Good news for all the gluten-intolerant tea drinkers out there: with very few exceptions, Bigelow® teas are naturally gluten-free! Just check out the ingredients listed on the packaging or on our website – (www.bigelowtea.com) they will clearly indicate that the tea is either “GLUTEN FREE” or “NOT GLUTEN FREE.”  So, if you want to savor the sweet spice of our family’s signature tea, “Constant Comment”®, or sip a soothing cup of one of our newer flavors Green Tea Chai – you can rest assured that you’ll enjoy a safe, healthy and tasty libation.

October is Celiac Disease Awareness Month.  For adults and children living with Celiac Disease (CD), a lifelong digestive disorder, gluten is the mortal enemy.  So, what is “gluten”, exactly?  Well, it’s actually a generic name for the storage proteins found in grains, specifically: wheat, barley, rye and oats.

When people with CD eat foods containing gluten, they suffer a toxic reaction to the immune system, causing damage to the small intestine which, in turn, hinders proper food absorption.  CD patients generally have weak immune systems and may experience sensitivity to other foods.  However, as long as they are monitored by their physician and carefully watch what they eat and drink, the disease can be managed without sacrificing quality of life.

At Bigelow Tea, we take “quality of life” very seriously, by providing you with a wonderful selection of teas to add to your gluten-free diet.  So, have a cuppa, and toast to your good health!

It’s three o’clock on a weekday afternoon. The children are napping. The whistling of the teakettle is my cue to take a deep breath. Contentment fills my soul as the aroma of “Constant Comment®” fills the kitchen. Soon the telephone rings and it is, as I knew it would be, my best friend, Maggie on the line. I hear her deep sigh, almost a purr, as she, too settles in with a cup of the aromatic tea. It is time for our afternoon chat.

We have continued this tradition for years, rarely missing a day. Serendipitously, we would discover years later how good for our health all this tea drinking was. Our friendship blossomed, watered by countless cups of Bigelow’s elixir. Once a week perhaps, our conversations would be held face-to-face as we watched our toddlers form their own bonds, ties that exist to this day. We shared our joys and sorrows, career successes and tragic deaths, our children’s accomplishments, our aging parents’ struggles. Often we would look into our cups, trying to read the future in the amber liquid. A tear might drop, sending out waves of fragrant tea, as comforting and timeless as an ocean tide.

Then Maggie moved to Germany. Communication went from verbal to visual. It was pre-internet days, so we resorted to pen and paper. When the blue aerogram envelope arrived, I would restrain myself from ripping it open long enough to brew a cup of “Constant Comment®.” Some traditions simply have to be honored. We are grandmothers now, our lives full of new babies, second careers and madcap projects. Phone calls are few. E-mail serves, in its impersonal way, as the preferred method of communication. In fact, a recent e-mail from me to my dear friend carried the lament that we no longer have time for a tête-à-tête. All those cups of tea nourished the plant that is our friendship. It is time to feed it again.

By Susan Tornga

I love my Constant Comment® iced tea so much that I drag an insulated sports bottle around with me wherever I go, especially when I plan on having to do something that requires a lot of time. So I fill up the sports bottle with ice, Constant Comment®, sugar and a straw and carry it with me to our stallion barn, to have when holding horses for our farrier, and out to the wash rack when bathing the horses. In fact just about everywhere.

One afternoon, I had the ultimate in time consuming tasks to perform; washing, combing out tangles, and braiding our Thoroughbred stallion, Miraculus Time’s beautiful thick floor length red chestnut tail. After a trip to the wash rack, I tied him up close to his wall mounted grain bin, grabbed the combs, brushes, and conditioner and put my sports bottle in the grain bin. I started in the front with his mane until I had the last of the tangles free, sipping a few times and replacing the bottle in the bin. Miraculus is a brilliant red, very kind stallion, who follows every move you make with his ears forward and his eyes aglow. I finally got around to going behind him to attack the 4 and a half foot long mass of tangles that comprised his tail. After about 20 minutes he stepped forward a few steps and started making some very strong sniffing noises.

