It is fun to receive a pretty handmade card each month with some new teas to try.
I think Susan did a great job with the card. I like the bright stripes and the apple tree with a falling apple and lots of texture.
I’ve tried Stash tea before, but not blueberry or licorice (I love really fresh black licorice candy). The Good Earth brand is a tea that I have not tried yet. All four are caffeine free, so they will be nice to enjoy for a late evening cuppa.
Having a bad hair day is nothing compared to having a bad baking day. I decided to make a chocolate pound cake this morning. It has been a while since I used this recipe, but I should have caught on a little sooner. For instance, why didn’t I acknowledge the fact that there was not much head space in the pan after pouring in the batter. Where did I think it would go?
As you can see my pan was not quite the recommended 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan. It looks like I baked a second cake on the floor of my oven. I guess the moral of this story is to stay close to the kitchen, but even if I had witnessed the batter bubbling over, I’m not sure trying to dump some out at that point would have been a good idea.
I’m not usually such a ditzy baker and people do ask for my recipes all the time. I guess it was just a bad baking day.
The good news is that the cake turned out just as moist and rich tasting as usual. And from now on I’ll be checking the dimensions of the pan before I begin to bake.
Add the milk first because hot tea homogenizes the milk fats. In the earliest days of tea drinking in France, milk was added first to protect the fine porcelain from cracking on contact with the hot liquid.
Some say that adding milk to tea had more to do with economics. At one time tea was very expensive, but milk was cheap, so the lower classes drank milk with a little tea and the wealthy drank undiluted tea.
Tea connoisseurs will insist that good tea doesn’t need anything added. As for myself, I do enjoy a good strong Assam or other robust black tea with a splash of low fat milk. Perhaps it has something to do with my British heritage.
Do not worry;
eat three square meals a day;
say your prayers;
be courteous to your creditors;
keep your digestion good;
exercise; go slowly and easy.
Maybe there are other things your special case
requires to make you happy;
but, my friend,
these I reckon will give you a good life.
- Abraham Lincoln
Of course, I would add: have at least a couple of tea breaks each day.
This teapot is by Homer Laughlin in the Skytone pattern. I bought it at a little antique store in Paducah, Kentucky back in 2000. It is such a pretty blue and I like the rather Aladdin's lamp shape.
I’ve been wanting to try the tea packets that you can add to bottled water, but hadn’t been able to find any without artificial sweetener – until now.
These Stash Pomegranate Raspberry Green Tea packets are lightly sweetened, require no brewing and can be added to up to 16 oz of water. They are made with whole Japanese Sencha green tea leaves that have been ground into a fine powder. That means more healthy antioxidants because the whole leaf is consumed.
The Pomegranate Raspberry tea has a pleasant flavor that is quite refreshing. It comes in several other flavors including Green, Blueberry, Lightly Sweetened Green, Lemon Ginger and Mint. You can order at Stash and also find Green Tea Smoothies and Ice Cream recipes.
Sometimes I find myself longing for a wall of shelves or display cabinets to corral all these teapots. They do take up a lot of space – now why couldn’t I be totally enamored with thimbles or matchbooks or coins and stamps. Oh wait, I do have a stamp collection.
Although I can display a lot of teapots above my kitchen cabinets, they are so out of reach its easy to neglect them (and boy, do they get dusty). One of these days I’ll arrange them into pretty little groups and add some greenery and other accents. Yes, I know they are not shown to their best advantage all lined up like rows of tin soldiers.
Its just about time to weed them out again and make room for a couple of new additions.
There are teapots in every room of my house. Okay, maybe not the bathrooms. Does anybody have some creative ideas for storing and displaying teapots – I’d love to hear them.
When I receive a flyer in the mail marked boldly “Attention Tea Lovers!” it catches my attention. Taste Indulgence of Richmond, BC is launching a brand new line of specialty teas.
They are offering free samples by mail or online at their website here for the cost of shipping and handling.
The three samples included are Traditional Earl Grey, Fruit Tease (caffeine free) and Jasmine Jewel.
For those who are curious about the teapot, it is one that I received from my in-laws about twenty-five years ago. It was made by Mikasa and the pattern is called Innovation.
