Pumpkin-Walnut Tea Bread & Pumpkin Ginger Tea

You'll have to forgive me but I'm on a pumpkin kick, and after eating tea sandwiches with pumpkin butter the other day I still haven't gotten my fill of pumpkin flavors. If you're a pumpkin fan too, you may want to try some new pumpkin tea, some new pumpkin tea bread or both!

The Pumpkin Ginger Tea from Republic of Tea is a new blend I found at World Market last week. I was very sorry to hear some of you no longer have a World Market nearby, because this particular tea is a World Market exclusive and it is simply divine. The combination of the sweet pumpkin with the spicy ginger is a new one in a tea to me, and oh my, is it good!

This "Spices of Fall" tea also has what I would call a buttery taste, a delightful richness I don't often find in a tea blend.

To go with the tea, I made up a new pumpkin bread recipe based on one I found in the book "Totally Teabreads." I didn't like some of that recipe's ingredients, and I wanted to add nuts and some kind of glaze to mine. I have to tell you this is one of the few experiments I was truly delighted with on the first try, and my husband declared this one "a keeper." I hope you'll agree!

Pumpkin-Walnut Tea Bread with Pumpkin Glaze

2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/4 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each of ginger, cloves and nutmeg
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Glaze:

1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons canned pumpkin
1 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9x5x3-inch loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside. In large bowl, add flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, spices and nuts and stir. In smaller bowl, combine pumpkin, eggs, oil, buttermilk and vanilla. Make a well in center of flour mixture, add pumpkin mixture and stir just until combined. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Place pan on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes and then remove from pan to finish cooling. If desired, top with glaze.

Glaze: In small bowl, add confectioners' sugar, pumpkin and milk and combine well using a small wire whisk. Drizzle over bread as desired.

Tea Sandwich Saturday #38 - Turkey & Pumpkin Butter

Yes, I know fall is still officially a few days away, but I'm starting to see the flavors of fall in the stores and I am loving it! I had already thought of making this week's tea sandwich with turkey and apple butter, but then I saw a jar of pumpkin butter in World Market and that sealed the deal.

This sandwich doesn't really have a recipe but rather just instructions for assembly. Slice pumpernickel bread. Spread both slices with a nice thick layer of pumpkin butter. Add roasted turkey to one slice and sandwich with the other. Simple foods really *can* be delicious, you know?

This Oregon Growers & Shippers Pumpkin Butter is the brand I found at World Market, and I love the pumpkin flavor as well as the smooth, creamy texture. I still may try this sandwich with apple butter, too. Are you a fan of fall-flavored butters? If so, what do you recommend?

Green Earl Grey Dark Chocolate

A bar of chocolate is a good way to end the work week, don't you think? This Green Earl Grey dark chocolate was one of several happy finds on a trip to World Market.

If the "Tea Room" name wasn't enough to catch my attention, the logo certainly was! I love this jester holding his cup of tea. Nice!

And the taste? You know how they sometimes say we eat with our eyes first? Sometimes I eat with my nose first, meaning that a scent can quickly turn me on or off to a food. The first scent I detected was something between a floral and a citrus one. I couldn't quite name it until I broke off one of the tiny blocks of chocolate and slowly let it melt on my tongue. Tastes ... like ... the bergamot in Earl Grey tea! I was pleasantly surprised at how accurate the taste is. I wasn't at all surprised by how wonderfully it goes with dark chocolate. There were three or four other tea-flavored chocolate bars in this line, and with enough trips back to World Market I intend to try them all!

Crochet Gift List magazine

The grocery store and bookstore magazine racks are starting to fill with Christmas magazines, and as a crocheter I came across a new one I like for a lot of reasons! It's called Crochet Gift List, and the crocheted gingerbread house and cupcake tea cozy on the cover both caught my eye.

Here's the inside photo of the "Tea & Cupcakes" tea cozy. I think this would be pretty easy to make!

And I've crocheted a tea set before (shown here), but not this set with floral saucers and teapot lid. Too cute! In case some of you are crocheters too, I wanted to go ahead and mention this issue so you could be on the lookout at your local magazine sources. Happy crocheting!

Passion Fruit Peach Tea with Stevia

Since iced tea season is winding down in my neck of the woods, I'm also winding down my samplings of the various powdered tea mixes for the year. While at the beach over the weekend, I found this great Passion Fruit Peach Tea at a Walmart Market. (I really liked this Walmart that was *just* a grocery store, by the way. So much smaller and easier to whip through!)

This drink mix is low-calorie, not no calorie, but at just 30 calories for a whole bottle of water flavored with this mix, I think those 30 calories are worth it.

The sweeteners in this drink mix are interesting: cane syrup solids and Stevia extract. I'm not sure if it's the sweeteners that made this such a refreshingly fruity drink, I just know I thoroughly enjoyed it!

St. Ives Green Tea Scrub

Are any of you fans of facial scrubs? I am, and I found a new one at Walmart the other day I had to try, this St. Ives Green Tea Scrub. It smelled wonderful, but does it really contain green tea?

Yes, apparently so (Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract).

