"bottled" news and stories

Yesterday, Marisa told you about the 2008 Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting this past week (what - you didn't attend?), Los Angeles and Clearbrook, British Columbia beat out 120 other entries, including ones from Macedonia and the Philippines, for the title.

Here's a closer look at the competition: the 10 judges based their selections on five criteria: taste, smell, texture, aftertaste, and clarity. They downed water from three categories: municipal, bottled, and the newest, purified.

In case you were wondering, the bottled water winner was Tumai Water from Martinsburg, West Virginia, the purified water winner was from Federalsburg, Maryland, and the carbonated bottled water winner flowed all the way from Emsdetten, Deutschland.

All of this begs the question: if you're tasting water, is it necessary to cleanse your palette between sips?

And we're wondering: how's your tap water?

Source

Even as a kid I was never much of a pop/soda drinker, but I've always had a little love affair with iced tea. Whether it was powdered, bottled, or freshly homemade - it never mattered to me as long as I had some. Needless to say, when I saw that Stash had released a line of Iced Green Teas in powder form, I was pretty excited.

Though I haven't tried them yet, the four different varieties look pretty enticing - they come in Blueberry Green Tea, Mint Green Tea, regular Green Tea or lightly sweetened Green Tea. Has anyone out there tried them? If so, let us know what you think.