I'm new here as of today.

[TeaPlease]

I've been a fan of everything tea for a good long time, well over 50 years. I have a blue ton of teas and tea gadgets. My whole family is infact tea drinkers. I've been collecting tea sets, pot, cups, saucers, sugar, cream containers, etc for years. My wife gets me a new set each year for Christmas, which gets used and is displayed in our home. I don't have a favorite tea as it all depends on how I feel, what mood I am in along with what I am doing.

We are a retired military family with a young teenager keeping us busy. We get to play with our RV and kayaks often. We enjoy grilling on one of our Big Green Egg smoker grills. We also enjoy playing in our sewing / quilting room with a 12' long arm quilting frame and machine, a 12' hand quilting frame, an embroidery machine, a couple of regular sewing machines and a nice surger. We also have been amateur radio operators for years, where my wife likes to chat over the air and I really enjoy cw, a.k.a. morse code. I'm found all over the place, but usually operating QRP CW.

We have a model #99 Grainmaker mill for grinding our own grains. We like to ferment all kinds of things, and make our own kumbacha tea too.

I just found this site today and it looked interesting so I registered on it.

[debunix]

Welcome! This is a great place to hang out and chat about tea. I was particularly struck, however, by this less on-topic but quite interesting note

mill for grinding our own grains.

because it's very rare to find someone else who mills their own flours. I've been milling for 30+ years, generally preparing a specific flour & spice blend for each recipe. I share my best recipes on my web site, but assume that the majority of people who use them will use the variations written out for prepared standard flours.

Do you play with the grain blends or use whole spices in with the grains?

[TeaPlease]

Hi,

My 14 year old son has a problem with his digestive system and cannot eat any refined flours, rice, white potato, any sweetener except sugar, dairy except a bit of greek yogurt at a time and acidy food. Funny thing is that he does fine on whole grain.

We grind all kinds of different blends and grains and make everything from scratch. I don't play with spices except salt & pepper, they tend to disagree with David's tummy. I sweeten everything with honey.

Following this diet keeps him on minimal medication. His gastroenterologists treated the symptoms for years, then a new doctor we started using, who specializes in this specific problem, changed the diet drastically. Since then the symptoms have been minimal.

I've learned quite alot about what grains are good for what food. I also make sprouted Ezekiel bread from scratch. It is pretty good. Today I made some bran muffins with my own soft white wheat flour, wheat bran, some unsweetened rasins and honey. Good stuff.

[debunix]

We grind all kinds of different blends and grains and make everything from scratch. I don't play with spices except salt & pepper, they tend to disagree with David's tummy.

Ah. Too bad about the spices--one of the nicest perks, to me, when I mill my own flour is the ability to mill in small quantities of whole spices, specific to each recipes, resulting in very fresh spice flavors. The whole spices are also nice to have on hand for making herbal tisanes when the mood strikes.

Even without that, though, it's lovely to mix grains for flavor and texture, or to adjust the soft/hard wheat proportions to match the type of bread or pastry I'm making.

If you're interested, I post recipes here, and my best tips about milling here.

[TeaPlease]

Super!

Thank you very much.

Steve