Boston Tea Party at the Aurora Public library

To help celebrate America's 250th the Aurora Public Library held a Boston Tea Party (Saturday June 27th). Everyone grabbed their first cup of hot tea and then there was a presentation. 

The presentation gave a quick spill of the history of tea and what led up to the Boston Tea Party.

As a historian I think that this was a nice quick presentation about the topic. Past politics there was fun facts around tea, like the above slide talking about the invention of the tea bag.

The event had plenty of tea and snacks for people to try.

This is the third tea related event that I have done at the library. One of the fun things they have are these beautiful tea cups. If you were worried about breaking them, like elderly guests that shake, or if you wanted to take your drink with you, they also had paper cups. I ended up going with both for this event.

Traditional Medicinals Organic Dandelion Leaf & Root

This "tea" I tried kind of tasted like drinking a salad. The back of the package said that it was for adults only. A lot of detox teas will have dandelion in them. Historically this would have been considered a freedom tea. This is because there was no actual tea from a tea plant in it, but relied on a common plant found in North America.

Yogi DeTox

This was another non-tea tea that I tried. I noticed a weird taste in it and say that it contained licorice root. I would not recommend this one if you are not a licorice fan. On the back of this one there were also medical warnings as well.

Good Earth Sweet & Spicy

This was a true tea that had black tea in it. I would only recommend this tea to people that like those red cinnamon hearts. It burned. The "sweet" and orange flavors were overpowered.

Of the three hot teas that I tried at this event I really wasn't a fan of any of them. 

Tea Punch

This was created by the librarian that was hosting the event. He found a historic recipe and made a few tweaks, like nonalcoholic. This tea punch had Earl Grey as the tea base and then had additional things like sparkling grape juice and club soda in it. He even had frozen Earl Grey tea into the giant ice cub so that the drink would not be watered down as it melted. The fresh fruit was also a nice touch. Personally I found it a little weak due to the amount of club soda that was used. I think cutting out the club soda entirely would have made it much better.

The spread of snacks to pair with the tea was very good. There was both soft and crunchy options.

My favorite of the snacks was actually the ginger snap crackers that made for good dipping in the tea. In the hot tea one quick dunk was all that was needed or they fell apart quickly.

This was a nice little event. The Aurora Public Library does a lot of nice events, but moving forward they are cutting events due to budget issues including Saturday events. If you are interested in possibly attending an event, they are normally free, but you need to register ahead of time through their website.