Cratakardia (Organic Lemon Raspberry Herbal Tea)

Small white bowl full of a blend of lemongrass, hawthorn berries, lemon peel, and freeze-dried raspberries. It is shot from above, fairly close, so that you can get a good look at the tea. The background is a textured green stone.

‘Cratakardia’ came out of the fact that there’s been quite a bit of stress in our lives of late.  Some of it is direct and personal, and some of it falls into the “due to existential dread” category.

The exact reasons why aren’t germane to the creation of this tea, but the stress itself is.

The more stressed I am, right up to the point of utter breakdown, the more prolific the creative parts of my brain become.  It’s a weird sort of coping mechanism, but it does help.  However, it means that sometimes the inside of my head gets very loud and chaotic, as all the thoughts and ideas vie for central focus.  Oftentimes the only way to get it to quiet down is to actually act on some of the ideas.

This means that, despite my best intentions, I have been having new tea ideas at a ridiculous rate.  I’ve also been trying to avoid creating them.

Occasionally, I mention the ideas on Twitter.

When someone indicates that an idea provokes a serious uptick in the production of their salivary glands…  it becomes pretty much impossible to resist making the tea.

It gives the creative part of my brain a caliber of argument that cannot be defended against by the other, more responsible and staid, portions of it.

“Look!  Someone else wants to see this, too!  That definitely means we should do the thing!”

It doesn’t help that creating new blends of tea falls (nominally) into the work category, and therefore it is far harder to fend off the urge to play.  Unlike sitting down and just scribbling a story idea, or working out a melody, or…

So, I made the tea.

It even fell into one of my current project categories:  more herbal tasty teas.  Specifically because I feel we need more decaf options.

The naming progression on this one was a bit amusing.

It started with the suggestion that it should be named like a potion from the Potterverse.  I couldn’t come up with anything I particularly liked, though the possible names were at least in the “okay” range.  Still debating whether I will keep them for other teas.

However, the chain of conversation led to one of our followers researching hawthorn, and then fiddling with Latin to come up with “Cratakardia.”  A mash-up of the botanical designation for Hawthorn, and the Latin for strong.

Mister Tea and I latched on to that one immediately and happily, because it seemed perfect.

Amusingly, the spiffy human who came up with it really liked one of my initial suggestions, thinking it was cuter and still appropriate, both to the tea and to the Potterverse-ish-ness.

We went with the Latin mash-up because it falls right in with the way we approach so many things.

We like science.  We like history.  We like well-told tales and wordplay and many subsections of geekery.

And we like to combine them all.

A small white bowl full of a blend of freezedried raspberries, lemon peel, lemongrass, and hawthorn berries. It is surrounded by a tins and bags of tea, and a small paper packet that could hold a single teabag.

Organic Ingredients:  Hawthorn Berries, Lemongrass, Lemon Peel, Freeze-Dried Raspberries

Batch Size:  1.8 ounces, approximately 25-30 servings of tea


Purchasing:  Personal Shop, Etsy Store

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