How many times have we seen this:

Goji Berry Tea. Pictured on the box: beautiful glistening goji berries, growing the in Himalayan mountains. Description on the side of the box: explains the benefits of goji berries (the latest superfood!), the wonderful flavor of the berry, how it is grown in the Himalayas. Ingredients: Tea, goji berry flavor.

Strawberry Black Tea. Pictured on the box: huge, fresh, ripe strawberry in the sun. Description on the side fo the box: talks about the refreshingly sweet taste of strawberries, how they complement the tea flavor, the blend is the highest quality tea you can possibly buy. Ingredients: Tea, strawberry flavor.

[Insert fruit name here] Tea. Pictured on the box: beautiful, large, ripe, colorful [insert fruit name here]. Description on the box: how wonderful, tasty, and beneficial [insert fruit name here] is. How this [insert fruit name here] blend is the most sophisticated, and delicious blend of all teas. Ingredients: Tea, [insert fruit name here] flavor.

Why do we keep saying that we use real pieces of fruits and berries in each of our blends? Because we just don’t think the above examples are good ones to follow. Our goji berry tea, the Goji Force Green Tea, has real goji berries and real lingonberries. Our strawberry tea, the Naked Strawberry Green Tea, has real strawberry pieces in it. All of our blends have the berries and fruits they are named after right in the teabag!

At FullyLoadedTea:

Real Strawberry Pieces + Green Tea = Naked Strawberry Green Tea

+ =
We just like to do what we say!

FullyLoadedTea recently sponsored an event run by Emerging Green Builders, which is a part of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. The Cascadia Region Green Building Council promotes the design, construction and operation of buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The event was part of the Natural Talent Design Competition, which is targeted to architecture students to create innovative and practical designs for homes that follow the principles of integrated design, sustainability, innovation, and social consciousness.

We believe in being involved with the community and with organizations like the Green Building Council, which work towards a more sustainable future.

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Last week, FullyLoadedTea exhibited at the National Restaurant Association show, which is an annual gathering of the foodservice industry and is attended by more than 70,000 industry professionals. It was our first time exhibiting at the NRA show, and it was a huge success. We had visitors from over 15 countries stop by our booth to sample our teas. Thank you to all visitors who stopped by - we hope you had a great show!!

Some of the highlights of the show for us:

1. All visitors to our booth - we had all types of visitors, from large multi-nationals (looking for new ideas, no doubt!), to small independently-owned cafes in the Chicago area.

2. The number of people who commented on our advertisement for the Cucumber Mojo White Tea: “Good for puffy eyelids. Amazing for tea. Introducing Cucumber Mojo White Tea”

3. Our wonderful neighbours from Greek Island Spice (www.greekislandspice.com) - their pestos are out of this world!

4. Meeting all of our competitors. Many of our competitors stopped by our booth to check out our products and taste some of our blends. Most were very friendly and it’s great to hear positive feedback from companies who have been around for decades. Wish we could say that nobody pretended to be a cafe when they came up to our booth, but it did happen!

5. Some of the culinary students from a local cooking school who came up to our booth and didn’t know what “whole leaf tea” is!

More photos after the jump…

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We use pyramid teabags to package all of our blends because it allows us to use whole leaf teas and also add real pieces of fruits and berries to each of our blends. When we exhibit at trade shows, we get asked a lot of questions about the pyramid teabags, and we thought we would answer some of them here:

Q: Does it mean the tea is better if it is in a pyramid bag?

A: No, just because the tea is packed into pyramid bags does not make it a high quality product. Some tea companies advertise their pyramid bag teas as being better simply because of the packaging, but this is not the case. At FullyLoadedTea, we say that pyramid bags are simply packaging - it is what is inside the bag that counts. We pick the highest quality teas and add real pieces of fruits and berries to each bag.

Q: Are the bags made of silk? Sometimes, they are advertised as “silken” or “silky”.

A: No! The pyramid bags are not made of silk - they are made from food-grade nylon material. Any company that is advertising their teabags as made of silk is incorrect. Think about it, silk is produced by silkworms and it is not a food-grade material! FullyLoadedTea pyramid bags are made from food-grade nylon material that has been approved by the FDA to be safe for use in steeping in boiling water.

Q: How are the teabags made? Are they glued?

A: The teabag is formed by a special tea packing machine in one step. They are not glued, but ultra-sonically sealed by the machine in a controlled food-safe environment. The machine sorts out a portion of the blend, packs it into the teabag, seals the bag and packs it into the individual envelope all in one step. The pyramid teabag itself is not touched by any person during this process, making the process contamination-free.

Cucumber can be found in our Cucumber Mojo White Tea. Why did we decide to include Cucumber as one of our ingredients? Because it’s tasty and goes great with the light flavor of white tea!

Some cucumber facts:

Cucumbers are fruit

Having an enclosed seed and developing from a flower, cucumbers are scientifically classified as a fruit. Much like tomatoes and squash, however, their flavor contributes to cucumbers being perceived, prepared and eaten as vegetables. It should be noted that vegetable is a purely culinary term and as such there is no conflict in classifying cucumber as both a fruit and a vegetable.

Health Benefits

The flesh of cucumbers is primarily composed of water but also contains ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and caffeic acid, both of which help soothe skin irritations and reduce swelling. Cucumbers’ hard skin is rich in fiber and contains a variety of beneficial minerals including silica, potassium and magnesium.

A Radiant Complexion

The silica in cucumber is an essential component of healthy connective tissue, which includes muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and bone.

History

The cucumber has been cultivated for at least 3,000 years in Western Asia, and was probably introduced to other parts of Europe by the Romans. Records of cucumber cultivation appear in France in the 9th Century, England in the 14th Century, and in North America by the mid-16th Century.

The cucumber is believed to be native to India, and evidence indicates that it has been cultivated in Western Asia for 3,000 years. The cucumber is also listed among the products of ancient Ur and the legend of Gildamesh describes people eating cucumbers. Some sources also state that it was produced in ancient Thrace, and it is certainly part of modern cuisine in Bulgaria and Turkey, parts of which make up that ancient state. From India, it spread to Greece (where it was called “vilwos”) and Italy (where the Romans were especially fond of the crop), and later into China.