A few minutes later he started rattling things around in his grain bucket with his nose. Since stallions are very curious and mouth around on everything, I thought nothing of it and let him go ahead and enjoy himself. It wasn’t long after that, when I heard some very interesting sounds. It sounded like he was chewing on something and there were definitely gurgling noises. I decided to drop everything and go see what he was doing. Imagine my shock when I found my Constant Comment® bottle with his teeth on the straw drinking my tea!! My straw had teeth marks imbedded in it and he had tea dripping from his muzzle. I laughed until my sides hurt. I guessed that I was the only woman on Earth that had ever shared a mug of Constant Comment® with a REAL STUD!! From then on every time I hold him for a new set of shoes, I set the bottle on the ground beside my director’s chair. Every time he points his nose in that direction, I pour out a handful and he slurps it up and licks my hand (clean!). It really has ruined stallion’s reputations to have one licking your hand that way.

ANNE GEINZER, Constant Comment® Contest Runner Up

As you might know, we ran a contest for the best Constant Comment Story.  Our winner is here but below is a runner up that we enjoyed as well!

If I think about this too much it makes me cry, because Constant Comment is the only tea my grandma ever used. I loved her so very much and I think of her every day – she is my inspiration. I grew up in Northbrook, Illinois and my grandparents were hard working people who did so much for their community. They singlehandedly started the Northbrook speed skating club, and my grandma dyed long johns red for the kids uniforms! My most special and loving memory of drinking this tea was after a speed skating race in the dead cold of a Chicago winter. I can still see it in my mind…when my sisters and I were done skating, we would be freezing cold – our toes and noses almost frost bit. We were so little, 6, 7 & 8 years old. We would skate our hearts out for my grandpa, and when we were done we got to race back to my grandma’s car and get warm. We couldn’t wait! My grandma would be waiting in there, snug and warm and tell us how proud she was of us. Then she would get out her red plaid thermos and pour us a cup of “her” tea. It was so sweet and so warm and went through us like a warm, wonderful blanket. Except this was a warm blanket of love from her, like her outstretched arms to keep us from shivering.

She was so amazing to us all, so gifted and so full of love and adventure and we all adored her so much so this special tea, Constant Comment, was her tea and hers alone. I knew the name – I remember recalling it many times and feeling so privileged to have had it. She made us feel so loved and so adored that surely, anything she did, was special. If Mrs. Bigelow hadn’t created that tea, I know my grandma could have. But the fact she loved it, was enough for me to become a fan for life. When I smell it and close my eyes over that cup of warm, orange aroma, it makes me feel like she is right here with me, wrapping her soft arms around me once again. (This is where my tears fall into the cup!)

As for that Northbrook Speed skating Club, my grandpa put that little town on the map when his team won Olympic medals in Sapporo in 1972. I know that her tea went along on that trip and many others! This tea, “her” tea, my grandma’s favorite tea, is now mine and will be always. I hope that someday my two boys will feel the same love that I do when they smell that aroma and that sweetness and know I am with them in every cup. This tea is like a big warm hug of love from someone very special. It is a little cup from heaven.

Heidi Prom

Tea reminds me of my mother. One of my earliest memories is of getting off the big yellow school bus and coming home to find my mother in her bedroom, waiting for me to tell her about my day, sitting in her chair and watching soap operas as she had her “afternoon tea.” She would have her favorite tea cup full of her favorite tea, Constant Comment — a blue and white cup so big it looked more like a soup bowl — and an open-faced sandwich to go along with it. She was European, and afternoon tea was an important ritual to her — so important that I can remember driving home from a family vacation and my mother insisting that she needed to stop for “high tea,” while my father tried to bring her attention to the fact that we were in the north woods of Canada and tea houses were few and far between. We ended up stopping at a truck stop; I don’t think the “high tea” lived up to my mother’s expectations that day.

My favorite family teatime ritual, however, was our evening tea. Every night around 9 p.m. my parents would brew a pot of tea. They would carry out the steaming cups (my mother’s cup taking up far more than its fair share of space on the tray) along with dishes of ice cream or slices of cake. We would sit together, enjoying our dessert and watching television. My mother would sew or flip through a magazine for awhile, but eventually I would lay my head in her lap and she would scratch my head with one hand as she sipped her tea with the other. I would doze off, sleepy and content, feeling her fingers in my hair, her warm touch conveying her love for me. I’m 29 years old, now, and my mother has been gone for three years. She was the glue that held our family together, and I miss those nights of tea and dessert like I miss sunshine in winter. That big blue cup belongs to me, now. When I take it out and make myself a cup of Constant Comment, I can still feel my mother’s hand on my head, and I feel again her love for me, and suddenly all is right with the world again.

—Erika Holst, Runner Up for Best Story for the Constant Comment Contest

Yes, we have a winner for the Constant Comment® Story Contest written by Debora Dickinson.  Thanks Debora for sharing this with us!

