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I love to cook and I am good at it too. Great teas need to compliment with great food, so I want to share some of my favorite dishes with you.
Fried rice is a popular dish among Asian cuisine. Back to the old days when microwave was not invented, one of the good way to get rid of leftover rice is to pan fry it in a wok to warm it up again. People started to throw in different variety of ingredients including eggs, meat, veggies and etc to enhance favor of it. Many people complained to me that their fried rice became very mushy. If you love fried rice, you need to follow my advices:
1)You need to use leftover rice. If you don’t have any, please make a pot of rice and put it in a fridge for at least a day before you use it. I normally keep it in the fridge for 2 days before i use it. The idea of using leftover rice is the water content of leftover rice is a lot less than the fresh cooked ones. Most of the ingredients that go into fried rice generally have some sauces coming out when you saute them for a while. So you want to make your leftover rice as dried as possible, so that it could absorb all these juicy great sauce without getting too soggy. The dried leftover rice is easier to separate each rice grain too without sticking all together.
2)Oil is important. Most cuisines used a lot of oil to separate the rice grain out, and the shinny rices look good when they present it. You could use olive oil and reduce the amount of the oil, if you put the rice in the fridge longer time.
3)Heat up your wok very HOT before you put in oil and rice. It reduce the chance your rice stick to wok.
4)Pan fry each ingredient separately and mix them all in at the end. If you have green and meat together, you probably want the green still look green in the rice, right? So don’t overcook the food.
4)Combination of ingredient. You should avoid put in the ingredient which could generate a lot of sauce after pan fry it. If you do so, your fried rice will turn out like congee or rice swimming in a bowl of sauces.
5)There are dozens of varieties of fried rice, each with its own specific list of ingredients. You really don’t need to follow all these specific ingredients and you could mix in any ingredients you like is fine.
I made dried scallop and egg white fried rice today. It tastes good to me.  Happy Cooking.
Posted by june / Food & Drink
I gained nearly 50 pounds when I carried Jacob and it took me 10 and half months to shake them off naturally by drinking tea and taking care my baby. A lot of my co-workers asked me how I could lose so much weight and why I am so skinny. Here is my secrets:
1) A small exercise could help in a long run. I used to go to gym and swimming, but I really can’t afford it anymore. I am a working mom and I treasure every moment I have with my baby. I decided to take Jacob for at least 30 minutes walk everyday to see more people after I noticed he had stranger anxiety when he was 4 months old. I guess a nice relaxing walk and a few crunches a few times a week is a pretty good exercise routine in a long run.
2) Eat right and don’t starve yourselves. I like to know what I put into my mouth, so making my own lovely food is part of my ritual and my husband loves my cooking. I am contend when I am well fed myself with hearty warm meal and I hardly feel like going after the snack. So i guess it’s very important to love what you eat and make sure you eat healthy.
3)Tea is my life and I drink it throughout a day. Tea has been proven to increase metabolism and burn fat. I cannot speak for other people, but I do notice my metabolism is very high and I generally have a lot energy comparing to other new moms. If this is a true statement, then I am the most fortunate person in the world because I enjoy every sip of my fine tea.
Posted by june / Health Benefit of tea
I got many cool mugs from friends since I launched Just4Tea. Allison gave me a mug for my birthday and it has a picture of me carrying a 4 by 4 ft of gigantic tumble weeds at her grandparent’s farm in Oregon. It took me a while to collect this big weeds from dessert. I still remember the flame was exploding to very high when we burnt it. I giggle so much whenever I use this mug and it reminds me the great time I had in Oregon.
The other nice mug I got is the heat sensitive mug from Melanie. The color changes when you put the hot water in it. Cool urh?
Posted by june / Cool Things
One of the good thing after being a mom is to learn how to prioritize my work a lot better and let the not-so-important things are out of my picture. For instance, I used to spend 2-3 hours in front of television watching junkie soap operas and I don’t do it anymore. My day normally starts with a cute cooing and babbling sound of Jacob and follows by half screaming & crying loud noise if I dare to ignore him. Thereby, as you could image that he is a sure the most effective alarm in my life. David & I turn him into bed around 9:30pm, so that we could have our personal time to follow up the work, tea business and my new hobby.
Most of my friends know I love cooking, but I don’t bake. I never grew up having an oven in the house, so baking to me is a challenge. Anyhow, Markus, one of my foodie friend simply made a delicious funeral cake (aka Streuselkuchen)when we went snowboard trip last year. He taught me into baking since then and he certainly has a lot of patient to answer my brainless questions and even showed me how to bake.
