Bag Ladies Tea claims to be a specialty tea company, but their tea is not special. It's the packaging that counts. Their 17 offerings appear to differ only in the design of the box or tin they come in and the tags attached to their tea bag strings. "English breakfast" is as far as the website goes to describe the tea itself, which at $12.50 for 24 bags ought to be a premium selection. If you're looking for a cute gift go ahead and order a box, but if you're looking for tea keep searching.
Why am I so captivated by the idea of drinking tasteless, slippery, crunchy-kerneled seeds? Because subja seeds sound like fun. I first learned of them by browsing The Indian Spice Kitchen , where Monisha Bharadwaj describes them, but Osimum basilicum seeds seem impossible to find. I made a special trip to Seattle's Uwajimaya to track them down, but came up empty. I stopped at Market Spice at Pike Street, where they hadn't heard of them (but they suggested another shop down the street). I went into Souk, where the gentleman understood what I was looking for only after I described it; he knew the seeds by a different name, which he couldn't remember, and said his sister gets them at a shop (the name not in his memory) on Roosevelt Avenue. But I was out of time in the city and couldn't follow up. (But before I took more than a few steps out Souk's door, the proprietor called me back in, because he had asked his arriving friend what those seeds were called. Tukmaria, ...
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