I really enjoyed using this product. Some scrubs are a bit too harsh for even my not-very-sensitive skin, but this one felt lightweight and had finely textured granules. It was nice to find this scrub with the travel-size products, and now I'll be going back for the full size.

A new style of cup and saucer

So tell me, have you seen this style of cup and saucer before?

My husband and I just got back from spending a few days in Orange Beach, and while there one day we traveled over to Fairhope, the beautiful little town on Mobile Bay we first visited a few years ago. I went back in Downtown Antiques since I'd had luck finding some tea goodies there before. I had not even closed the door before this unusual little cup and saucer set caught my eye. Is that a tray or a saucer? It's kind of rectangular.

I studied it for a moment. Yes, that "saucer" was definitely wider than it was tall.

Lifting the cup, I saw that indeed there was an indentation off to one side. How unique! There were actually two of these sets, and though they were just $15 a set (which I thought was fair), I didn't like the other design as well so I left it. I hope I don't regret that!

Royal Stuart. OK. But all my snack sets, or what I've called snack sets, have those larger, luncheon-sized plates with indentations, about 8 inches or so in diameter. This one's saucer is 5-3/4 inches tall and 6-3/4 inches wide, just the right size for a cookie or two Dove chocolates. But is this called a "snack set" too? Can any of you learned ladies help me out here?

The next day while the DH watched college football, I went to three antique malls, four thrift stores, one indoor flea market and an outlet mall and didn't buy a thing, so I'm glad I'd already found my souvenir of this fun trip to the beach!

Tea Sandwich Saturday #37 - Parmesan-Walnut Butter

It was just a thought: could I use up some leftover Parmesan cheese by incorporating it into a flavored butter that could be used for tea sandwiches? The answer is yes!

One reason I wanted to experiment is that I also had some Pepperidge Farm Very Thin 100% Whole Wheat Bread I needed to use up, and it was *so* thin it had occurred to me this would be a great bread to use in a stacked sandwich. The small slices worked beautifully. I spread a slice with the flavored butter, topped it with another slice, more butter, then the final slice before cutting off the crusts and cutting the sandwich into rectangular fingers.

And you know, I've never had tea sandwiches cut into small squares, but why not? I liked the way these look, and I'm always searching for ways to liven up a tray of sandwiches. If you like these flavors as much as I do, you may want to give these a try!

Parmesan-Walnut Butter

1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Combine all ingredients in food processor and pulse until well combined. This smallish recipe was just enough for snacks for my husband and me (he liked them too, by the way), just about four sandwich fingers. So I would double, triple or quadruple this depending on your tea sandwich needs. Tasty, easy, pretty. (And may I just say I do love that Pepperidge Farm Very Thin Bread!)

Some new "old" teatime earrings

Recently I decided to take a chance on a pair of sterling silver earrings on eBay simply because they were so inexpensive and in a design I didn't already have. They'll need a little TLC but they're marked sterling, and there's also a word on the back that's too tiny for me to read, even magnified. But mostly I like that one earring is a teapot and the other is a teacup. One is longer than the other, and that actually will work out great for me because my earlobes happen to be uneven!

At any rate, the new "old" earrings are a bit of a curiosity to me. First, pierced earrings aren't usually that old, are they? (Any jewelry historians out there?) The design definitely looks older than the teatime earrings I see today. If you have a pair like mine, I'd love to know how old *you* say they are!

And I always enjoy seeing the handle on tiny teacup charms. Simply charming!

When making fruit salads ...

Last weekend I made some frozen fruit salad and was draining the fruit before combining it with the other ingredients. I happened to have the fruit draining in a colander sitting atop the saucepan I used all summer to make Minted Simple Syrup.

I was about to pour out the fruit juices when it struck me that instead of making a fruit-flavored simple syrup, I already had one! This one is a combination of the juices from peaches, pineapple, maraschino cherries and mixed fruit.

And what a delightfully fruity sweetener this makes for iced tea! Next time you make something where you have to drain the fruit, you might try adding a bit of the leftover juices to your tea and see what you think. I liked it a lot!

Tea for George

When I got married, my husband came with a set of cat siblings, George and Tammy. Now I am allergic to cats, but we all managed to get along. Sadly, Tammy passed away around Christmas. I think I surprised everyone, including myself, by crying when she went to kitty heaven. A month or so ago, my husband called to say he had accidentally run over George on the way to work and was taking him to the vet! For an ancient cat (he's like 14 or something), George has made a speedy recovery and is now getting around quite well. So naturally I needed to buy him this get-well gift when I saw it at HomeGoods the other day.

This Kitty Tea Bag had George's name on it the moment I saw it. I'm sorry to report I wasn't on hand for photos when my husband first had Tea with George, but I'm told the catnip tea bag was a real hit. By the time I got downstairs, George was asleep and using his new tea bag as a pillow. Sweet dreams, I guess!

Some very tea-ish tea mugs

Months ago, I saw some great new tea mugs advertised in a magazine. They were part of Martha Stewart's "Dish of the Day" line for Macy's, in which the tea mugs say "Tea," the drink glasses say "Drink," the cake plate says "Cake," etc. Cute! And $22 wasn't a bad price for a set of two, but ... the set wasn't on sale. And what's that old Macy's motto? "It's smart to be thrifty."

