Tea and Brideshead

After being so very English and doing so very much gardening yesterday (or at least, so very much agitating around the subject of gardening–spent less than an hour actually working at it), it seemed right to watch a lot of Brideshead Revisited and to have a proper cream tea, today.

When I was in England nearly two years ago, I made a point of studying the cream tea, as a phenomenon. A cream tea simply means that scones with clotted cream are included on the menu. From Liberty’s to Claridge’s to the Randolph Arms in Oxford, though, everything was predictable and similar.

Tea sandwiches: cucumber sandwiches, smoked salmon sandwiches, either egg or chicken curry mayonnaise sandwiches, and sometimes also Black Forest ham sandwiches.

Scones: always light and made with white flour, no Scottish oat scones here, and with simple fruit inclusions–raisins or currants or dried apple. No orange-strawberry-walnut nonsense. The scones are eaten with clotted cream, of course, and with a selection of strawberry and gooseberry jam and orange marmelade.

Well, here I departed from tradition. The tea usually also includes a selection of tiny pastries, which I call “Frenchified dainties”. I happened to have some Chocolate Insanity cookies sitting around, or I would have made chocolate-backed shortbread. No, I didn’t make the cookies. No, I don’t have the recipe. Yes, I want it and will work on getting it (just for all of you). I do know the theory behind them, though–that if one is making a chocolate cookie, and is really committed to it, one has no use for flour. One uses cocoa powder instead. Get my drift? Yes, they are INSANE.

Brown sugar lumps and milk for the tea are standard. There are so many things on this tray that I’m fond of–the sugar tongs were fetched for me from Holland, and the repousse silverware (silver plated) used to be my everyday set, until it got too beaten up to give to guests.

I have been working my way through Brideshead Revisited with a fellow Anglophile. Today, we watched episodes 3, 4, and 5–then decided that we either needed to stop and do something cheerful, or start to drink. Well. We stopped. Episode 5 is a bit much, you know? The first two episodes–the double-length pilot and then episode 2–are just dreamy, though. The happiest three hours of television ever, as far as I am concerned.

And we kept a teddy bear and a hand-knit Fair Isle sweater vest close at hand, just for atmosphere, in case my fishpots and chintz curtains didn’t do it for us.

Hope in March

There is, after all, some hope. It may be chilly outside, but it is increasingly less so. It may be gray sometimes, but it is increasingly less so. And even if everything outside is still bare and gray… it’s Spring in the greenhouses.

And in more greenhouses.

And more.

(What are these?)

(Because gee golly there were a lot of them)

Snapdragons Warrants: soap

This week, the idea of the Royal Warrant has captured my imagination. The queen of England or the Duke of Edinburgh or the Prince of Wales issue a warrant for an item when it has been consistently used over five years, and is of high quality and distinctly British (or something like that–possibly bribes are involved, but I only know what is in that Wikipedia article). I am a raging Anglophile, especially when it comes to domestic culture and homewares, so you can imagine how much I enjoyed reading the list and ticking off my everyday dishes, Johnson Brothers, check. My Spode collection, check. My Smythson address book, check. My Pringle twinset, check. Etc, etc, etc.

I think that it would be a fun blog exercise to issue lists of one’s own Warrants–products or brands that one has returned to consistently for years and years, because they’re just so good that there’s no point in making do with substitutes. I invite you to play along if you think this sounds like fun. You could even make yourself a little heraldic Warrant graphic, if you’re handy at that sort of thing.

Here is my review of soap.

French soap doesn’t impress me. L’Occitane doesn’t lather well (actually, it lathers like olive oil soap, if you’d believe it) and their fragrances aren’t appealing.

Italian soap is okay. Its lather is decent and it usually has lovely, basic floral scents like lavender and orange blossom. Unless you’re scouring T. J. Maxx every weekend, though, it’s hard to keep yourself supplied.

English soap is the way to go. It lathers like a dream and the scents are always good. Yardley, just the kind you get at the drugstore, is a lovely soap that I’m happy to use any day. Yardley has real royal Warrants.

My favorite soap is the big store-brand bars that one gets at Liberty of London.

I bought six bars when I was in London myself, and when a friend was there six months later he bought me twelve more. I am now just about out of them. In fact (goes to bathroom cabinet and checks) I have two left. Both are in my favorite scent, Lavender & Eucalyptus. You cannot buy this soap anywhere except the Liberty store. You cannot order it from anyone but Liberty, and then they charge a horrendous shipping price that stopped even me from ordering it. I remember on my first day in London I was feeling sweaty and gritty and disgusting from being in filthy Copenhagen. I went to Liberty’s and bought that soap, and the matching bubble bath, and then went to Harrod’s and bought six white washcloths with their logo embroidered on in silver (because the flat I was in didn’t have any…), and I went back to my flat and pulled the most enormous bubble bath and washed, and washed, and washed over and over, and thought I was in heaven.