As far back as I can remember, my mother bought Bigelow’s Constant Comment Tea, she loved her coffee too, but would relax in the afternoon with her tea in our living room, and when I became a teenager she shared it with me. We would sometimes sit out on our outside front porch in the summer when everything was rich and green and the morning doves were cooing, crickets were noisy and read a good book savoring our CC tea. As I grew up and life became more hectic, time did not always allow for us to sit on the front porch. I never developed a taste for coffee and continued to drink Constant Comment every morning and made iced tea with it, and it became my staple. I moved to other cities to work and live over the years, and had a family, but almost every time I drank Constant Comment tea I would think of my home and my mother and our time together.

So two years ago when she was diagnosed with a terminal disease, I flew home and we cried together and spent our time with each other and we would again sit every day and have our tea, remembering our times 40 years earlier, our summertime’s sipping tea on the front porch. Constant Comment was our very favorite and she would always buy me a box to have for myself when I came to visit for the holidays. Once she even put one in my Christmas stocking! I don’t have a daughter now to share my tea time, but I am acquiring a daughter in law next spring and we will be having an afternoon tea shower for her. I can’t wait for her to taste my Constant Comment. It will seem as if my mother is somewhere there with us in spirit. It was just one of the pleasures in life that we enjoyed in common.

Debora Dickinson with her mother.

There is nothing more uplifting than the beginning of spring — especially after a long, cold winter! Sweet scents of hyacinth and vibrant tulips and daffodils fill us with a sense of well-being and renewal. Our cups runneth over. Speaking of cups, Bigelow Tea is celebrating springtime with our most exquisite Spring Catalog to date. It showcases a fabulous collection of Bigelow gifts, from colorful “On the Go” Tote Bags to the beautifully crafted Flavored and Herb Tea Chest. Green tea drinkers can go green with Bigelow’s All Green Tea Basket, a seagrass basket lovingly filled with Bigelow delights, including the ever-popular Green Tea with Pomegranate.

“On the Go” Tote Bags

Flavored and Herb Tea Chest

All Green Tea Basket

There’s something for everyone: discerning teacup collectors can enjoy Spode® Flower of the Month Teacups with their favorite Bigelow Tea, and organic tea aficionados can relax with treats from the Amber Spa Basket and Organic Tea For Two.

April — Flowers of the Month by Spode®

Amber Spa Basket

Organic Tea For Two

We at Bigelow Tea have put a lot of TLC into the creation of this catalog. Celebrate this glorious season with tea — whether planning the first of many spring tea parties or simply enjoying a beautiful sunset on your back porch while sipping some American Classic Tea®.

60+ years ago, Ruth Bigelow, with her unabashed passion for tea and adventurous taste buds, created a zesty tea, Constant Comment®. Her children and grandchildren were inspired by her. To read more about a true “American classic” and the family-owned company that she founded, read My Mother Loved Tea, written by her son, David Bigelow. And, yes, you can order it from the 2009 Spring Catalog.

Photo courtesy of Redhatsociety.com.

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple with a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.”
—Jenny Joseph

Tea seems to be the libation of choice for the ladies with “hattitude.” Free of the inhibitions, which plague the self-conscious “under-fifties” crowd, the Red Hat Society women enjoy celebrating age, friendship, and fun at gatherings that inevitably revolve around tea. They transformed the Tea Party into an art form!

Red Hat Society was founded in 1998 by California artist Sue Ellen Cooper, who set the wheels in motion by giving her friend a 55th birthday gift: a red fedora hat and a copy of Jenny Joseph’s poem, “Warning” (quoted above). The idea caught on and, not surprisingly, word spread. Now, over a decade later, the Red Hat Society has become the largest social networking community for women, with over 30,000 chapters throughout the world. Television shows, stage productions and comic strips have all tipped their hats to the Society. Wherever they go, they seem to cause a stir — people gape at the audacity of their attire and envy their joie de vivre, while newspapers photograph them for the social columns.

At Bigelow Tea, we have been fortunate enough to host a group of Red Hatters from Nampa, Idaho at our Boise facility.  These discerning tea aficionados were interested in how teas, like “Constant Comment”®, are made. A fabulous time was had by all, and several cups of Bigelow Tea selections later the ladies went on their merry way.

To all the Red Hatters out there (and the under 50 Pink Hatters too): come visit us again at Bigelow Tea – it’s always Teatime here!

