain cold for 2 days.
PS. For those of you wondering about your monthly club orders, today is a shipping holiday, so we will be shipping all the monthly clubs tomorrow, for delivery later in the week. 
Local Kale, Fair-Trade Coffee
Our local farmers market just had it’s opening weekend, and we’re so excited to be able to buy wonderful local produce again! 
In our town, the farmers market is not only a great venue to purchase fresh organic produce from farmers we know personally, it’s also a social event with ready-to-eat food, live music and free yoga and qigong classes. Getting kale from a farmer you know, grown on land nearby, feels so much better than buying greens that were shipped hundreds of miles in a refrigerated truck while losing their vitality.
Unfortunately, there are some items that we simply can’t buy locally, at least not at this latitude. Tropical fruits like coconuts, bananas and mangoes as well as coffee, tea and chocolate are all luxury items that we’ve become accustomed to in our global economy. 
Although these foods travel long distances to our grocery stores, there is an upside to purchasing these products from other continents. When we use our dollars to buy fair-trade coffee, tea, chocolate and fruit, we directly support the farmers growing these products who, in turn, contribute to their local economies and help their families and neighbors live more prosperous lives. In a way, buying fair-trade coffee is similar to buying kale from the farmers market. Fair-trade certification, like meeting the farmer in person, tells you that the farmers are directly benefiting from the sale of their products and that the products you purchase are higher quality for the farmers’ loving care.
The Minty Month of June
If you are a mint lover, this is your month! Our flavors of the month for June include Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies and Peppermint Velvet Fudge. 
Add to that our refreshingly sweet Peppermint Bark, Peppermint Patties, and Peppermint Drinking Chocolate (also called hot cocoa), and you’ve got your very own mint lover’s paradise.
Although mint is often associated with the winter holidays, I think that it actually tastes best in the summer months when refreshing, cooling treats are really a necessity. The reason we call our Peppermint Drinking Chocolate “drinking chocolate” and not “hot cocoa” is because we want to encourage everyone to enjoy it hot and cold. It’s excellent in shakes and smoothies, or as creamy peppermint chocolate milk, especially with Allison’s amazing Brazil Nut Milk, the creamiest, richest non-dairy milk you’ll ever experience.