Tag: tea

Products, Miscellaneous, Mary

honest tea

I got the opportunity to try a handful of Honest Tea flavors this summer.

Honest Tea makes its products with all organic products – focusing on the tea and the flavor.

Among the flavors I got to try (from left to right): (Not Too) Sweet Tea, Half & Half, Pomegranate Blue , Orange Mango and Cranberry Lemonade.

Regular sweet tea has always been too much for me – to me, it just tastes like really sweet sugar water. Honest Tea’s version of “sweet tea” is much better. It’s sweet without being overbearing. It’s sweet but still drinkable. Sweet, but you can still taste the tea!

The Half & Half is organic tea with lemonade. This was one of my favorite flavors of the five I tried since I love the lemonade and tea combination. The lemonade adds just the right amount of lemon and sweetness to this flavor of tea. It’s not quite as strongly flavored as other teas, so this one is much better if the bottle is cold, rather than pouring it over ice.

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Mary, Hillcrest, San Diego County

kona coffee company / hillcrest – san diego, ca

I’ve had kind of a love and hate relationship with coffee the past few months. I like to have coffee, but for awhile, I was unable to have it at all. It really tended to tie my stomach up in knots and drinking a cup of coffee made my stomach unhappy for a whole day. I laid off the stuff for awhile until I started taking probotics on a regular basis to help ease my stomach woes. I’m happy to say and coffee and I are friends again.

It was fortuitous then that I was invited to come to Kona Coffee Company in Hillcrest to try out what they had to offer. I was still a little wary of coffee at this point, but I had slowly started to partake of the fragrant beverage again and was hoping my stomach would be amieable enough for the ride. Jake and T were with me for this particular adventure. Jake isn’t a fan of coffee really and neither are most teenagers (T included). But I was hoping there would be enough here for them as well and happily there was.

We had a small snafu in the beginning as the manager gave me a blank look when I told her why we were there. But, after everything got cleared up, we were well taken care of. I let the manager make us whatever she wanted us to try.

[Outside of Kona Coffee Company from across the street]

The Kona Coffee Company in Hillcrest is one of the few shops in town that will offer you a 100% Kona coffee (french pressed for you, no less). They also offer 35% Kona blend at a lower price. I started off the day with the blend.

[35% Kona Coffee Blend]

I kept it simple and added milk and Splenda to my coffee. I’m not good at describing coffee flavors, but this had a bold and somewhat rich flavor. It wasn’t too bitter tasting with just one package of Splenda in this large mix of coffee which I liked.

[Hawaiian Mocha – espresso, milk, Ghirardelli chocolate, banana, coconut flavor, ground cinnamon and topped with whipped cream, coconut flakes and a sprinkle of cinnamon]

I’ve never had a mocha quite like this one – this one goes beyond just a dash of chocolate in your coffee drink! This is filled with intense flavors, giving the mocha a very tropical taste and feeling with the coconut and banana flavors in the mix. It’s also quite sweet – the mix of flavors and chocolate made this a rich, chocolately drink – enough to make you forget that it even has any espresso in the mix. The cinnamon rounds out the flavor nicely giving it a nice heat and spice that I really enjoyed. Jake and T also enjoyed this one, so it was winner for the coffee and non-coffee drinkers alike.

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