Tea & Cookie Time!

It's time to start thinking about Christmas cookies, and my Christmas baking kicked off this weekend with my first-ever attempt at making those buttery spritz cookies using a cookie press. This was so easy, I should have tried it sooner!

I was inspired when I cleaned out the pantry a few weeks ago and discovered a Wilton Cookie Pro cookie kit I got for Christmas several years ago.

First, I mixed up the simple butter cookie recipe and chose a shape from among the discs included in the box. Soon, I was squeezing the trigger of the cookie press and watching pretty little bits of dough appear.

A few sprinkles later, and voila, Christmas cookies!

I made Christmas tree-shaped cookies too, and it couldn't have been easier. With some tea, these small buttery treats made a perfect snack. The more "experimental" ones were for my husband and me to enjoy, and the prettiest ones have gone in the freezer for Christmas gift-giving.

Next, I want to try one of the many delicious options in the new magazine I found at the grocery store the other day, 100 Best Cookies. On the cover, I really like that first zero in "100" at the top, a little thumbprint cookie with a dab of caramel in the middle.

Tea lovers will appreciate the feature on ways to dress up madeleines, and there are also 10 recipes for shortbread, including a Red Velvet Shortbread Cookie that looks wonderful. I've thought about it, and a good old-fashioned chocolate chip cookie is probably my favorite kind of cookie, but what's yours? If you were to get a gift of cookies, what would you hope it included? I'd like to surprise a few friends with cookies this year, and it occurred to me you all might give me some good advice!

Tea Room Recipe #45 - Idyl Hours Tea Room (Cypress, Texas)

Some recipes, frankly, have such a bizarre combination of ingredients that you a) wonder how on earth this could work and b) suspect that it just might. That's the case with this week's delightful recipe from a small tea room in Texas.

Tea room cookbooks are just so fun to read. Idyl Hours Tea Room in Cypress, Texas closed in 2009, but the tea room's owner, Stella Riley Pinson, has compiled some of the tea room's favorite recipes and made them available in a cookbook on Amazon, which is where I found my copy of "The Idyl Hours Cookbook." Here is what she says on her Amazon page: "This isn't a book of recipes for high tea. This is a book of recipes from a little tea room in Texas. It's peppered with local history, artwork, and photos." I love how she spelled that out, because some folks are still unaware that American's earliest tea rooms were not Victorian tea parlors with lace doilies and three-tiered servers. That may be what we think of today, yet I think it's important to honor past tea room history by acknowledging the hardworking women (and men!) who had the gumption to open quaint little restaurants where travelers, and locals, could stop and enjoy a nice meal. Also, Pinson's story of how she came to acquire the tea room is a great read!

And the recipe I decided to make from this book was fun and easy to cook! If I told you to spice up some baked chicken with a combination of apricot preserves, French dressing and onion soup mix, would you be skeptical? I was, and yet somehow I had a hunch this could work. For one thing, the tea room entrees I have tried this year have all been wonderful. In fact, only one tea room recipe so far this year turned out to be a dud. (Which one? Well, it was a dessert, a chocolate cake recipe from a tea room in Mississippi. This thing turned out to be so dreadful that my husband tossed it out in the yard for me, and he later admitted upon inquiry that even the critters wouldn't touch it. Our critters obviously have standards.) At any rate, this week's tea room recipe is most certainly *not* a dud, and I hope you'll give it a try!

Almond and Apricot Baked Chicken

1 envelope dry onion soup mix (store brand is fine)
1 (16-ounce) bottle Ken's Country French dressing
1 (18-ounce) jar apricot preserves
8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup slivered almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small mixing bowl, add the onion soup mix, French dressing and apricot preserves, stirring with a wire whisk until combined well. Using a 9x13-inch pan prepared with cooking spray, spread one-third of the sauce mixture. Add chicken breasts to the pan, then pour the rest of the sauce evenly on top and bake for 1 hour. Meanwhile, in a small skillet, melt butter and sugar over medium-high heat, until the mixture is bubbling. Add almonds and stir constantly until all the almonds are coated well. Remove from heat and set aside until chicken has cooked. Use the caramelized almonds as a garnish when chicken has finished baking. Serve over rice if desired.

