The reason why I switched to tea was because I wanted to lower my daily caffeine intake. I wasn’t sleeping well, I became extremely restless, I was getting stomach cramps every morning minutes after completing my tumbler of coffee, and I was spending way too much money. However, there are many reasons why I continue to drink tea to this day.

To name a few, I consider the prevention of cancer, aging, heart disease, arthritis and the improvement of weight loss, bone strength, improved memory loss to be enough motivation to fill up the pantry and my cup full of tea .

I should put an asterisk next to the aforementioned benefits because some of the studies are debatable, but asterisk or not, I’d rather take the chance that these studies are spot on and drink as much tea as possible than not.

The source of my tea for the past year has been www.adagio.com . They have a great web 2.0 website that is easy to navigate  and make a purchase from. The teas are pretty damn good and blow away anything that I have purchased at a grocery store. 

They primarily sell loose tea that can be steeped with a tea bag or teapot with an infuser. With good tea, decent pricing, and fast shipping, Adagio Teas is a tea retail store worth checking out.

For my daily tea consumption I use the following:

The Utilitea kettle for heating my water. It has two convenient heat settings, a low setting used for greens and whites and a high one for blacks and oolongs.

The IngenuiTea teapot for steeping the tea.

My favorite tea is the Adagio’s Silver Needle.

My Casual tea is the Citron Green. 

A teapot I want SoraPot

Once you try a loose tea, you’ll never look at an unused off the shelf tea bag and think “fresh” or “quality” again.

Anyway, happy tea drinking.

UPDATE:  according to an article in the Chicago Sun-Times today, Starbucks is jumping on the tea bandwagon…..read about it here.

Here’s a photo I took at a Starbucks. They have a lot of cool Teaware such as clay tea tumblers, glass teapots w/ infusers. 

Audi A1 concept car.

Check out this sweet concept car from Audi that gets about 75 miles per gallon. Are those neon lights?  Go here for the full story….. 

Mavelas Gallery will be down temporarily until Tuesday morning. You may be welcomed by a “requested page unavailable” type splash page until then when clicking on some of the links throughout the Transmission site.

Mike

***Update: Mavelas Gallery is back up.

Blueberries provide such benefits as lowering your risk for cardiovascular disease, maintaining healthy skin, reduction of giant flappy bags under the eyes and may prevent cancer.

Dr. Steven Pratt, MD, who authored Superfoods Rx, suggests that we eat blueberries on as many days as possible along with one of the other most powerful Superfoods, Spinach. 

Steven Pratt also suggests that we be very generous in the amounts of jam we put on our toast because of the health benefits of such fruits. But not all jams are recommended. I’ve read everywhere that High fructose Corn syrup is one of the leading causes of our American obesity problem. A lot of jams are high in this ingredient, so if you’re looking to jam some jam down your throat, I recommend reading the nutrition label. Some jams don’t have such ingredients. I believe Smuckers’ low-sugar jams don’t.

This brings me on to talk about a new thing I tried on Sunday–making a low-sugar blueberry jam.

All it took was a food processor, some jars, simple canning equipment, blueberries (super expensive), sugar, lemon juice, and pectin.

Let me tell you that the directions on this site: http://www.pickyourown.org/blueberryjam.htm were very convoluted when they didn’t have to be, but I was able to decipher them during the process. I can tell you that looking back, making jam was rather easy providing you have the right tools and a Blain’s Farm and Fleet nearby.

The jam was ready to eat once it cooled but the directions suggested that the jam sit for 12-24 hours to rest. After about 12 hours I cracked open a fresh jar and spread of the jam on toast. Wow, what a difference in taste and texture. This batch of jam is easily better than any expensive low-sugar jams that I have tried. Some low-sugar jams have the right texture but have too much of a Splenda flavor, while other jam textures break down into a watery gel after a couple days. The jam I made has the best of both worlds; good texture and great taste.

Anyway, if anyone wants to try one of my jars of youth packed with fresh blueberries, email me. I have 6 left.

I’m going to go ahead and cite, Superfoods Rx, as my reference and influence of this blog post and my creation.

Here are the features:

3.5L 6 Cylinder 306 horsepower engine, Automatic Transmission w/paddle shifters, All Power Options, Fully Loaded, Auto adjusting lights, Bluetooth, Heated mirrors, Dual zone Climate Control, ABS, 6 Disc CD Changer, Moonroof, Keyless Entry, Factory Alarm, Navigation System, Mark Levinson Surround Sound System, Adjusting headlights, Heated/Cooled Seats, iPod adapter.

Here are the photos: Mavelas Gallery: My Car

According to the book, SuperFoods Rx, by Steven Pratt, M.D. , and Kathy Matthews, people who feel fine and live a healthy lifestyle don’t believe that they could be developing disease. 

Unfortunately that is not the case. If you feel good and live a healthy lifestyle, you should try this simple test: look in the mirror at the whites of your eyes, especially the parts to the left and right of the colored part–the iris. If you see some yellow discoloration it could be some sort of oxidation caused by exposure to pollutants and ultraviolet light. If this is the cause the yellow may look like “ropey globes” called “pinguecula.” Pinguecula is a callus that forms to protect the eye from pollutants and ultraviolet light.

You may also notice a ring around the front, clear part of the eye. If you have any of these signs, odds are your body is giving off warning signs that your diet and your environment may be hindering your immune system and your health.

Eating the right foods can change your biochemistry.

Here’s a list of “superfoods“.

For more information on Superfoods hit up this link: http://www.superfoodsrx.com/superfoods/

Check out the book, Superfoods Rx. It’s an interesting read a and a book I always go to for reference.

My close friend from childhood got married recently in Minnesota on September 27th at St. Anthony’s on Main.

Photos posted here: Mavelas Gallery: Reid’s Wedding

Upon learning that some multivitamins aren’t safe due to there not being a uniform set of manufacturing laws, I decided to avoid sales on unfamiliar brands and to start researching the best multivitamin for me.

Here’s a PDF put together by www.consumerlabs.com of 11 multivitamins to avoid all together:

After some research, I learned that big brands like Centrum Silver are actually safe bets but the multivitamin supplement that I went with is New Chapter’s Every Man thanks to some advice from friends and review sites. I like the fact that each tablet is made of organic whole foods that are easy to digest and dissolve. Whereas, the typical multivitamin tablet is usually packed with synthetic chemicals which can upset the stomach.

I originally spotted the Every Man 90 tablet package over at Whole Foods for $60 and was going to purchase it, but held off and checked pricing online. It turned out that Vitamin Shoppe happened to be running a sale on the whole line so I walked into one of the Vitamin Shoppe brick and mortar locations and had an employee price match the website. I ended up walking out with double the tablets at 180 for only $47.97.

After two days of taking the Every Man tablets I can say that I do like them. After working so much the past month and feeling like absolute shit, I actually felt really good. Not saying that it was the tablets, but I’m sure they helped since I haven’t taken any vitamins since I ran out 2 months ago. I even took one of the tablets today with only like two sips of water left in my Nalgene water bottle and the tablet never felt stuck or came back up like other herbal pills tend to.

Enough multivitamin talk. I now await my loose tea from www.adagio.com