A site such as Steepster after all should focus on the one thing it does, which is bring together tea lovers, give us a place to post our thoughts on teas, comment back and forth on those specific things, and that's about it. That's pretty much all we need. And Steepster does it pretty darn well.

That said, they have been steadily rolling out new features over the past year, like a discussion area, private messages, cool contests, and I'm sure a lot more to come. If you're a tea lover, I think it's a must have on your bookmark list. I know I've discovered quite a few new varieties of tea there, found a few good deals from tea sites, and made more than a few new friends.

By the way, I'm at steepster.com/jrking if you want to become my friend.

Rather than having my tea flavored with something, how would I like something else flavored with tea? For example, rather than mint flavored tea, how about tea flavored mints?

To be honest, it's not something I'd ever thought about, a lot. I have seen and been a little curious about some recipes I've run across in the past. Like perhaps a chicken baked in tea leaves, or Maeda'en's awesome looking green tea ice cream.

As for the specific question asked (thanks Chocolate Blush) on perhaps mints, or chocolates with tea flavoring... as they seem to suggest in their own comment (and I would agree), it seems to me that coffee for some reason to be a better pairing with this type of taste. Although I am not averse to giving it a try, and if anyone comes up with something, feel free to fill out the contact form at the top of this page, shoot me an email and I'll be glad to review some samples for you!

A quick Google search turns up a few pages with recipes for cooking with tea, including this nice article on the Teamuse site from a few years ago. It seems there's quite a tradition of cooking with tea, and one that I might have to get on board with if I am to call myself a true tea enthusiast.

The only problem is... I'm not much of a cook.

• Twitter - @rubofthegreen
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• Youtube - random videos that don't make a lot of sense to anyone but me. Sometimes I do post videos of my golfing exploits, and plan on more in the future.
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• Flickr - similar to Youtube, most of the pics here don't make a lot of sense to anyone but me.
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• Posterous - this is where I post random things that don't fit into any other categories. Just random links and videos I run across while surfing the web.

Feel free to friend me up on any of the pages above. I love meeting new friends!

But there is also evidence that Ancient Egyptians did prepare drinks in the way that we prepare tea today, in the form of the herb chamomile (still popular today amongst the world of tea) and also from a plant known as Catha edulis. Apparently, "the ancient Egyptians considered Catha edulis to be a most sacred plant, a "divine food" like royal jelly to bees, capable of releasing humanities nascent divinity."

With common names such as Abyssinian tea, African tea, Arabian tea and Bushman's tea, there can be no doubt that one of the ways the Egyptians prefer(red) to prepare the leaf is as we would a true tea. That said, it appears to have quite a different effect, including "excitation and increased motor activity, being wakeful, talkative, energized and cheerful are some of the feelings that users describe. A sense of exaltation, of being outside the sphere of space and time. Approximately 30 % of the people who use Khat (Catha edulis) experience sleepiness as opposed to excitation. Larger doses can lead to boisterousness and aggressiveness. Initial effects of ingestion can be a little disconcerting, including dizziness, increased heart rate and possibly mild stomach pain. The less pleasant feeling soon subside, and gently merge into a sense of bliss and euphoria, boundless energy and clarity of mind."

I think I'll just stick with the Chamomile.

Heck, according to this article on Wikipedia, "some historians trace the sport back to the Roman game of paganica, in which participants used a bent stick to hit a stuffed leather ball. One theory asserts that paganica spread throughout Europe as the Romans conquered most of the continent, during the first century B.C., and eventually evolved into the modern game."

I guess the point is, the game of golf isn't really unique in its form, and it's not surprising that other bored souls would have thought to hit something with a stick, be it a rock or a ball or whatever, and knock it across a field at various points in human history. I mean heck, anyone out there ever played kick the can? And given the human predication for competition, it's no surprise that someone would eventually turn it into a game of sorts by doing the obvious and giving the object a destination.

According to the same Wikipedia article above, the most widely accepted account is that "the modern game originated in Scotland around the 12th century, with shepherds knocking stones into rabbit holes on the current site of the Old Course at St Andrews."

I wonder if King Tut had the same problem with casting as me...?

Courtesy of Youtube.com/Golf

For those not schooled in the world of Firefly, it's a sci-fi western set roughly 500 years in the future and in a distant galaxy populated by the descendants of "Earth that Was" and stretches across hundreds of worlds that were terraformed and populated after "Earth got used up." It's arguably one of the best series in history that never made it, and one of the biggest debacles in the history of the Fox network.

But I digress.

The backstory of the 'verse is that back before the human population left Earth, the two big superpowers remaining were the US and China, and they took it upon themselves to be the catalysts in making the move to space. It's not surprising then, that those two cultures would be the two that would survive 500 years down the line. So much so that in the show, the characters speak a mish-mash of English and Mandarin interspersed together in kind of a fun bit of dialog. And since China took itself into space, it's not surprising to see how the culture of tea might have made its way to space as well.

So the next time you watch the show (or if you choose to check it out for the first time), try to pick up on the subtle references to tea peppered throughout the show... mainly with the Companion Inara, who seems to be always drinking tea, and is in fact very ceremonial about it.