food · healthy · tea

Happy New Year! Delicious healthy salad you can make friends with, and Teaview – Red Green and Dreamy, T2

I hope you’re all well enough after your new years debauchery (mine involved getting the kids to bed on time and falling asleep in the recliner. THE EXCITEMENT NEVER STOPS.).

So are you looking to atone for your sins during the season of gluttony? Well turn over a new tea leaf (see what I did there?) and get into this “wild rice and lentil salad” from the November issue of the Woolworths Fresh Mag. It tastes so good that you’ll forget you’re eating healthy.

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I know that sounds like a line, but the salad is actually rather good. And I’m a heaps good writer.

So the Woolies mag puts it roughly like this:

1 cup of fancy-pants wild rice blend. I’ve no fucking idea what “wild rice blend” is meant to be, so I just went into the rice aisle and picked something off the shelf that said it was rice but didn’t look like rice.

420g can lentils 420g?? The only can there has 400g of lentils. The salad can just deal with a moderate amount of lentils.

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup of red wine vinegar

1 garlic clove crushed

2 grated carrots

1 grated beetroot

crumbled fetta, chopped wallnuts and sliced spring onions to top

Cook rice according to packet directions, stir in rinsed lentils and cool. Mix up dressing of olive oil, vinegar and garlic. Toss grated veg through rice mix, drizzle with dressing, top with yummy bits as desired.

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The result is a rather delicious, so colourful salad which eats like a meal. With grains and protein in, it will keep you going for longer and it’s great for your gut. This will surely make up for the month-long deviation from any attempt at moderation, won’t it? Of course it will. Trust me, I’m a blogger.

Teaview – Red Green and Dreamy, T2, and old faithful Red, the Teapot.

Internet people, meet Red. Red, internet people. Say hello.

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No. He didn’t say anything back. He’s a teapot.

Moving on.

Red was my first teapot (if you don’t include the tiny porcelain kids set I had when I was little. I miss it still. *sigh*) and was given to me by my awesome sister in law who knew that I had an interest in such. At the time she told me that it was nothing special, just something cheap. But I loved him, and I love him still.

Firstly it’s red. Red goes faster. Secondly, it’s Asian-inspired, meaning that it’s in no way Asian, but it has cherry blossoms on, a twine handle and has cups big enough to serve black tea with milk and sugar. So it was perfect for me. She later gave me a proper clay pot with the tray you see here, but we’ll get into that later.

I’ve shared many a cup with Red, mainly my first cube of Melbourne Breakfast from T2, because that’s the tea everyone buys first when they go to T2 because it’s black tea with vanilla in and it seems like a safe choice, and if it’s inspired by Melbourne, then wow, it must be trendy.

After all my recent, new excitement in teaware I thought it might be able to take you back to where it started with old Red, but with a new tea I hadn’t tried –  Red Green and Dreamy, T2.

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When I opened this one there was an immediate rich, fruity smell. It appeared to be a mix of very small cut leaves and large ones. Red Green and Dreamy was described to me in store as a mix of fermented and unfermented rooibos, but the website tells me that it’s unfermented rooibos, sunflower petals (the big leaves I guess) and flavour.

So I brewed it up in Red for 4 mins at 100 degrees and it produced a very light yellow brew, which is not light in flavour!

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PEEEEEAAACH. Very peachy. Very fruity. It still tastes a bit like rooibos, but it seems to be mostly a vessel for peach flavouring. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not unpleasant, quite the contrary. But it’s a lot more like their seasonal “iced tea” creations from exuberant T2 food scientists rather than, well, tea.

Because it’s unfermented it might not take milk, but don’t quote me on that. I drank some hot then cooled the rest and am finding it refreshing as a cool drink as well.

The overall verdict is that I enjoy it enough, but there are a lot of things I’d rather drink. Things like the James Squire Chancer I’m about to open on account of I-made-salad-today so I’ve earned myself a beer. You saw it.

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