In the last few days I have learned a lot about tea and scones. As I discussed in my previous post, I got two tea-related cookbooks from friends: one with scone recipes, and one that had miscellaneous recipes for tea. And when I say tea, I mean Tea, the meal, not tea, the drink. I have never attended nor hosted Tea. I don't know much about it. I have never cooked nor eaten a scone.
Today I wanted to try out a scone recipe from my new cookbook, and I thought, 'why not serve the scones with tea this afternoon for my husband and I?' But if I were going to do that I may as well make a couple other little things to eat as well. Then I figured if I'm going to do all that I should invite over our friends Phil and Jenn, whom we haven't been able to see in quite a while (my darn illness). So instead of having a little tea with my scone, suddenly I was preparing a full High Tea.
High Tea means a tea service that is much more elaborate and meal-like than just Tea, "regular" Tea. It is more often served later in the afternoon and can substitute for dinner. This is all stuff I've learned (from my new book) just in the last couple of days. Despite the trend that many things served at Tea or High Tea are often sweets, I actually made mostly savory things. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for what I was able to put together, considering we only have the last bits of miscellaneous stuff in the pantry and fridge, since I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow and hadn't planned on Tea when I last grocery shopped.
I ended up putting together a few finger sandwiches, some mini lettuce wraps, mini lemon tarts, and of course the scones, which were cheese scones. I also served toppings for the scones: mustard, marmalade, and get this: homemade carrot butter. I'm going to talk about the carrot butter in a separate post since it deserves it's own. Then of course we had every type of tea I had in the house, sugar, vanilla sugar, and milk. I didn't have any lemons left in the house to serve as wedges and I'm sure some people would think that was highly abnormal, but oh well. I did what I could.
I got out some of my "good" china (which is nice but not extremely fancy or anything) and put the sugar in the nice china sugar bowl and got out my grandmother's silver footed bowl and did the table up. The odd thing is that, the one thing I don't own is a teapot. Nor do I have anything that can really substitute for a teapot. I just put a pot of boiling water out and we ladled it. Funny having Tea and realizing you don't have a teapot. Anyway, we sat and tea'd and ate and talked and it was wonderful. I will definitely make scones again and also I promised Phil and Jenn that we'll doTea again sometime, hopefully soon.
Happy tea-ing!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
It's Scone Day!
We got an awesome Christmas gift a couple weeks ago from our awesome friends Donna and Bob. They know how I've been entertaining myself while being stuck at home, tethered to my dialysis machine, by cooking foods, old and new, and babbling about it here. They put together a lovely basket with sortof an English teatime theme, including a tea-time recipe book and a scone recipe book. I have never made scones and I'm excited to try a few of these recipes, which sound delicious.
I've been thumbing through the books and I picked out a couple of recipes to try. I'm going to give it a shot and I'll post more when I'm done. Wish me luck!
I've been thumbing through the books and I picked out a couple of recipes to try. I'm going to give it a shot and I'll post more when I'm done. Wish me luck!
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Welsh Rabbit
Welsh Rabbit is a funny name for multiple reasons. It's just silly sounding, first of all, especially since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with what it is (which is cheese sauce on toast), and especially when someone says "rarebit" instead of rabbit. But once you know where the name came from, it's actually even funnier. It's basically a big dis of the Welsh. Since it is a meatless dish, made to use up leftovers or make due when the day's hunt went badly, it came to be known as "Welsh Rabbit" as an insult, as in, "those men in Wales are terrible hunters." Those crazy Englishmen. They sure know how to throw the insults! (Like in Family Guy: "Oh Reginald.... I disagree!")
I love cheese sauce in all forms. I love Welsh Rabbit's Scandinavian, French-adopted cousin, fondue. Like fondue, Welsh Rabbit is traditionally a way to get dinner on the table when all you have is stale bread, cheese, and some sort of wine or ale. However, for whatever reason, I've just never gotten around to actually serving Welsh Rabbit. Ever. I am not sure why this would be. I've made a million versions of cheese sauce to have on and in numerous types of things, just never toast. Well, I finally got around to serving it for dinner yesterday. It was delicious and easy and I have absolutely no freaking clue why such a meal wasn't already in my cheese-loving repertoire. Shame on me. I'll make up for it by serving it regularly from now on.
I made my Welsh Rabbit with white wine, and I used cheddar cheese, swiss, and a little monterey jack. The toast I simply brushed wtih a little olive oil and sprinkled with parmesan before baking. I served half the toasts with chopped tomatoes and half without to see how that went, and I actually did like the tomatoes very much. But, come on, there's not much you can do to white wine-cheese sauce over bread to make it bad.
I also boiled some cauliflower to have on the side, so I basically just piled the toast, tomatoes, and cauliflower on the plate and just doused everything in the cheese sauce. Yum, right? Of course.
Happy eating!