I’ve just now smelled the remaining bars of Liberty’s Lavender Eucalyptus soap, and… ohhhh my goodness. That’s exactly how soap should smell. You can’t imagine how heavenly.

Another soap that I quite like is Vinolia, a nostalgia product made by the Pears company and available through The Vermont Country Store. It’s the soap, so it advertises itself, that was in the first-class cabins on the Titanic. It is creamy and peppery, and by the time one has run through a package of three bars, one feels quite attached to it. I do recommend. Pears has real royal Warrants–that’s what the crest on the box is.

Last, the Pure & Simple Soap from Williams-Sonoma Home (formerly known as Chambers). Be wary of this stuff. The lather is distinctly second-rate, though it’s so appealing named, packaged, and advertised that one may ignore that fact. I recently bought a box of six bars of Citrus Blossom, and with two bars of Liberty, six bars of Vinolia, and three bars of Italian orange blossom in the house, am feeling distinctly “meh” about it. The fragrance tends much more towards bergamot than I had expected (I prefer neroli).

Something I need to try: the original Pears soap. Have never tried it. Know only that it’s the oldest brand (of anything!) in existence, and very very British, and available in drug stores here. So. Yeah. Some day.

Having thought about all of these soaps, and which ones I really enjoy and am likely to buy regularly in the future (and to be glad I’ve bought), I will issue two Snapdragons Warrants for Soap:

LIBERTY of LONDON, and
YARDLEY

Pudding wants you to know that has no need for soap, and thinks that I’m very silly.

Spring?

While I was away on my “Spring break,” Spring seems to have sprung in my part of the world. The snow, which had been ever-present since before Thanksgiving, has melted. Daytime temperatures have been in the high forties or fifties, which for us Midwesterners is no-coat weather. Nighttime temperatures aren’t cold enough to frost. The ground thawed and was saturated with rain, rain, and more rain. And…

My garden is coming to life. You’ll excuse the poor look of the soil, I got ripped off by my landscaper and will amend it when I can… you’ll also excuse the no-moisture cracks in it because it had rained just the night before. But look! Plants are coming up!

And bunnies are nibbling them, of course. We’ll see how that pans out, this summer. Also, my old nemeses the mourning doves have returned from their winter retreat. One can hardly go outside for a minute without hearing one, or walk down the street without startling one. Last summer, I thought that if my house had a name, it would have to be Dove Cottage because of all the doves and because the house itself is small and gray. But, every house in this neighborhood is small and gray, and they all have the doves. Alas.

Yesterday I took me to the garden center and bought four big planters and four big bags of dirt. I was wise to stop, because more wouldn’t have fit in my car. I put the planters on my back deck, filled them up, and planted sweet peas in two of them. I am told that sweet peas don’t mind a wee bit of frost, and that this is the time to plant them. I do hope so. When they begin to take hold, I’ll put cone-shaped wire frames in the planters and train them up and over those. I do hope they’ll be lovely. You remember my one solitary sweet pea from last summer?

And Pudding seems to have thrived in my absence. Good kitty.

Key West

Candy protests, “that picture is not making me want to go there.” Being from Florida, she of course knows that it’s a picture taken from a causeway between two of the Florida Keys–U.S. Highway 1. She wants to know if I can get a palm tree in.

I live to serve, Candy.

That was the most overcast of the days I was there. Most of the time, it was sunny, slightly breezy, and comfortably warm. Coming from the long, frigid Midwestern winter, the sunshine was like a lovely tonic on my nerves. It feels so free and light and wonderful to go outside without a coat… you know?

I did lots of the things one is supposed to do on Key West. I visited the butterfly conservatory

I visited Hemingway’s house, and made nice to his polydactyl cats

I walked up and down Duval Street (and had my palm read!)

I chased chickens

I soaked up the good life under lighted trees at night, and in sleepy bars in the afternoon (and yes, I had a beer at Sloppy Joe’s, though I could hardly call that bar “sleepy”), I walked and sat on the beach, I waded in the Gulf of Mexico (or is it still the Atlantic ocean, on Key West?), I ate lots of wonderful seafood and succulent fruit, I sunburned my nose, I ate key lime pie… in short, it was great. I’m in love with Key West. The next time I find myself playing the “If I had a billion dollars…” game, a house in Key West–maybe one of the quiet, dignified ones across Front Street from the Truman complex–is going to be on my wish list.

Mystery picture

Points if you know what this picture is of, and therefore where I must have been since Saturday, without clicking through to the caption on my Flickr page…

*yawn* Posting is such awfully hard work. I’ll resume when I’m back from vacation.

Summer dreaming

There is no joy in Snowville, mighty Winter won’t strike out.

Le sigh, le yearn, le ennui. It is still snow, snow, snow here. I should start some of these in pots indoors, though, so they bloom before July.

