Tea and Travels

This summer poem mentions Afternoon Tea, one of England’s most famous gifts to the rest of the world. And before we end our brief sojourn in London and venture on to Paris and beyond, I wish to contradict a widely held belief that, other than Afternoon Tea, English food is terrible. American tourists in the Twentieth Century were well known for returning from England with complaints about soggy Fish and Chips wrapped in a puddle of grease in old newspapers along with a pathetic pile of mashed peas. Times have changed! London has become a foodie paradise, thanks to Globalism and the influx of immigrants from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Mediterranean areas, including Italy! There is nothing like diversity to improve the food of any culture, inspiring both home cooks and professional chefs to introduce new ingredients and fusion food preparations into existing culinary traditions.


The traditional English Breakfast is a perfect example of this immigrant-inspired transformation. Our breakfasts at the time-honored Savoy Hotel in London guaranteed that we were going to have a good day. The generous breakfasts served in the Thames Foyer and the River Restaurant offered all of the elements of the world-famous hearty breakfast that the British have enjoyed for generations. The English Breakfast that Wayne ordered included:
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What is Stornoway Black Pudding, you ask? Well, it’s not a dessert. It’s a traditional Scottish blood sausage, produced on the Isle of Lewis and containing beef suet, oatmeal, onion and blood. (I overheard several guests at the Savoy, all with American accents, asking the waiters to omit this item from their English Breakfast.)

While this breakfast epitomizes historic British fare, additional items reflecting a wider range of provenance were included in this meal. The moment we sat down at our breakfast table, a server with a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice in one hand and a pitcher of fresh grapefruit juice in the other arrived, offering us as much of either juice as we wanted throughout the meal. The hot beverages we were offered included not just tea, but a variety of coffees, including Cappuccino. Influences from Spain and Italy are already apparent. If fine food is being served, can French influences be far behind? Before we even read the menu, our server offered us a basket of freshly baked and still warm croissants, including dark chocolate croissants, Danish pastries with fruit fillings and homemade muffins, with generous amounts of butter, marmalade, honey and jam. When breakfast arrived, guests could choose either white, whole meal, sourdough, English muffin or granary toast. Again, the wider world is adding delightful innovations to an already delicious meal.


The Savoy Vegetarian Breakfast that I ordered also reflected Asian and Mediterranean influences while including the fresh juices, coffee choices and abundant pastry selections. Here’s what I had for breakfast:

I noticed that avocados appeared several times on the Savoy menu, as Crushed Avocado Toasts and other delicious sounding items. The crushed avocado I ate was excellent, and I have learned that the British import avocados from Chile, Israel, Spain, Peru and South Africa. The vast majority of the oranges consumed in England come from Spain. Tofu, of course, is of Chinese origin, and Asian influences are now ubiquitous in England. Before we move on, I invite you to read the essay, “Eating with Immigrants,” which I included in my very first blog in June of 2016. This essay appeared in the college English textbook, Visions Across the Americas,” by J. Sterling Warner, and has been read over the years by thousands of college students. I hope it helped them to appreciate multi-national foods and the rich artistic, historic and social diversity that immigrants bring, enriching the culture of their new homes.
 
One Asian food adventure we especially enjoyed on our last day in London was a fascinating
“Secret Indian Foodie Tour of London.” Wayne and I walked through the White Chapel neighborhood, to a Bengali speaking Bangladeshi community centered around Brick Lane, where mothers in burkas, walked amiably with their children, doing the family grocery shopping in a variety of specialized food and spice markets, fruit and vegetable stands, butcher shops and sweets shops, amid a flurry of other activities centered around businesses, clubs and art galleries on this lively spring afternoon.
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​Here we met our guide, a delightful young woman of Welsh and Bangladeshi descent who had a Master’s Degree from Cambridge in Social Anthropology. She was a treasure trove of information on Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian culture. We learned as we walked, and we ate lots of fabulous food in various locations along the way. First, we stopped at an excellent restaurant, all run my men, where we enjoyed some delicious garlic nan with chili flavored cassava and fried river fish. The chef let us tour the kitchen and watch him make nan (east Asian flat bread) in the tandoor, a vertical, round extremely high-heat oven. We also got to view the huge simmering pots of lamb, dal (spiced lentils) and so many other dishes being prepared for the evening’s dinner. The staff was also making ground lamb kabobs, which Wayne enjoyed along with the fish and cassava.


