Adagio - Earl Grey - Bravo and Moonlight

So I set down to do a post about some more of the Adagio teas I have tried in the past week. I go to draw up the tasting notes on Steepster and realize I had been too busy to do a Steepster review. But I did make some short reviews on the adagio site.

EG Bravo

First the Earl Grey Bravo. It's Adagio's version of Earl Grey, it's black tea with bergamot oil, but it also has orange rind and cornflowers. I steeped it for about 2 minutes with boiled water. My short Adagio review:

It tastes more of orange citrus than bergamot. A little harsh, very strong. I would not drink this without sugar. 

Earl Grey Bravo is not my favorite Earl Grey. It's cheap and will do if there's nothing else, but I do not plan on ordering more.

The Earl Grey Moonlight is supposed to be a creamy Earl Grey. Like the Bravo it's black tea, bergamot, orange rind and cornflowers but it also has vanilla and creme flavoring. I steeped it for about 3 minutes.

EG Moonlight, sans milk

Not as harsh as the Earl Grey Bravo but I still would not take this tea without a little sugar and some milk. 

If you want to try a creamy Earl Grey, Moonlight is not too bad. Not as good as NM Tea Company's Earl Grey Creme, but it's cheap and drinkable.

And while I am reviewing Adagio teas here's a $5 gift certificate at Adagios: 2680945299. The code is good for 24 hours for new Adagio customers.

Two Pumpkin Teas - DAVID's Tea and Adagio

Ok, after doing my tea post last minute last week I made up my mind to make my tea post early this week.

And here I am writing this at 10:30 on Thursday.

I blame classes.

Adagio Pumpkin spice

I was going to review the teas I got from Adagio but still I have not had time to properly review them all... But I have a half-done review on Adagio's Pumpkin Spice tea.

Here is my Steepster review:

Tastes more flowers and spices than actually like pumpkin. A little disappointing. But not too bad a tea by itself.

Adagio Pumpkin Spice

I thought I could improve it by using brown sugar instead of white... but it still does not taste much like pumpkin, just pumpkin pie spice. Very inferior to David's Tea Pumpkin chai.

Yeah, I'm afraid I did not like the Adagio Pumpkin tea very much. It stained my teacup really bad too.

But I have had some good pumpkin tea this week. I got a little of DAVID's Tea pumpkin chai. It's awesome. Steepster Review:

David's Tea Pumpkin Chai

I have been wanting to try this tea for months and finally got it in a swap. I am not disappointed. It tastes like pumpkin, really like pumpkin, not just like cinnamon and nutmeg like a lot of pumpkin teas. I had it with some brown sugar and some half&half.

I will need to order a couple ounces of this. 

It costs $6.75 for 50 grams (about 1.75 oz, 15+ cups), then another $5 for shipping... So I will need to scrape together a bit of cash for it. It is more expensive than most of the other pumpkin teas I've looked at but worth it. Check out the ingredients:

David's Tea Pumpkin chai

Black tea, cinnamon, cloves, lemon peel, squash, carrot, caramel bits, pumpkin candies.

 The pumpkin candies are mostly to make it look pretty, the candies (sprinkles really) melt in the first steeping and do not add anything to the tea itself. The dried pieces of squash and carrot are what really make it taste like pumpkin (Most pumpkin pies/pumpkin pie filling is actually squash) .

Regina's Only Friend

I'm a fan of the TV show Once Upon a Time, so how about a post about Once Upon a Time?

Maleficent is really hurt right now

This is something that has been bothering me since the season one finale. Regina sends Emma under the library to see "an old friend" which turns out to be Maleficent trapped in her dragon form. Emma winds up having to blow her up with a well thrown sword, rumor has it Maleficent is still alive but usually when someone gets blown to ash they're pretty dead, or at least really hurt.

What I want to know is why Maleficent wound up getting the short end of the stick.

Regina was at her most evil right before she set the Dark Curse. For whatever reason Maleficent had traded her sleeping curse with Regina for the Dark Curse, probably to go after Sleeping Beauty (Aurora and/or Aurora's mother) But Regina is the sort of customer who would expect to get a full refund for any product that does not completely meet her every expectation. Because Snow was freed from the sleeping curse Regina uses that as a reason to get the Dark Curse back from Regina. Maleficent and Regina have a magic fight with lots of CGI, a miniature unicorn almost gets killed, and in the end Regina traps Maleficent with a bunch of chandelier loop things from the ceiling. Maleficent expects Regina to kill her but Regina does not because Maleficent is her only friend, and shows uncharacteristic mercy by leaving Maleficent to awkwardly squirm out of that stupid hoop thing but alive.

I killed my horse for nothing?! I look like such an idiot right now.

An undetermined amount of time later Regina first kills her horse, then her father (both things she loves the most) in order to enact the Dark Curse.

So Regina would not kill Maleficent because she was her only friend but cursed her worse than most. Even Mary Margaret got to be human, interact with other people, go places around town. But Maleficent got stuck in her dragon form, trapped in some underground caves, completely alone, with nothing to do but move Snow White's glass coffin around (The coffin was under the abandoned mines in "Still Small Voice" but was under the library/town in "Land without Magic". Some people wonder why some of the glass was broken, I'm surprised the dragon didn't smash it completely.) as her only piece of furniture, for 28 years.

Why (and how) Maleficent was trapped in dragon form is something I would like to know. Maleficent was not the only shape shifter; Regina herself shifted into a mouse to visit Rumpelstiltskin. Red was a werewolf but Ruby would not change in Storybrooke because there was no magic. Isn't a dragon a magical creature and impossible to exist, fly and breathe fire in Storybrooke? It is possible that Maleficent was in her dragon form when the Dark Curse hit and so she stayed in that form. But Billy was never human in the Enchanted Forest, he was a mouse, Gus, and possibly was briefly a horse if they want to borrow from the Cinderella story. For some odd reason Gus got turned into a human when he was brought to Storybrooke. So even dragon Maleficent should have been turned back into a human when she was brought to Storybrooke.

Could Maleficent get pregnant from this?

Maleficent being a dragon in Storybrooke could not have been unintentional, what Regina said to Emma about Maleficent being trapped in a different form suggested that Regina did it on purpose. Why did Regina do that to her? Did Maleficent remember her previous life, or did she get her memory erased like everyone else? And how emotionally scarred was Maleficent after having Charming shove that egg in her gills? Or is her dragon form like Red's Wolf form before she learned to embrace the Wolf, in blacked out dragon rage?




In honor of Maleficent I blended a tea on Adagio called Regina's Only Friend, a mostly green tea with bergamot (Earl Grey Green) and spearmint with a little cinnamon flavored black tea with ginger accent. I've paired it with my other OUAT fandom tea Evil Queen.If you get it use code 8581843594 to save $5, the code expires in 24 hours.