irish tea brack

A perfect recipe for St. Patrick's Day or whenever you're in the mood for a tasty teatime treat, with a cup of hot tea used in the batter -- it's the classic Irish Tea Brack.  I like King Arthur Flour's version here because it includes chopped dates and opts for whole wheat or wholemeal flour. 

"You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your father was." -- Irish saying

sheldon's tea mandate

Truth be told, most people who think they don't want tea almost always seem better off having had a cup or two urged upon them.

teapots and beatrice

Today would have been the 120th birthday of artist, muse and otherwise fascinating persona Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at the age of 105 and nine days.  Throughout her long life, Beatrice was involved with acting on stage and interacting with the likes of handsome geniuses such as Marcel Duchamp, but it was her 1933 search for a certain type of teapot that led to a more defining career.  She wasn't able to find the pot she wanted, so she signed up for a ceramics class at Hollywood High School to make one herself.  It wasn't quite as simple as she thought, but through a combined approach of persistence, talent, and intuitive application, her work developed a style of its own and her ceramic pieces became highly sought after.  And some very distinctive teapots were ultimately created as well.

Beatrice once said that "chocolates and young men" were a key to her charming longevity, and while I can't speak for her preference, I wonder if she would have enjoyed Republic of Tea's Red Velvet Cuppa Chocolate. It's smoothly sweet and caffeine free with rooibos, bits of beetroot, blackberry leaves and chocolate and vanilla notes -- and for those of us still here on earth, maybe taking a page from Beatrice's book and signing up for an intro to ceramics or glassblowing class might be fun, to make a teapot then see where else it leads.

Pictured:  Gold Lustre Teapot -- Beatrice Wood, 1988 (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center)

still life with white teapot

Pictured: Still Life with White Teapot -- Francis Campbell Bolleau Cadell, 1913 (from www.the-athenaeum.org)

café de olla

Here's a recipe for Café de Olla from Pati's Mexican Table on PBS...me gusta mucho and yes, a French Press coffeemaker works fine in place of a clay pot, though it's not quite as authentic.  A quicker or more portable version is Nescafe's instant Café de Olla sold at MexGrocer.com (or maybe at a store near you, depending on where you live).  There's just something about cinnamon -- it's not a rare or unusual spice, but it does always seem to bring a certain warm magic to anything it's added to.



[Pictured:  The Open Cupboard -- Maria Izquierdo, 1946]

steeping drama

As we come to the last days of wintry January, the official National Hot Tea Month, let us sit with Alan Rickman for a moment or two and contemplate an intensely furious tea moment.  (Perhaps somebody slipped him a bag of that crappy cheap Earl Grey that tastes like it's made with Lemon Pledge instead of bergamot.) 

staying healthy with the gypsies

Last month I saw a box of Traditional Medicinals Gypsy Cold Care Tea on sale and thought, "Looks interesting but I don't have a cold, I don't need it."  And that was probably when a gypsy curse floated out of nowhere to strike me down with a wicked cold/sinus infection soon after, because I dared to presume that I didn't need any Gypsy Cold Care in my life.  I got through the first miserable days with hot lemonade steeped with bits of fresh ginger, and I think that helped a lot.  But then there was all this remaining congestion and a weird croupy cough, and at that point I went for the Gypsy Cold Care potion.  It's great stuff, with organically magical things like elder flower, yarrow flower, peppermint, hyssop, rose hips, cinnamon bark, ginger and licorice, and it really does seem that if you drink a lot of it and let those natural elements go to work, you can get over a plague quickly but in a holistically healed way.  And anytime I can feel better without antibiotics or visits to doctors' offices but by sipping hot tea and watching Jean Reno in Les Visiteurs instead -- I am happy.

Pictured:  The Sleeping Gypsy -- Henri Rousseau, 1897

lampedusa and some blood oranges

I had a cup of Rare Tea Cellar's Sicilian Blood Orange Green over the holidays and really loved it, and this is something because I'm not a big fan of green tea.  When I think of Sicily in literature I think of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's classic The Leopard, a complex and fascinating novel about that Italian region circa 1860, as the old ways of aristocratic life give way to the upheavals of the Risorgimiento.  The Leopard seems like a fine match for Rare Tea Cellar's Sicilian Blood Orange Green, pairing a book you can lose yourself in with a tea you'll want to sip slowly and surely enjoy more than one refill of.