At another stop we had black chickpea curry with tasty little lentil flour fritters and mango lassi, the refreshing cool yogurt and fruit “smoothie.” We also visited a Bangladeshi market filled with all kinds of fresh and packaged foods, including sauces and flavorings, varieties of lentils and rice, and a huge assortment of fresh vegetables and fruits. Then to my delight, we stopped at a sweet shop where our guide bought some cream and coconut covered gulab jamun, popular in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and for many years my favorite Indian dessert. Gulab jamun are little fried dough balls made of milk powder, semolina flour and rosewater, floating in sweet syrup like little extra-sweet doughnut holes.


At our final stop, another excellent Pakistani restaurant run entirely by men, as we waited for the outstanding chicken, lentils, spiced spinach and biriyani, (flavored rice,) our guide brought out a spice box and a mortar and pestle to play a little game with me and Wayne, challenging us to identify each spice by color, texture and aroma after she ground each spice while our eyes were closed. We did surprisingly well identifying the cumin seeds, cardamom, cinnamon bark and turmeric, but we got a little stumped by the masala, which is a mixture of several spices. Our charming guide seemed startled by our knowledge of East Asian spices, but this wasn’t our first Indian rodeo. You are welcome to read one of my earliest blogs, August 2016, “Eating in India."

We cherish international art almost as much as we love the foods of the world, and London is the place to see some of the world’s best paintings, sculptures, monuments and historic artifacts. No one can deny that London has some of the best art galleries in the world, though it saddens me to point out that many of these priceless treasures were pilfered from their original owners during the dark days of Colonialism, when the British Empire stretched around the globe.
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Let’s start at the National Gallery, right on Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster in Central London. This location, a central meeting place since 1200, was transformed into its current Neoclassical appearance in 1844. The focal point of the square is the monumental statue of Admiral Nelson, hero of the British victory over the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, a pivotal point in the Napoleonic Wars. The National Gallery and the Church of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, also examples of Neoclassical architecture, are sited at right angles to each other on the square.

If you are not an expert on art but would like to learn more in a pleasant, relaxing and free (yes, free!) setting, The National Gallery is the place for you. The National Gallery’s collection focuses only on paintings, 2,300 of them, spanning the history of European art from the mid Thirteenth Century to 1900. Some of the most famous paintings in the world are in this outstanding collection. The National Gallery is very popular with the British, as two of England’s own favorite sons in the world of art, John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough, are included in this world-class collection among the likes of Leonardo da Vinci (Virgin of the Rocks,) Michelangelo (The Entombment of Christ,) and Peter Paul Rubens (“Samson and Delilah.”) And yes, you can view Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery.
 

The painter, Jan van Eyck, was born in 1390 in Masseyck, now in Belgium, and his works formed a transition from the International Gothic style represented by the Wilton Diptych and the Early Northern Renaissance style, characterized by minute realistic details and portraits of ordinary people in addition to religious themes. Some art historians credit van Eyck with the invention of oil painting, which allowed the layering of paint to create his remarkable luminous effects. In the portrait of Mr. Arnolfini and his wife, van Eyck presents a wealthy couple wearing fur trimmed clothing, gold jewelry and an elegant lace head covering for the wife. Yet the portrait also suggests restraint and piety, as the couple are not overdressed or wearing large jewels, and their faithful little dog stands at their feet between them. A large brass candelabra with only one candle hangs above them as light from the window gleams on the polished brass.

