Catherine Felegi is the founder and author of the blog Tea Love, a blog dedicated to all things tea-related. You can find this post and others on her page, http://cafelegi.wordpress.com/.
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Hello tea-lovers!!!!
Thank you so much for being patient. Those who follow Tea Love on Facebook have heard that sadly, I have been having some personal problems that spanned back to late October. But, fortunately, things are resolving, life is moving on and I am back!!!!
I even made a New Years resolution to cut out coffee, only allowing chai lattes :-) This means LOADS more tea!
Anyway, back to the blog :-)
One of my blog readers and Facebook followers, Becky G, posted this question on my Facebook:
Sorry you're not writing right now, I miss it! But I do have a question in the meantime. I really like loose leaf tea, but every tea infuser I've tried has been a huge pain to clean and get all of the tea leaves out of. Do you know of any that are easy to clean?Well, I recommended for Becky a tea ball, which she replied that she had. So, I am curious if it might be cleaning that's the issue and not the ball itself.
I personally love loose tea. Anyone that talks to me knows that I will advise that it is a higher quality brew. No dustings involved, the leaves have more of a chance to open up (seriously, brew a cup of loose leaf tea and watch the difference as the leaves unwither! It's something really cool to behold) and it's more of a full-body tea at that point.
However, just like everyone else, I HATE cleaning out those little tea balls. Standing over the trashcan, smacking the ball every which way until you get most of the leaves out and, if you're like me, you usually have a few that just are too stubborn, so you get lazy and throw it in the sink.
While getting the leaves out is annoying, washing them shouldn't be that bad. For that, you should just have to flip the ball over and run the water through the strainer. The tea leaves will fall into the sink trap and then you just need to then, well, stand over the trash can, smack the trap every which way until you get most of the leaves out and, if you're like me, you usually have a few that are just too stubborn, so you get lazy and throw it back in the sink.
I wish I could say that there was an easier method. Maybe invest in some tea strainers that advertise how easy it is to clean them? But my personal opinion is, sadly, keep searching. I've yet to find the most effective one myself.
However, that being said, there is no shortage of decorative tea balls that you can purchase! See the slide show for some of the more interesting ones, all found on Amazon.com :-)
