Tea flowers

I am obsessed with tea.  I'm pretty sure in my detox blog I expressed my love already.  My family bought me tea back from Tasmania and discovered tea flowers.  Tea flowers are combinations of tea leaves crafted to make a compacted dry flower that expands in water...kinda like those sponges for kids or the stupid frogs that turn into princes...only tea.  I will share with you my little tea flowers journey from "seed" to "bloom".

Japanese green tea. 

Here's what I started with...

They take about 10 minutes to open up in boiling water but here's the finished product...

Pretty commercial asian ones...