Forgotten Apricot Tea

It's almost a rule with me to try to match the tea I am drinking to the teacup, but this time I realized I don't really have any "apricot" colored teawares. So I went with the next closest color, the peachy-pink background of this chintz teacup I've had for years. It's very springlike and totally out of season color-wise, but I love it anyway and hey, if I make the rule, I can certainly break the rule!

The tea is a flavored black Apricot Tea from Upton Tea Imports. I discovered the silver packeted sample hidden amongst an old pile of magazines I'd let stack up, which was almost like receiving an unexpected gift—from me to me! I'm glad Upton puts the date tea is ordered on the packet, because it let me know this is still fresh, having been ordered in August.

And oh, friends, if you could have smelled the fragrance wafting from this packet of tea when I opened it ... divine! My only tweak of this tea was that it wasn't quite as sweet as I would have liked, and for the first time in years, maybe, I actually added a teaspoon of sugar. Then, I was quite, quite happy with this Apricot Tea!

Oolong Tea Chili with Beans

In the past I've made a chili with black tea and a chili with green tea, but this time when I heard a cold snap was on the way I decided to experiment with a chili made with oolong tea!

Some of the ingredients, interestingly enough, were free. Before going in to Barnes & Noble to meet my friend Deberah for tea and a snack the other day, I sat in the parking lot typing my grocery list into my iPhone. I knew I needed meat, tomatoes and tomato sauce, and when I looked up an old recipe from a past blog post, I realized I had left off green peppers and added that to my list before going to join my friend. So, Deberah and I sat down at B&N to catch up on our lives and the various projects we are working on together. After a while Deberah reached in her tote and said, "Oh, I've brought something for you. I just picked these from the garden this morning." And she hands me two big plastic baggies stuffed full of a lovely variety of peppers, including the very bell peppers I needed! How did she know?

I can't help thinking this delicious and spicy chili tasted even better than expected because of the fresh peppers I was able to use!

Oolong Tea Chili with Beans

1 pound turkey (or ground beef)
1 large onion, diced
1 cup green pepper, chopped (or a mix of bell peppers and chili peppers, as I used)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon chili pepper
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon salt
2 (14.5-ounce) cans diced tomatoes
1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce
3 cups red beans (I cooked mine from dried beans, but canned would be fine)
3 bay leaves
4 teaspoons oolong tea steeped for 5 minutes in 2 cups boiling water

Over medium-high heat, brown the turkey, then add onion, green pepper and garlic, and cook until onions are translucent. Add chili pepper, red pepper flakes, thyme and salt, stirring well. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce and red beans and bring to a boil. Add bay leaves and stir. Add steeped oolong tea and again bring to a boil, stirring well. Lower heat and let chili simmer on stovetop for an hour or two, until beans are of desired consistency and seasonings adjusted to taste. Remove bay leaves before serving. (Best made with peppers fresh from a friend's garden!)

Vintage plate from the Salvation Army

My enjoyment of a vintage plate is inversely proportional to how much I paid for it. That is to say, the less I pay, the more I like it. And so I *love* this plate I found at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Carrollton, one of the places my aunt likes to shop and where I'm now a regular.

It has a lot of crazing, which just adds character, but otherwise this pretty rose-rimmed plate was just perfect.

I realized a while back that buying thrift store castoffs is a great way to gussy up food gifts. I like this plate a lot, though, so it remains to be seen whether anyone's Christmas cookies will be delivered on it this year!

The backstamp says it was made by the Edwin M. Knowles China Co. I've been unable to determine a date or pattern name, but considering the price, I'm more than happy with my new plate!

"Tea Time" fabrics by Linda Maron

Nearing the completion of my scrappy crocheted afghan, I looked online for a new tea-themed pattern to inspire me to use up some of my stash of tea-themed fabrics. Alas, I haven't found a new pattern, but I did come across some amazing tea-themed fabrics I came very close to missing out on, these prints from the Tea Time collection by Linda Maron for SPX Fabrics!

