chai pilgrimage card give-away.
To celebrate Jenny’s new Chai Pilgrimage selection on cardstore.com, we are giving away a set of 5 of our favorite cards. To enter, just leave a comment on this post describing your favorite masala chai. We will select the winner at random on Thursday, March 12th and announce it in a post later that day. The lucky winner will be contacted by email for a mailing address. Good luck and thanks for visiting our site!
My favorite masala chai is the home concoction of loose tea, grated ginger, cardamom, holy basil, turbinado sugar and of course milk.
hope to win
05 Mar 2009 at 1:44 pm
Ours was always a deeply passionate relationship. It was love at first sight, of course. Steamy sweetness lightly caressed expectant lips, tempting them to slowly draw closer… and closer… whispering soothing words of comfort, calm and cinnamon. My heart skipped a beat. And then, a tentative first touch.
Suddenly, I find myself showered with intense kisses of cardamom… intimate, adventurous kisses creating ripples of pleasure, lightly nuanced with black pepper and hints of cloves. Playful stings of fresh ginger swirl round a warm stream of rich vanilla-scented milk, only moments before falling free into the dark, welcoming space within. Symmetrical stars of aniseed sparkle distractedly in the sky, mesmerized by the emotionally charged embrace.
The magic traces of its touch lingers long after we part, just like a lover’s…
Shanti, metta & garam chai!
05 Mar 2009 at 2:39 pm
To be honest, I had never made my own chai until I discovered your blog. My favorite chai, and the only one I’ve made so far, is your ‘chai guru chai’ recipe. Both my hubby and I think it’s amazing.
05 Mar 2009 at 2:49 pm
My favorite recipe of Chai have only two basic ingredients:
LOVE & DEVOTION
Namaste!
05 Mar 2009 at 3:57 pm
I make my chai with elachi (cardamom), cinnamon, sugar, black tea leaves, water, and milk! It reminds me of being at home at a dinner party with my mom and her friends. It brings back a feeling of community, warmth, love, and familiarity.
05 Mar 2009 at 5:25 pm
I’m with Jacqueline – I never made my own chai until I tried your recipe and I love it! Sometimes I make it with vanilla soymilk. I used to really like Border’s vanilla chai, but since they changed to Seattle’s Best coffee, it’s not as good.
05 Mar 2009 at 5:47 pm
Hmmm, I gotta get this giveaway!!! Gotta get a Jenny card.
Let me see, i think my all time fave chai is the cardamom one, with a spoonful of honey stirred in AFTER boiling!
05 Mar 2009 at 8:55 pm
My favorite chai is strong with cinnamon, I’m so in love with this spice which invigorates me and brings me joy and light-heartedness.
06 Mar 2009 at 2:23 am
such nice work Jenny, love those teapots!
06 Mar 2009 at 9:42 am
I’ve been making chai for years, but the Chai Guru chai is all I make now. The best part is the first direction: Stop, Breathe and Smile. It works everytime!
06 Mar 2009 at 6:32 pm
it’s been fun reading all the comments everyone. i’m happy so many of you like Patrick’s chai guru chai recipe. it’s my favorite, too. i’ll have to add that recipe as a card on my collection. oh, i wish i could send a set of cards to all of ya!
06 Mar 2009 at 7:01 pm
The cards are stunning. I like my chai made by partner’s mother – heavy on the cardamom, made with good organic black tea, served with soy and honey and poured from a heavy handmade pottery teapot at the big kitchen table. As my partner is one of five brothers, the teapot needs to be big!
06 Mar 2009 at 11:53 pm
i haven’t made my own chai before — but am inspired to do so after finding your recipe! love the aroma of the spices and the mixture of the sweet and spicy flavors. beautiful! xx s
07 Mar 2009 at 9:16 am
First of all, I find your site lovely and inspiring. I serendipitously stumbled across it while doing “stream of conscious” web surfing. It motivates me in planning my long-hoped for “trip to India for a significant birthday year”.
Any chai that I share with loved ones is wonderful.
My favorite chai recipe is spicy, and not too sweet. I let the cinnamon act as the sweetener. I like a good black tea, cinnamon, cardamom (when I can afford it) cloves a hint of black peppercorn, ginger and vanilla soy milk. The aroma is therapeutic and is my brain’s signal to unwind.
Thank you for your lovely work.
07 Mar 2009 at 10:28 am
I have to say, I have made chai from scratch occasionally but my favorite chai is what I used to get from a cart.
I worked at an office downtown for about 3 months during a turbulent should-I-peruse-art-as-my-primary-job period when I first moved to Portland. I was an administrative assistant for a very difficult law office, one of the most uptight in the city I’m told. Down the street from the office was the library and I used to sit out there and sketch on my lunch hour to sort of decompress from the morning insanity, and on the way there’s a wonderful Indian food cart. Not absolutely every day, but during particularly tough times I loved to go up there, stand on my tiptoes and ask the great beaming gent to pour me some spicy milky goodness.
I don’t think I would have stopped to partake in this sort of thing unless I had read this blog, so I have you to thank for that! Whenever I’m down there now I try and make sure to go and get some chai from them.
09 Mar 2009 at 4:17 pm
to think i just stumbled across this and tomorrow’s the last day. how lucky do i feel? lucky enough to soon possess those precious cards? maybe not
but here goes…
don’t know how familiar with india you are, i’m from here. i live in bangalore. and like all indians, i have a penchant for bending the rules a little bit. so i’ll forge right ahead.
a. i don’t know the first think about making anything but a mess in the kitchen. and tea requires a lot of love and patience – which i possess in limited quantities.
b. i will write a little bit not about my favourite tea recipe but about 2 of my favourite tea experiences.
1. i was in auroville, pondicherry drenched in the downpour and freezing to death. landed up at the tea stall there run by a british lady who served tea and peanuts. the tea was made by her assistant, lakshmi. she made me wait almost half an hour for it because she was making a huge pot for 20 people and that takes time, but when i first sipped it, ah, i started believing in angels. it guess it was a regular packed brew which she enhanced with her own ingredient x. and yeah, it had cardamoms.
2.i was in ooty (the hill station), and freezing again, will you believe it! had trudged to the top of it’s highest peak and wanted tea to save my life. and sure enough! there was a little chai stall. the guy gave me the hottest and sweetest tea i’d ever had. and i don’t normally like the sweet stuff, but this: tasted like the nectar of immortality.
c. one of my favourite non-masala tea is the gentle deorali.
ok, my friends have told me i tend to talk too much.
11 Mar 2009 at 8:54 am
I love my cardamon chai! It may not be chai – but there’s nothing like nice cup of sukku kaapi on those cold, rain swept monsoon days.
12 Mar 2009 at 3:41 am
I am a chai neophyte—I will be bookmarking and sharing this site for sure!
namaste
12 Mar 2009 at 6:39 am