I am doing a lot baking project and experimenting many new recipes. I made Tiramisu using TGY powder last nite before I went to bed! Instead of using espresso powder, I grinded High Mountain TGY into fine powder and dipped the lady fingers with lot of Grand Marnier. At last I dusted with TGY powder and dark Belgium chocolate. It’s no way you could turn down such a nice tea & liquor! It should go well with a nice cup of High Mountain TGY.  Yeah! Happy Baking 101.
P.S. I should have taken the picture before I shared this yummy cake with Lisette and Paul, but it’s too late. I only have 1 slice left and the picture looks awful..
Posted by june / Food & Drink
I am back again after so long!! During the 9 and half months pregnant, I was only able to consume limited amount of tea, I was so bump out and missed my TGY so dearly. Anyhow, I am so happy to back to my lovely tea drinking ritual. Instead of feeding Jacob my little boy sugary water, I guess I will indulge him with a nice cup of just4tea.
P.S. I did drink Dragon Well sometimes because it has smaller amount of caffeine in it compared to other teas I have.
Cheers!
June from www.just4tea.com
Posted by june / My life as an Entrepreneur
My last post explained why one should not make tea from tea bag. I am going to start talking about how I make good tea at work without hassle. Most people either use paper cup from the office kitchen or bring their own cup to make tea. I have tried both, but none of them really work well. The disadvantages (or advantages) of paper cups are pretty obvious, I won’t go into details here. A normal coffee mug or cup won’t work for me either since I don’t sit on my desk all the time. And as most tea lovers know, some teas need to steep (like Pu Erh) for a longer time in very hot water; a normal cup (especially without lid) just cannot keep the water temperature high long enough.
Then I tried one of these stainless steel vacuum coffee mug with a lid  (actually, that was a giveaway from my previous company). It worked pretty well, much better than my old cup. I could roam around the office with it and it keeps the water pretty hot for a long time. This is not the mug I am currently using though. Before I show you what I am using today, let me talk about what other people use across the Pacific (China, that is).
Two most common styles of tea”cup” I have seen are tea jar  and tea cup with lid  . The tea jars are nothing more than a long cylindrical plastic or glass jar with a twist top. Actually, an used spaghetti sauce jar works just fine. I remember when I was a kid, bus and taxi drivers in Hong Kong simply use jars like that for tea. Back then, there was no cup holder in cars. The ceramic tea mugs with lids are classic. You can see them whenever you see Chinese government officials in Hollywood movies (remember the court scenes in Red Corner from Richard Gere?). Even today, they are the still used in the National Assembly meeting in China.
I guess I have side tracked too much :). Here is what I am using these days. 
Nothing really fancy. It is very much like a normal thermal travel coffee mug, but with a water-tight screw top. For making black tea, I can close the lid and let the tea steep for a longer time in very hot water. For making green tea like Dragon Well, I can keep the lid open so the tea is not cooked. In any case, the screw top comes in handy since I like to shake the tea a little to make sure the tea has an even flavor. It is so water tight and sturdy that I have dropped the mug a couple times (with the lid on) and nothing spilled.
I would like to know what mug or cup other tea lovers out there use for making tea. Please send me a picture or leave a comment with a description.
David from www.just4tea.com
Posted by david / Pratical tips
Like most tea lovers, I used to make tea from tea bags when I want a cup of tea after lunch. It does not mean I did not appreciate a good cup of tea. However, I just found it very troublesome to make tea from loose leaves in an office setting. And unlike coffee, there is just no Starbucks equivalent around even if I am willing to drive down the street and pay $2 plus for a cup of tea. Most tea lovers associate enjoying good tea with making tea with gaiwan or yixing teapot from premium tea leaf at home. This is definitely true. June and I do that at home whenever we get a chance. After a couple years of trial and error, I finally figure out some ways to make good tea at work without spending too much time and without messing up my desk.
Before I go into the details of the technique that I use, let’s discuss why one does not want to drink tea made from tea bags. I bet most of the readers of this tea blog is sophisticated enough to figure that tea made from most tea bags taste horrible. This is mainly because tea leaves are all broken in tea bags. There are 2 problems with broken tea leaves. Broken tea leaves are generally low grade “tea dust” that is left behind after the bigger tea leaves are picked. In addition, much of the flavor in tea is from its oil on the tea leaves. Tea oil is easily dried up if the leaves are broken. There are some higher quality tea bags. Those higher quality tea bags use larger leaves with roomier tea bag and/or having individual tightly sealed packaging to avoid drying up of tea leaves. However, I have yet seen any decent quality tea bags for Chinese tea.