Next to teacups and teapots, the design theme I like most is anything with script or text on it (a writer thing, no doubt), and these fabrics HAVE IT ALL. Mercy me.

Aren't these teabag and teapot prints just wonderful?

This line of fabric came out in 2011, and like most fabrics they don't remain available forever. In fact, I had to order from two different sources (Rossville Quilts and M's Quilting Inspirations) to acquire the five different designs I wanted from this line. For contrast, I got these two designs which feature the names of teas. The only problem now is, I can't find exactly the right project or pattern that will be worthy of actually cutting into these awesome fabrics!

It's time for toy tea sets!

I've begun shopping for Christmas toys for the children in my family, and to my dismay the little girls are all now past the tea set age. I still like to stock up on toy tea sets, though, because they make great gifts for the local toy drive, and I got a head start thanks to the great selection at Ross last week.

Tin tea sets never go out of style, do they? I love the cupcake designs on this set!

And of course anything with a Disney princess on it is bound to be a hit.

I also liked this tea set because it has both white and black princesses, so it would be appropriate for any little girl.

This 43-piece set is perhaps the biggest one I've seen, and I like that it has a "silver" sugar and creamer as well as cutlery and a tray of food. Also, these tea sets were priced quite reasonably, just $5.99-$11.99. Will you be buying a tea set for any little girl on your Christmas list this year?

Tea Room Recipe #44 - Younkers Tea Room (Des Moines, Iowa)

Do you usually get a salad along with your afternoon tea when you visit a tea room? I do only occasionally, but I love salads and it's always a treat to get one at teatime, because tea room salads are always much more special than just a little iceberg lettuce with some thousand island dressing thrown on top. This week, I made a tea room's once-famous salad simply because the bacon dressing reminded me of a tasty salad I once had in Atlanta.

This recipe comes from the "Holiday Celebrations" cookbook from Younkers, a department store whose flagship store was in Des Moines, Iowa. When I came across the book, I was thrilled to find that there is an entire chapter of tea room classics from the Younkers Tea Room, and this week's recipe is one of them.

The dressing is super easy to make, and the hot dressing over the wilted spinach leaves makes it oh so good!

Wilted Spinach Salad

8 cups spinach
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
4 slices bacon, diced
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup rice vinegar
4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Toss spinach and mushrooms in a large salad bowl. In a skillet, cook bacon over medium heat for about 3 minutes, then add onions and cook until they are translucent and the bacon is crisp. Drain and reserve 3 tablespoons of the bacon drippings in the skillet. Add mustard, brown sugar, white wine and vinegar and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Pour dressing over salad and toss to combine. Add eggs, toss and serve immediately. Yields 6 servings.

Rosy tea and toast sets

Recently I came across some tea and toast sets in a design I'd not seen before. The rosy pattern is just lovely, and I wish I knew exactly how old these are. They look too old to be new but too new to be old, if that makes sense!

The rose design reminds me very much of Pierre Joseph Redouté's famous rose paintings.

But the real reason I bought two of these tea and toast sets is that they were made for Lord & Taylor, one of the famous department store chains I've been researching. If you're going to learn about Lord & Taylor, why not do it alongside a Lord & Taylor tea and toast set!

Samples from Nuvola Tea

Recently I received some samples from a tea company I'd not heard of before, Nuvola Tea. Here's what the brochure included with the teas says: "Nuvola Tea is an extraordinary collection of hand-picked, premium tea leaves harvested from the most exclusive tea regions situated in the scenic rim of the high mountains in Taiwan. Wreathed in a pristine layer of mist, the unspoiled and fertile soil yields only teas of the finest quality that bring our honoured customers the most enjoyable, refreshing, and wholesome tea experience."

Of course tasting is believing, and first I sampled their Premium Taiwan Oolong Black Tea. When I opened the packet of wiry black tea leaves, I got that yummy scent of wood shavings I associate with the freshest teas, but steeped, there was also a musk-like quality to the tea's fragrance. The taste was nice and brisk but with very little astringency, and this was a nice change from all the flavored teas I have been enjoying this fall.

