We've been seeing a lot of stories lately about art made from recycled packaging. We've also seen a few posts about food art and a lot about tea.
In this yesterday's New York Times, I found an article to tie them all together.

Oh how I love my tea, but this group of artists in Capetown, South Africa would rather have the tea bags, thank you. The group, called Original T-bag Designs, collects used tea bags, which turn dry and brown. The artists can then paint them and turn them into any number of things from coasters and magnets to original artwork.

The artists group does well enough selling the magnets and such. Their real hope, though, is to put together a traveling show of artwork similar to the traveling quilts from Gees Bend, Alabama. I wish them the best of luck. And if you want to donate tea bags, you can go to the website for contact information.

One of my pet peeves, which I've ranted about before on this site, is tea bags that have staples in them.

Now, since I've switched to loose tea and infusers/filters, this isn't as much of an annoyance as it once was, but I still wonder about it. Last year I had a staple tear off of of a tea bag (one of my fears that became reality). That would have been nice to swallow. So I wonder why, in this day and age, do tea companies still use staples? Many companies, such as Tetley, don't use them, but I've noticed Red Rose, Twinings and Lipton (and many others) still have them. Why? We have the technology to create a staple-free tea bag, people!

We were once promised that we'd have our own jetpacks by now, but since that isn't going to happen anytime soon, can we at least have a tea bag without metal in it? Thank you.

I think it's about time I graduated from tea bags to loose leaf tea.

I'm trying to decide what kind of infuser and/or teapot I should buy. I saw this one from Bodum at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, but almost every single one had a broken top (the little plastic appendages that extend from the bottom of the teapot's top). It looks pretty cool, a combo infuser/pot, but all those broken pieces don't give me any confidence. This one from Teavana looks neat.

What should I buy, just an infuser or one that comes with a teapot too? I've seen just the infusers at places like Borders Cafe. I'm looking for something sturdy, of course, and something with a mesh screen that won't let any tea get through into the water. A teapot with it would be nice, though it's probably not necessary (again, not too familiar with infusers and pots). Any ideas?

A lot of you gave me some tips for trying to find great-tasting teas that would help me cut down on my daily sugar intake. Thanks again. I took everyone's advice and went on a little tea shopping spree this weekend, and here's what I bought and how they taste.

I went with reader advice and bought two different kinds of Good Earth: Original and Vanilla Chai. Both are nice. The original has a strong cinnamon taste, and while the chai has a strong vanilla flavor and aroma to it, it also has a lot of cinnamon and other spices. But they both taste good. I've had some cinnamon-flavored teas that, well, just tasted like someone took 30 or 40 sticks of Big Red gum and boiled them. These taste really great. I also bought a variety pack of Celestial Seasonings. I've had some flavors of this brand in that past I wasn't too thrilled with, but it's a good tea to keep on hand. I'm going to buy some other brands too and see how they are.

And the best news? With these teas I've cut down from 4-5 packets of sugar to only 1 or 2! Most excellent.

Discussing the process of coffee decaffeination in an earlier post, I mentioned my "trick" for keeping the caffeine low in tea: steeping the leaves more than once (and yes, I did admit to using tea bags, a topic for a future post I'm sure). Bruce Dearborn Walker piped in and mentioned that many tea drinkers "wash" their leaves in one quick steeping of hot water before drinking to remove most of the caffeine.

With good tea, a 20- or 30-second steep won't remove much flavor and, in fact, many tea houses wash some types of leaves before serving as a matter of course (like the Tao of Tea in Portland). My big question is, how much caffeine does this really remove? And does it really remove the nutrients, as well? Have any great chemistry minds done the research? And if not, do we have any readers who'd like to dive in and test the caffeine in several varieties of post-wash tea?

[Photo of tea house in Portland Classical Chinese Garden, Sarah Gilbert]