cornerofmadness

I'm glad to hear the tea cup made it in one piece. And now that you've seen the book, I can tell you that I can see why your parents had a problem with the Adagio genmaicha. It's an aggressive tea, but you can tame it into a very nice cuppa by preparing it using the directions for brewing sencha in that book. The book itself, by the way, says boil it, but the Adagio brand makes a much mellower brew at "fish eyes" for two minutes (and you might have noticed that there's a temperature chart that accompanies the fish eyes/string of pearls/turbulent water schtick. Invaluable for preparing tea according to the instructions on the Adagio tins). I first found that book in our library, and it really opened the doors for me to enjoying green tea. It tastes a lot different prepared properly, and I've learned to distinguish flavors since I started brewing green tea right. Be sure to try Dragon Well, if you can get hold of any. Even the health-food-store grade I get from Ward's is a wonderful tea, so I can only imagine what top-grade dragon well must be like.