In the future blog, I will share with you more about what works and what doesn’t when coming to making tea at work.
David from www.just4tea.com
Posted by admin / Pratical tips
It took me a while to think throughly when it comes to market my teas. I don’t have much budgets to market my teas as a small business owner, but I have 200% confident on my teas and I’ve been told by many people how much they like my teas.
Therefore, I invite you Tea or Foodie Bloggers to try my teas. I believe that your honest opinions actually worth a lot more than all of these flashy advisements. If you want to support local small business and love to try a relaxing cup of Just4tea for free, please fill out your info and I will send you the teas.
Cheers!
June from www.just4tea.com 
Posted by june / Uncategorized
I received a lot of love and hate comments about my roasted style Tie Guan Yin (TGY). I am not surprise at all after reading reviews and it’s my honor to get to know my tea lovers what they like and dislike on certain style of teas. The Chaozhou (Chiu Chow) style TGY is my signature tea and you definitely need to be very open minded if you want to check it out. It’s truly an acquired taste.
Comparing to other non-roasted or lightly roasted TGY in US or even in China, our family still carry the tradition of roasting and blending our TGY. My papa always serve this TGY to his Chaozhou friends. Gong Fu (Kung Fu) Tea was synonyms to TGY to me when I was a kid till I realized it’s a tea ceremony recently after doing more research on my own. It was a popular tea choice in the old days; but it becomes an ancient tea and rarely any people know about it except older generations from ChaoZhou.
Papa and my brother mentioned that this is not a popular tea as it used to be with a long sigh. Despite knowing that this is a fading way of making tea, it is very labor intensive and knowing that they should have spent more time to market the tea store instead, they can’t help to admit that they both love to feel and smell the teas by roasting and blending the teas. I was watching them doing it all the time when I was a kid and they would get really mad and yelled at me if I messed around their teas and tools. The roasting part and hand blending requires extremely high concentration and they usually shut themselves at the backstage of our store to do the work. They would come out with their bodies full of tea dust and sweat, then they would make a pot of hot water immediately to taste their newly made tea. Like any good tea maker, they would discuss and write down details of the tea features and the differences between this one and the previous teas and the changes of the new season teas. Like wine that each barrel taste differently, each batch of our Tie Guan yin also does not taste the same.
I am surprise when Alex, Martin and Maria told me that they love this tea especially Alex can describe how the tea transformed from each brewing and my jaw was dropped completely. I am proud that my family has been crafting tea for so many years and I intent to carry this tradition to my next generation too with my ridiculous stubbornness.
June from www.just4tea.com
Posted by june / My life as an Entrepreneur
Since we started the website, we heard a lot of encouragement words from different people. Thanks again for all the support. My sister, Anna Chiu, (a register dietitian in Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong) is so nice that she did some research on her own and send us her findings. I think it is worthwhile to share this with all the tea loving folks.
I actually would like to share with u some info on the tea as one of the functional foods, which is
“a food similar in appearance to a conventional food, consumed as part of the usual, with demonstrated physiological benefits to reduce the risk of chronic disease beyond basic nutritional functions”
As u mentioned about the reduced risk of Cardiovascular disease with the intake of tea, u could also find out more info regarding the protective effects of the phytochemicals, i.e., Polyphenols & Catechin in the tea extracts.
From: Position Paper on Functional Foods, American Dietetic Association, Journal of American Dietetic Assoc., May, 2004
Catechins in green tea, reduce risk of certain types of cancers, recommended that green tea 4 - 6 cups daily
Polyphenols in black tea, reduce risk coronary heart disease
From: Sonenshein G et al. Cancer Research. October 2007; 67(19):9018-23
Green Tea and Breast Cancer Therapy
World Cancer Research Fund - supported research has shown that a component of green tea known as EGCG can stop the growth of certain breast tumours in an animal model. …suggests that EGCG, in combination with conventional antibody therapies, may represent a new way to target these specific breast tumours.
I hope there would be happy experience to promote the beneficial effects of your nice tea!!
David from www.just4tea.com
Posted by david / Health Benefit of tea
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