Easter is here already, with an early jump on the Calendar for April 12th. And along with Easter comes family fun, painted Easter Eggs, chocolate bunnies, and the traditional Egg Roll, including the famous White House Easter Egg Hunt. The White House Easter Egg Roll dates back to 1878, and is designed to encourage children and their families to come outdoors and celebrate the start of the spring season.

Bigelow Tea also wants you to enjoy the new spring season too, and if you are entertaining a large extended family gathering for this Easter, or just having a quiet dinner with your immediate family and friends, we have a couple great suggestions for a festive dinner. Make Bigelow Tea a part of the celebration feast with this outstanding recipe; pairing the traditional Rack of Lamb with our own Plantation Mint® Tea Sauce.

A delicious traditional meal with a striking Bigelow Tea twist. And once you look over this grand entrée, check out this equally grand dessert idea that everyone will love from Bigelow Tea — Constant Comment® Spice Cake. The best of the season to all from Bigelow Tea!

Rack of Lamb with Plantation Mint® Tea Sauce

Ingredients for the sauce:
1 cup canned beef broth
6 Bigelow Plantation Mint Tea bags
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon butter, unsalted, at room temperature
Ingredients for the racks of lamb
2 racks of lamb (about 1- ½ pounds each), frenched*
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon of finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 small clove garlic, minced
¼ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

Yield: 2 racks of lamb

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400ºF.
Brush racks of lamb with oil and place them meat-side down in a heavy, low baking dish.
Bake for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the bread crumbs, parsley, garlic, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Turn the racks of lamb over, brush with mustard, and then apply the crumb mixture with a cupping motion. Drizzle the melted butter over the crumbs and return to the oven for another 10-12 minutes for medium-rare.
Prepare the Bigelow Plantation Mint Tea Sauce while waiting for the lamb to cook. –
Remove the rack of lamb from the oven, let stand for 3-4 minutes, then slice chops. —
Serve a generous spoonful of sauce over each chop.

Method for the sauce:
In a small saucepan, bring beef stock to a boil.
Turn off the heat. Add the teabags and steep for 10 minutes, making sure they are all submerged. Remove the teabags to a small strainer and using the back of a spoon, press as much liquid as possible back into the pan.
Stir in the honey and return to a boil, stirring until the honey is incorporated.
In a small custard cup, combine the flour and butter into a smooth paste, using a fork. –
Just before serving, bring the liquid to a boil.
Turn off heat, add the butter/flour mixture, bit by bit, and whisk until it is incorporated and the sauce thickened.

Constant Comment® Spice Cake

Ingredients:
½ cup milk
5 Bigelow “Constant Comment”® Tea Bags
½ cup unsalted butter (1 stick)
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
1-2/3 cups flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
Confectioners sugar

Yield: Yields one 9” round cake.

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease and flour a 9″ round cake pan
Combine milk and tea bags in a small saucepan. Heat over medium/low heat until bubbles form around the edge, stirring occasionally. (DO NOT BOIL.)
Remove from heat and let cool (15-20 minutes); remove tea bags squeezing out liquid. — Set aside.
In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until smooth.
Add the eggs and whisk to blend. Add the cooled milk; continue to whisk until thoroughly combined.
Add flour and baking powder; mix until a smooth batter forms.
Pour batter into pan. Bake approximately 35 minutes, or until center of cake springs back when touched. Cool on wire rack before removing from pan.
Let cool completely before serving. Dust top with confectioner’s sugar.

Christmas is almost here…the economic conditions are not looking fabulous. Now more than ever I want to make sure I am doing the best job possible for this company. I have always been so proud of each one of our teas, as if every one is like delivering a new child, but now more than ever, it is about the employees.

I hear so much about companies, large and small, that have to let go people or worse, close down completely. I have always been highly motivated to exceed everyone’s expectations (anyone close to me here can attest I am like a large bolt of energy that comes into the office every day), and in this economy, I am no different. My family has always cared about the employees (I call them our shareholders) but it means even more today.

I am THRILLED our company is selling lots of tea, has all kinds of new ones on the way and other neat “projects” in the hopper. I went to a seminar the other day where they asked me “what do we do within Bigelow Tea to survive these challenging times”…my answer? Planning and a clear direction that began 10 years ago. Fortunate for us after 63 years we are in a very strong position….I am going to darn well make sure we keep it that way. Time for a cup of “Constant Comment.”

Cindi Bigelow