I can wait forever to get a bargain. On Saturday, my mom and I went to a Macy's store in Marietta so she could find a bracelet like one I'd bought there, for about 67 percent off the regular price. I was looking around in housewares while she checked out and saw that the tea mugs I'd wanted were marked down to $10.99 for the set of two. Half price? Not bad!

Then I got to the checkout and found that, like a lot of merchandise during the Labor Day Sales weekend, they were even cheaper. $7.69 for the set of two. It's not only smart to be thrifty, it's also pretty fun!

Zen Tea in Chamblee

Friday was my fifth wedding anniversary (I can't believe it's already been five years!), so the DH and I decided to go gallivanting around Atlanta and see a movie, have lunch and dinner, and do a little exploring. Following lunch and a movie at Atlantic Station (we saw "The Debt," which was very good), we headed to Chamblee. After visiting one sign-filled antique store that looked like the American Pickers guys had stocked it, we happened upon this surprise find, Zen Tea!

I recently heard about this new contemporary-style tea shop but had forgotten it was in Chamblee. Inside there were tables with several people enjoying their tea and snacks. They had a good selection of cast iron teapots, assorted teacups and tea mugs, and a nice variety of tea accessories and filters.

I left with two mini-cupcakes, a great size for tide-us-over snacking, and this Black Caramel Roasted Almond tea I selected after the friendly sales clerk allowed me to sniff several different blends. Later that night I enjoyed some as a dessert tea, and it had a very rich, delicious and sweet taste even though I added no sugar. Perfect! Next time I'm in the area, I'll definitely be stopping by Zen Tea. (You can see their selections online at ezentea.com.)

Tea Sandwich Saturday #36 -Pimiento Cream Cheese

Recently my friend Paula at work mentioned that her daughter had created a tasty pimiento cheese using cream cheese. That struck me as a wonderful idea—making a pimiento cheese spread using cream cheese instead of mayonnaise—so that's what I experimented with this week and I loved it!

The neat appearance of these sandwiches, I must confess, is a happy accident. I had spread one of the full-size, frozen slices of white bread with the pimiento cream cheese and topped it with the other slice, intending to cut off the crusts and slice them into triangles. My square was more of a rectangle, though, so I needed to slice off a piece in order to get a square. The strip of sandwich fell over, and I thought, "Hey, I kinda like that!" (I realize I didn't exactly invent the ribbon-style sandwich, but I'm amused that this is not what I was originally going for!)

Another neat thing is that you get six tea sandwiches out of just two slices of bread and some spread. That would be a time-saver when hosting a tea party. Here's the recipe.

Pimiento Cream Cheese

1 (3-ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (I used a mix of mild and sharp)
2 ounces diced pimientos
1 tablespoon pimiento juice, or as needed
Dash of white pepper

In a small bowl, cream the cream cheese and shredded cheddar. Add pimientos, pimiento juice (so the mixture won't be too stiff) and pepper. Combine well. Yields enough spread for about 18 small tea sandwiches.

Why tamper with perfection?

This is a test. Do you recognize this?

Need another clue? OK. Try this. Know what it is now?

Yes, I'll bet many of you have correctly guessed it's the Twinings Earl Grey Tea in the yellow tin, that classic blend favored by so very many of us. I've always assumed it would always be there for me, each tin just as aromatic and delicious as the last. Well, the other day I got an e-mail from tea friend Ginger in North Carolina letting me know about this article in the UK's Daily Mail. WHAT? They've changed their Earl Grey? I couldn't believe it. Didn't they hear what happened with new Coke way back when? I immediately went to the grocery store and bought a fresh tin.

The happy news for us here in the U.S., according to this release from Twinings, is that *our* Earl Grey blend has not changed. Whew. And may it ever be! Your thoughts?

Tea bargains at Big Lots

Big Lots is second only to Dollar Tree among "Places I Like to Shop Because Everything is so Cheap." Big Lots' prices are for the most part so rock-bottom, it's a great place to go for cheap luxuries like new teas to try! Since I hadn't yet tried the Arizona Iced Tea with Raspberry Flavor, and this huge (23-ounce) can was just 75 cents, this went in my cart. The mammoth-size cans are a bit much, but I really enjoyed the refreshing raspberry taste of this drink. Earlier in the day I'd ordered some raspberry tea in a restaurant and the flavor was very weak. This one wasn't.

I don't believe I've ever seen a bottled version of yerba maté, that tea-like beverage favored by Argentine cowboys. Yerba maté is a beverage you sometimes see in the tea section of larger grocery stores, and this Agave Maté is made by Rob's Really Good. This drink, alas, was a disappointment. I like yerba maté, and I like agave nectar, but this drink just tasted like honey-flavored water. Cute packaging, but ... even for the bargain price of 75 cents, I didn't really care for it.

And finally, this Twinings Green Tea & Mint is a very smooth and especially minty mint, and I like that it's made with the green tea. The price was certainly right, and now I'm keeping these teabags in my desk at work. Overall, not bad results for my $2.50 investment in tea tasting!