I love cheese sauce in all forms. I love Welsh Rabbit's Scandinavian, French-adopted cousin, fondue. Like fondue, Welsh Rabbit is traditionally a way to get dinner on the table when all you have is stale bread, cheese, and some sort of wine or ale. However, for whatever reason, I've just never gotten around to actually serving Welsh Rabbit. Ever. I am not sure why this would be. I've made a million versions of cheese sauce to have on and in numerous types of things, just never toast. Well, I finally got around to serving it for dinner yesterday. It was delicious and easy and I have absolutely no freaking clue why such a meal wasn't already in my cheese-loving repertoire. Shame on me. I'll make up for it by serving it regularly from now on.
I made my Welsh Rabbit with white wine, and I used cheddar cheese, swiss, and a little monterey jack. The toast I simply brushed wtih a little olive oil and sprinkled with parmesan before baking. I served half the toasts with chopped tomatoes and half without to see how that went, and I actually did like the tomatoes very much. But, come on, there's not much you can do to white wine-cheese sauce over bread to make it bad.
I also boiled some cauliflower to have on the side, so I basically just piled the toast, tomatoes, and cauliflower on the plate and just doused everything in the cheese sauce. Yum, right? Of course.
Happy eating!
Monday, January 2, 2012
Scary Things About Juice
We all know that fresh produce is always more nutritious than packaged foods, but recently I learned something that really brought it home, and more than a little freaked me out. I read an article regarding the process a standard bottle of juice goes through before it gets to your grocery cart. I'm not talking cheapo juice, or the flavored corn syrup we all just call juice... I mean real, supposedly high-quality juices.
As it turns out, most of what we buy on grocery store shelves has sat around for so long, that manufacturers have to add in what is called a "flavor packet" just to get the juice to taste like what it should taste like. Most juices sit on shelves for a least a few months and some up to a year before the flavor packet is added and then it's sent to a grocery store. There are various reasons why this happens this way, which I won't get into, because my point isn't really the reasons behind it, but the impact on us, the consumers.
We all know that fresh produce loses nutrients over time. Juice an apple and you have a lot of nutrients. Come back to the same glass the next day and the nutrients have reduced significantly. Come back six months later, and... well, you see my point. The fact that they have to add in flavor packets is evidence that the nutritional value is basically nil. Flavor packets in, for example, apple juice, are part of the manufacturing process for basically every major apple juice brand on your grocery store shelf. A flavor packte isn't listed on the ingredients because it isn't required to be. Basically, except for the vitamin c which is added to the bottle, you may not be drinking more than flavored water, from a nutritional standpoint.
You think when you are drinking apple juice that you are getting the benefits of what is in an apple. But nope! Just another screw-you from our fabulous food manufacturing system. If you want your kids to have the nutition of an apple, they are going to have to eat an actual apple. Or... like I've decided... you could just make your own juice.
Yup, I'm one of those people now. I bought a juicer. Take that, food manufacturers! I will still buy crummy store juice sometimes, but I wanted to give this whole juicing thing a try, now that I know the evils of grocery juice. It's a little more expensive but it's certainly healthier. I already made apple juice and it was soooooooo good. Like fresh cider from the cider mill. And I certainly will be getting more nutrients than the bottled kind (not to mention none of those evil plastics chemicals everyone is screaming about now).
I also bought a bag of oranges and I'm looking forward to delicious fresh squeezed oj in the morning. I guess I'm a juicer-owner.
Happy drinking!
As it turns out, most of what we buy on grocery store shelves has sat around for so long, that manufacturers have to add in what is called a "flavor packet" just to get the juice to taste like what it should taste like. Most juices sit on shelves for a least a few months and some up to a year before the flavor packet is added and then it's sent to a grocery store. There are various reasons why this happens this way, which I won't get into, because my point isn't really the reasons behind it, but the impact on us, the consumers.
We all know that fresh produce loses nutrients over time. Juice an apple and you have a lot of nutrients. Come back to the same glass the next day and the nutrients have reduced significantly. Come back six months later, and... well, you see my point. The fact that they have to add in flavor packets is evidence that the nutritional value is basically nil. Flavor packets in, for example, apple juice, are part of the manufacturing process for basically every major apple juice brand on your grocery store shelf. A flavor packte isn't listed on the ingredients because it isn't required to be. Basically, except for the vitamin c which is added to the bottle, you may not be drinking more than flavored water, from a nutritional standpoint.
You think when you are drinking apple juice that you are getting the benefits of what is in an apple. But nope! Just another screw-you from our fabulous food manufacturing system. If you want your kids to have the nutition of an apple, they are going to have to eat an actual apple. Or... like I've decided... you could just make your own juice.
Yup, I'm one of those people now. I bought a juicer. Take that, food manufacturers! I will still buy crummy store juice sometimes, but I wanted to give this whole juicing thing a try, now that I know the evils of grocery juice. It's a little more expensive but it's certainly healthier. I already made apple juice and it was soooooooo good. Like fresh cider from the cider mill. And I certainly will be getting more nutrients than the bottled kind (not to mention none of those evil plastics chemicals everyone is screaming about now).
I also bought a bag of oranges and I'm looking forward to delicious fresh squeezed oj in the morning. I guess I'm a juicer-owner.
Happy drinking!
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