Zarafina Tea Maker

I got the Zarafina Tea Maker for my birthday from one of our kids, Scott.  He doesn't actually know that he gave it to me because he gave me a gift card to Amazon.com and I bought the tea maker with the gift card.

I selected the Zarafina Tea Maker because of its ability to make tea from bags or from loose tea leaves.

I'm a fan of Indian chai and learned how to make it from a friend of mine who is from India and is a fantastic chai maker.  I do the best I can to emulate him in my tea making experiments.

I use loose black Indian tea, shredded ginger root, crushed cardamom seeds, and crushed cinnamon sticks or fresh peppermint leaves. This involves boiling the tea and other ingredients for several minutes and then straining the tea into a cup and adding cream and sugar or agave nectar.

The part of this process I was trying to simplify is the straining part.  I'm messy and it never works as smoothly as I would like.  This tea maker has an infuser basket into which you put the tea and any additional spices. This eliminates the need for straining.

The Zarafina Tea Maker has settings for different kinds of tea.  This gadget makes tea without effort.  It's great.  The setting I use to make chai brews the tea for 8 minutes and it's done - no stress...no mess. The tea maker dispenses the tea into the teapot and it's ready to pour.  All in all this is a great machine.

You can order it from Amazon.com for $44.95 + $10.49 shipping.

Rating: ***** (5/5)

iHome MP3 Portable Stereo Speakers

 This little MP3 speaker system is perfect for those occaisions when you want to share the contents of your MP3 player with others where there is no electricity.

The iHome speaker system runs off four AA batteries.  It wll work with any MP3 player.  It is not like a typical docking station, the speaker system connects to the MP3 player through the headphone jack.  This enables it to be used by all MP3 players, including iPhones.

We had a long 8 hour drive back from our vacation a couple of weeks ago.  My husband's 4Runner doesn't have a connection for an iPod.  We wanted to listen to some audio books during the drive so I picked up an iHome speaker system.  Yes, I got the pink one.  We put batteries in it and set it on the counsel between us and turned on my iPod.  The speakers worked great.  I was impressed with the sound quality and clarity.

Later, we played music through the iHome speaker system and found that the sound was acceptable.  We would have preferred more volume capability and better base response - but it did the job.

This little speaker system comes with a bag in which to store and carry it.  I found this speaker system at Wal-mart for $19.99.  A great price for this gadget.

Rating:  *****