Next I tried the Premium Taiwan Muzha Ti Kuan Yin Tea. These tea leaves were rolled into little balls, and I detected an almost floral fragrance to these tea leaves. Sipping the steeped tea, I at first thought I was getting a genmaicha sort of taste, and that's the tea that tastes of roasted popcorn to me. This one, however, had a roasted taste but without the bitterness I find in genmaicha. Both teas performed well with multiple steepings, and I was very impressed with my samples from Nuvola Tea. Have any of you ever heard of Nuvola Tea? If not, you may want to check out their website here.

Wedgwood teacup ornament alert!

Last Friday I went shopping with my Aunt Jane, my niece Cari, and my niece's friend Melissa. We had a great time hitting the mall and quite a few other stores, including a nearby Marshalls where I spotted this beautiful Wedgwood teacup ornament! I have a teacup and a teapot ornament that are both in the popular white-on-blue Jasperware style, but this blue-on-white design was new to me. The box says the retail price is $28, but at Marshalls it was just $14.99.

Unlike my other Wedgwood ornament boxes, this one is white, not Wedgwood blue, so if you're in Marshalls or sister stores T.J. Maxx or HomeGoods, don't bypass the white boxes! In fact, I went through the whole shelf of white boxes before I discovered this teacup ornament almost at the back. Persistence pays off!

Have the boxes always had this royal warrant on them? I don't remember seeing it before, but I'll have to check the old blue boxes when I pull out the other Wedgwood ornaments before Christmas this year. And I do hate to beg, but you WILL tell me if you come across some new teacup/teapot ornaments this season, won't you, friends?

The wisdom of Uncle Si — that's a fact, Jack!

I've shared before that I'm a great fan of A&E's hit show "Duck Dynasty," and last week I got this free poster when I happened to visit the Lifeway Christian bookstore in Douglasville and bought a new Bible. What a great freebie! Earlier this year I wrote about finding a tea glass like Uncle Si's here.

The store was obviously promoting its "Duck Dynasty" books (and Miss Kay is coming out with a cookbook today!), because my freebies included the poster, some thank-you cards featuring wacky Uncle Si, and an old-fashioned wooden-handle fan featuring a beard cutout, which I figure my husband can use for … something.

The new Bible, by the way, is on top. A friend of mine said I should keep using the old one "because it makes you look so spiritual," which just made me laugh! I wish I had used it so much (and lived it so much) that it fell apart, but the truth is that I used a cute teacup Bible cover on it and it wrecked the spine!

Scrap happy!

This week, it occurred to me that I like making things with scraps. I like quilting with scraps, collaging with paper scraps, cooking a big pot of vegetable soup with veggie scraps ("leftovers" sounds nicer), and most recently, working on a scrappy crocheted afghan. While I crocheted over the weekend, I made sure to use an appropriately scrappy teacup and teapot, too!

This Sandy Lynam Clough design teacup and teapot were among some treasured gifts I received from my tea blogger friend Phyllis a few years back. Because of its fabric scrap design, I thought it was appropriate to sip my pumpkin tea from this teacup while I worked on the scrap afghan.

Frankly, this project was just supposed to be an experiment. I had a whole bag of very, very mismatched yarn leftovers. The colors didn't go together one little bit, the textures didn't match, and I figured I'd make a couple of these hexagons, it would be hideous, and I could toss the bag of scraps guilt-free. To my surprise, I rather liked the result! Because some of the yarns were different weights and textures, I had to use two strands of some, three strands of others, but the mismatched design appeals to me a lot. I absolutely love the easy-peasy pattern too, as it involves joining the hexagons as you go rather than crocheting them separately and then having to join them afterward, which I always found to be dreary work. (The free pattern's here, fellow crocheters.)

I'll keep going until I run out of yarn scraps, but for now I'm really enjoying the way this brightens up the brown leather sofa we got earlier this year. Scraps, I think, are a lot like life: Whatever you're handed, you can make something beautiful out of it if you set your mind to it. Are you a fan of scraps?

