About Tea Foodie

Thanks for checking out my journal of cooking with tea recipes! I’m Suzanne Klein. Self-proclaimed foodie and tea geek. I love food and I love tea, so I’ve combined those passions here in this cooking with tea blog.

I spent five delicious years in the Savory Spice test kitchen

I spent almost 20 years as a marketing executive before I was brave enough to jump ship and use my communications skills to turn my passions of tea and food into a full time job. Currently, I’m a freelance writer, recipe developer, content creator, and tea consultant.

On the tea front, I started an organic tea blending company in 2009 called Zanitea. I made hand blended loose leaf teas and sold them on Etsy and at local craft markets, restaurants, and cafes around Denver, Colorado. I’m no longer blending and selling teas; instead I focus on creating tea education content. I use my years of tea knowledge to consult with companies about tea, write about tea, and teach tea 101 and cooking with tea classes. I’m also studying for a professional tea certification with the Specialty Tea Institute of the Tea Association of the USA. (Skip over to my Connect page if you’d like to reach out and work with me on a tea project!)

A tea & cheese pairing is one of my favorite classes to teach

On the food front, I was lucky to fall into a dream job managing the test kitchen for a national spice retail chain, Savory Spice. I spent five years in Savory’s Denver-based home office and warehouse. I developed and tested hundreds of spice-forward recipes, produced a cookbook, created a recipe-of-the-month program, and managed all of the cooking and food styling for the company’s photography and video projects. My favorite part? Creating crazy-spiced and sometimes wacky birthday treats every month for the warehouse staff. Often these treats were infused with tea!

My first cookbook project with Savory Spice

I love exploring the role tea plays with food and needed a place to chronicle my journey. This blog tracks my observations and experiences with food and tea. (You can bet there will be plenty of spices tossed in!) Of course I’ll share all of the cooking with tea recipes I’ve tested. I may also share reviews of interesting tea-based food products I find, tea discoveries during my travels, summaries of tea dinners I host, or reviews of cookbooks with tea themes. It’s all fair game!

I always shoot tea cocktails as close to happy hour as possible

I create the content and take all of the photos for this blog. The recipes come from a variety of places, like food-based web sites, cookbooks and friends. In many cases, after rounds of recipe testing, I have adapted the original recipe that inspired me to fit my tea foodie style. All recipes that I share in this blog will be credited with the source that inspired me to write about the recipe.

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy cooking and sipping!