Bamboo rice

Like so many people my age, my parents lived out their early years in the stultifying culinary atmosphere of the 1950s, and went away to college at just the time that pizza and Mexican restaurants were beginning to happen. As a result, they’re suckers for ethnic restaurants and my own childhood involved lots of them: Greek, Indian, Russian, Korean, German, as well as Chinese and Mexican and the not-exotic-at-all Italian. Funnily enough, the only category of food that I can’t contemplate eating are the organ meats that my parents were raised on–liver and onions, anyone, or cold tongue, or perhaps a fried brain sandwich? Eugh. No thanks.

The hallmark of my own generation, I suppose, is that we feel motivated to replicate these ethnic dishes in our own kitchens. Now, my parents weren’t free of that. When my mother was pregnant with me she took a Chinese cooking course, and stir-fry was a semiweekly dinner while I was growing up. In summer 2000, when I was home from college for a few weeks, we ordered a huge box of bulk spices and dals, and had a field day with a Madhur Jaffrey book. I know all about making panir, and popping mustard seeds in hot ghee.

My parents aren’t as susceptible to novelty items as I am, though. Maybe it’s because they were raised by Depression-Era parents and I was raised by Boomer parents. If I see a grocery item in a funny color, I must have it! If I hear about a new kind of cheese, I must taste it! These are impulses my parents are capable of squashing. Alas, not I. Thus, I own a rainbow of colored rices from Super Target: black, red, and this green “bamboo rice.”

It tastes just like any other rice, perhaps slightly aromatic. It does have a very lovely color, both dry and cooked, and harmonized nicely with the green snap peas and white mushrooms. The original plan for this stir-fry had been to have white squid for protein, but the squid… well… they were left over from my meze party, and let’s say that thawed squid doesn’t keep in the fridge for a week, and leave it at that. I used shrimp instead, so the stir-fry was tri-color instead of bi-color. I also used an experimental garlic sauce of hot water, corn starch, and five cloves of garlic pressed. With no soy sauce, one has to season this, also.

Result: three perfectly acceptable lunches. Mission accomplished.

Air Pudding

If you’ll indulge me, this is a drive-by post. You’ll also indulge me for indulging myself in cat-blogging.

Pudding, the poor darling, is a Pirate Cat and derives much enjoyment in her quiet hours from wondering what kind of poem T. S. Eliot would have written about her if only he’d had the chance. She is a true swashbuckler, robbing the high carpets of shiny giftwrapping bows and strawberry pincushions, hiding her stash in under-the-bed islands. Alas, though, there is a disadvantage to being a proper Pirate Cat. She has only one eye, which means she doesn’t have depth perception, which means that jumping is a problem. From the beginning, she has wanted very badly to make the jump from my bed onto the top of my chest of drawers, but just can’t work up the confidence to try it.

Yesterday, as a reward for allowing me to pick her up (“arrr, unhand me ye scurvy landlubber… oh… I say, this is really quite an interesting new perspective. Okay then.”), I deposited her on top of said furniture. Ooooh, the kitty ecstasies!

Pudding would like to claim this island in the name of Spain, for the glory of the queen Isabella… does that make her a Privateer Cat?

Mah jong, apple dumplings, llamas

The mah jong party yesterday was lovely. I brought the game and some snacks, and the four of us met at the place with the squarest table (and it was very, very square.) The hostess of the square table entertained us with her collection of llamas (stuffed llamas–llama wall hangings–llama dish towels) and we played some rounds of mah jong. Excellent.

The wall, built up, before dealing.

In the process of dealing.

One of my hands, before play started.

Play in progress.

Play still progressing; the discard pile accumulating.

The end of another hand that I almost won; you see kongs of green and white dragons, two chows, and that lone nine-character. So close, I tell you, so close.

When we had played a few hands, Our Lady of the Llamas treated us to a dinner of recipes from The Pioneer Woman Cooks: the best lasagna. Ever., olive cheese bread, some salad for relief from the calorificity of it all, and these crazy apple dumplings. Yes, they are too dangerous to exist.

And the lucky turtle snacked on nori maki crackers. Altogether a lovely afternoon/evening that will have to be repeated as soon as I get a proper wooden card table.

Apropos: more blue-and-white

The World Market here is closing, and everything in the store is on clearance. Hmm. Though I’d altogether rather have it in town than not, it isn’t a place I go often, so I was more pleased than not to have such a consumer opportunity put in front of me.

Especially when I found the display of blue-and-white Chinese-style porcelain. Aha! Here is something I really appreciate.

I am a veteran with much experience in the trenches of consumer warfare. Dear readers: if you see something so pretty and perfect and cheap, and there are no budgetary reasons to restrain yourself, my advice is buy it right then and there, without hesitation. You’ll regret it if you don’t.

I haven’t the foggiest idea where I’ll store all of this (though using it is no problem–hello more parties!), but it was so lovely. All eight sauce dishes are different. Isn’t that wonderful?

Small platters. Just precisely what I wanted for the meze party. Just precisely what I want always. I adore dishes.

A very happy shopping experience, and very apropos. There will be mah jong this afternoon, and if I’m a sensible Kat, I’ll take pictures.

Here’s hoping.