Tea Room Recipe #43 - Sun Dial Tea Room (New Harmony, Indiana)

I love oranges. Do you? If so, you may want to try this moist, citrusy Orange Cake that is a recipe from the 1930s!

This week's tea room recipe comes from the Sun Dial Tea Room in New Harmony, Indiana, which operated from 1936-1942. I bought this cookbook online without seeing a photo of it, and I assumed because of the title it was a vintage book, but actually it's a 1998 book written by Lois Harmon Poteet, granddaughter of the tea room's operators, Carl and LeNeva Hellner. She says her grandparents were given $100 to get the tea room started. "The tables were purchased in Evansville and were painted black. They bought chairs in Tell City, Indiana, and painted them to match. Miss Fauntleroy gave the Hellners a big corner cabinet and sideboard. Antique dishes were placed on the shelves. They used green depression glass plates on the tables. There were silver decanters for vinegar, catsup and mustard. They used blue bean pots from Uhl Pottery as sugar bowls on each table …" Have you ever seen such a great description of a tea room of yesteryear? Wow!

This 1930s-era cake was simple to make, and the citrusy icing was, well, the icing on the cake. The cake is so moist, and I must say it made an excellent accompaniment to my afternoon cup of tea!

Orange Cake

1-1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup shortening
1 teaspoon lemon extract
1 tablespoon orange juice
Grated rind of 1 orange
8 egg yolks
2-3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-3/4 cups sifted cake flour
3/4 cup milk


Icing:

2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons orange juice (or as needed for desired consistency)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, cream sugar and shortening. Add lemon extract, orange juice, orange rind, and combine. Using an electric mixer and a smaller bowl, beat the egg yolks for about 5 minutes on high speed, until they are bright yellow and fluffy. Stir eggs into the shortening and sugar mixture. Sift baking powder and salt with the flour and add alternately with the milk to the creamed mixture.

Pour batter into a tube pan prepared with cooking spray. Bake for 45-55 minutes or until top of cake is light brown and pulls away from side of pan. Let cool completely on a wire rack. For icing, combine powdered sugar, melted butter and orange juice and spread on top of cake.

A wonderful new tea book: "Special-Teas" by Linda Weiland

A lovely e-mail came the other day from Linda Weiland, who so kindly offered to send me a copy of the tea party book she was inspired to write following her mother's passing. Having recently lost my own mother, I was of course intrigued by the book's topic as well as its inspiration. Now, having read the book, I knew I had to share it here because I believe many of you will be as blessed by it as I was! Linda writes that her beloved mother, Lois Glenn, "had a gift for making special occasions beautiful." Well, clearly the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. "I honor her memory," Linda says, "by displaying some of her crystal and china dishes in the following pages, and praising her example to me." With help from daughters Katie and Amy, Linda has compiled a unique book of tea party ideas, menu and recipe suggestions, and best of all a devotional book that will leave you encouraged and wanting to read more!

Just when I think there's nothing new in the world of tea books, a new one comes along to surprise me. I have another book titled "Special Teas," two words, but this one is "Special-Teas: Ten Themed Tea Parties to Nourish, Refresh, and Inspire Your Soul." Linda obviously puts a great deal of thought and love into her tea parties. Those featured in the book range from this Garden Par-Tea to a tea for your daughters, a tea for yourself, a tea to encourage your girlfriends, and several tea ideas that would be fabulous for anyone hosting a women's group tea. (I cannot say this strongly enough: If you are in any kind of women's ministry and host teas, do yourself a favor and get a copy of this book, pronto!)

This page is from the chapter on Sereni-Tea, hosting a tea for yourself, which I think is a terrific idea. I absolutely love how the photo of the open Bible and the snack plate goes perfectly with the scripture verse! The well-written, thoughtful devotions were so encouraging, and as soon as I finish this blog post I am headed to copy some information from this book into the prayer notebook I keep. I can't say that a "tea" book has ever inspired me to do that before, but this one did, and I feel so blessed that the author herself sent it to me. There's so much to love about the pleasures of teatime, and the incredible new "tea friends" I meet along the way are absolutely the best part! (Go here for more info and to look inside the book!)