A rosary hangs on the wall behind the couple, also reflecting the light from the window, and next to the rosary, a large round convex mirror reflects the couple from behind and also reveals two men in front of them, entering the room. This element has fascinated viewers for centuries. Is one of these men the painter, van Eyck himself? Who is the other man, reflected dimly in the mirror? Anyone can view online this magnificent and intricately detailed painting, in which every image seems both photographically real and simultaneously symbolic, but if you ever have the opportunity to visit London, don’t miss the National Gallery, and take a good long look at this fabulous portrait.

Now, on to the British Museum, located in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. It is one of the premier museums of the world, and it too is free. It is an enormous Greek Revival structure built in 1753, and it houses the largest collection in the world—eight million items, documenting all of human history, art and culture. The oldest item in the museum is the Olduvai Stone Chipping Tool, found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and estimated to be two million years old. The oldest mummy in the world, nicknamed Ginger, has been on display at the British Museum since 1901, and is dated at 3,400 BC. It is not possible in a single visit to view all of the exhibits, so I advise studying the website and a map of the museum in advance and selecting just a few items or historic eras that interest you. It is also helpful to have a guide.
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On this visit, we decided to focus on antiquities, and with the help of our guide, we viewed the most popular item in the museum, the Rosetta Stone, as well as the Sculptures from the Parthenon, a collection of silver platters, bowls and spoons from the ancient Roman occupation of Britain found in a farmer’s field, the Hinton St. Mary mosaic, also from Roman Britain, and perhaps the only representation of Christ in ancient pavement, as well as artifacts, including the famous helmet, from the 1,400 year old Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo ship burial, discovered in 1939, and the richest burial ever found in Northern Europe.
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As I mentioned earlier, many of the antiquities in the British Museum were obtained through questionable means. The Rosetta Stone, a stone stele, or monument, from Memphis in Egypt and dated 196 BC, is world famous in the history of deciphering ancient written languages. It contains a text inscribed on the stone in three different languages, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic script and ancient Greek. The Rosetta Stone has fascinated linguistic scholars since the British confiscated it from the French in 1801 after the defeat of the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt by the British. A French military officer had discovered the stone two years earlier, and apparently neither the French nor the English cared in the least that the Rosetta Stone actually belonged to Egypt.
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A similar story can be told about the magnificent marble sculptures that once graced the Parthenon in Greece and are now exquisitely displayed in the British Museum in a room specifically designed to imitate the Parthenon itself. This display is truly breathtaking and contains some of the finest marble sculptures in world history perfectly depicting human figures in a style that has never been replicated. However, the Greek government would like them back, and as recently as this year, Greece has continued its demand that England relinquish these priceless components of the ancient Greek heritage, dubiously obtained from the Parthenon in Athens by Lord Elgin in 1812.

Less controversy surrounds the Victoria and Albert Museum, fondly referred to by the British as the V&A. The V&A, established in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, is the largest museum of design and the applied arts in the world, with a collection of more than two million objects. Visitors to this free museum can wander through rooms filled with jewelry, clothing, textiles, wallpapers, tapestries, China, ceramics, silver, furniture, photography and other applied arts from a variety of historic periods. The Arts and Crafts movement, which evolved during the Victorian period, extolling the inherent beauty of nature, simplicity, quality materials and craftsmanship is well represented at the V&A, including the works of the British Victorian designer, William Morris. In fact, Morris designed one of the charming cafes at the V&A, and books about Morris and items adorned with his beautiful floral designs are available in the gift shop. The V&A is the place where you will want to linger over lunch, coffee, tea or afternoon sweets. In addition, visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum was one of the primary factors motivating our entire trip to England.
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​We wanted to visit the special exhibit, “Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature” mentioned by Kathleen in her April 2022 blog. This charming exhibit, which will remain at the V&A until January 2023, provides a warm, affectionate and comprehensive overview of the life, literature, art and social advocacy of Beatrix Potter, a remarkable British woman who made the world a better place for children, adults and animals for generations to come. Born into a wealthy family in 1866, Beatrix enjoyed a happy childhood with summer vacations in Scotland and England’s Lake District where her love for animals, nature, and scientific investigation thrived. As the author of twenty-three children’s stories, including The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which she illustrated herself, she became a wealthy woman in her own right and was able to purchase large tracts of land in The Lake District where she enjoyed gardening, cooking and caring for her farm animals. Upon her death in 1943, Beatrix bequeathed her original illustrations and 4,000 acres of land, including sixteen farms, cottages, herds of cattle and Herdwick sheep, a breed she help to rescue from near extinction, to the National Trust. Today this generous gift is included in the Lake District National Park.

The V&A’s Beatrix Potter exhibit is filled with photographs, personal letters, paintings, books and other personal artifacts related to Beatrix and her life, charmingly arranged with cute little mice and other animals (projected photographically,) running around the room. Kathleen’s April blog also mentions The Beatrix Potter Country Cooking Book, by Sara Paston-Williams, and Kathleen was kind enough to send a copy to me. This beautifully illustrated book, with photographs and original Beatrix Potter illustrations, captures the spirit of traditional English rural life in the Lake Country, including references to the animal characters in Beatrix’s many tales. As we say a poignant goodbye to England, it is my pleasure to share this simple, old fashioned summer dessert adapted from The Beatrix Potter Country Cooking Book using the fruits and berries that Beatrix loved to grow in her own garden.


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Special equipment: large mixing bowl, medium sized mixing bowl, electric mixer, sieve or flour sifter, 9-inch springform pan, sprayed with cooking spray, lined with 2 layers of parchment cut to fit and the bottom sealed with a double layer of foil, foil-lined cookie sheet, apple peeler, paring knife, rubber spatula, bamboo skewer, wire cooling rack, large decorative platter

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Mix together the 2 tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of honey and spread the mixture over the bottom of the parchment-lined cake pan. Peel and core the apples and cut them into small pieces. Arrange the chopped apples with the blackberries over the honey and butter in the cake pan.
2. Sift the self-rising flour and the cinnamon into a medium bowl and set aside. In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, beat the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs until just combined. Gently fold the flour mixture into the butter mixture a little at a time with a rubber spatula. Beat on low speed until no flour is visible. Carefully spoon the batter over the fruit in the pan and smooth the top with the rubber spatula. Place the pan on the foil-lined cookie sheet, as juices are likely to drip out of the pan. Bake for about 40-45 minutes until golden brown. Test for doneness with a bamboo skewer.
3. Cool the cake on a wire rack for about 10-15 minutes. When cool enough to handle, place the serving platter upside down over the cake pan, gripping the pan and the platter carefully, and quickly turn the cake pan over onto the serving platter, leaving it in place for 2-3 minutes to allow all the juices and fruit to drip onto the cake. Remove the pan and parchment. Serve warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Serves 6-8.

When we arrived in London, as late spring was turning into summer, we found ourselves in a clean, safe, orderly and ancient metropolis, founded by the Romans more than two thousand years ago on the lovely rolling Themes River. London, with its nine million inhabitants, is one of the most important cities in the world, for centuries a center of finance, commerce, art and culture. London is an architectural wonderland, with buildings constructed in every historic era, from Romanesque, Gothic, Tudor, Baroque, Neoclassical, Georgian, Victorian, Craftsman, and every other imaginable style.
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London is also a city of parks, gardens, museums, churches, restaurants, palaces and castles. Americans are in love with castles, thanks primarily to Disney movies, as most of the Disney princesses seem to live in castles, and perhaps also because we have no castles of our own. In fact, America does have one Royal Palace where a King and Queen once lived—the Iolani Palace in Honolulu, once the royal residence of the rulers of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Constructed in 1879 in the Hawaiian Renaissance architectural style, reminiscent of the palaces in Florence, this magnificent building, now open to the public, was home to King David Kalakaua and his wife, Queen Kapiolani, and King David’s sister, the final monarch of Hawaii, Queen Liliuokalani.
 
Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, whose grandmother, Queen Victoria, was friends with Queen Liliuokalani, officially owns seven royal residences, the most famous of which is Buckingham Palace, right in the center of London, near three of the other most famous and oldest monuments in the city—the Palace of Westminster, now known as the Houses of Parliament, built one thousand years ago by King William II, Westminster Abbey, where all of England’s monarchs since William the Conqueror in 1066, have been crowned, and Big Ben, the iconic chiming clock tower added to Westminster Palace in 1859. All of these old and architecturally fascinating palaces can be viewed easily simply by hiring a cab to drive you around central London, taking one of the red tour buses or by walking there yourself if you are staying nearby. The Savoy Hotel, where we stayed and enjoyed Afternoon Tea, is within walking distance of all of these London Landmarks.
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Windsor Castle, another of the Queen’s official residences, and the oldest occupied castle in the world, is sited in the lovely Berkshire countryside about twenty-two miles from London and easily accessible by train or car. Queen Elizabeth II’s preferred home, Windsor is a fortified castle built by William the Conqueror in the Eleventh Century and has been the residence of thirty-nine British monarchs. St. George’s Chapel, a glorious example of Gothic Architecture with magnificent stained-glass windows, was added to Windsor Castle in 1475. Numerous royal weddings have taken place at St. George’s Chapel, and many of England’s monarchs, including Henry VIII, Charles I, and George VI, Queen Elizabeth II’s father, are buried there. The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and her mother Queen Consort Elizabeth are also entombed at St. George’s Chapel. Visitors can tour parts of Windsor Castle, and plenty of information is available on-line to arrange tours, tickets and transportation to Windsor.
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With only a few days in London before we traveled on to Paris, we could not visit every palace in London, so we decided to tour Hampton Court Palace, the best example of Tudor architecture in England and a royal residence which we had not seen previously. Visitors can easily get to Hampton Court from Central London by car, train or boat. The Palace is located on the River Themes, just twelve miles from London and within the public transportation system. There are thirty-six trains per day from Waterloo Station to Hampton Court, so we took the train and arrived in about forty-five minutes. The British train system, including the underground, is clean, well maintained, on-time and efficient. And a new line, the Elizabeth Line, just opened in honor of the Platinum Jubilee. The fact that Wayne hired a guide to escort us made the short journey simple and easy. When we arrived, the film crew from the television series “Bridgerton,” which is partially filmed at Hampton Court, was on the premises, but they did not impede our visit in any way.
 
Getting to know Hampton Court is an adventure filled with art, beauty, glorious gardens, treachery and intrigue. This magnificent red brick residence spans the Medieval, Tudor and Baroque periods and is still filled with priceless art treasures from these historic eras. The remains of a house built some time before 1338 lie beneath the current palace. This original home was part of a large farm estate belonging to a religious order, the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, who helped provide food and funds for crusaders to the Holy Land. Later, Giles Daubeney, a courtier in the service of King Henry VII, leased the property in 1494 and began construction on the earliest parts of the palace. Now the intrigue begins.
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In 1514, Cardinal Woolsey, the most powerful cleric and politician in England at the time, acquired Hampton Court as his personal residence, reception area and office where he entertained international ambassadors on diplomatic missions. By this time Henry VIII was King, and Cardinal Woolsey worked in his service. Woolsey made extensive renovations and expansions to the house to accommodate the King and his courtiers as well as his own staff. He added an enormous new entrance courtyard and a long gallery overlooking the newly designed gardens. And as Woolsey was the most important English religious leader at that time, he created a new chapel with a cloister for state processions. Hampton Court’s beautiful Chapel Royal is still in use today and has been used continuously for religious services since Woolsey had it constructed, although Henry VIII installed the glorious, vaulted ceiling in the 1530s and Queen Anne refurnished the interior in the early 1700s.
 
Cardinal Woolsey was also a great admirer and collector of tapestries, one of the most significant and most expensive art forms of the late Medieval and early Renaissance period, the time when the Tudor family came to power in England. Woolsey commissioned around six hundred large wall-hanging tapestries depicting religious and classical themes, some inspired by the poet Petrarch. And he even instructed the weavers to include his own likeness and that of Henry VIII in some of the scenes in the tapestries he purchased. These masterpieces were based on Italian designs and created in Flanders, where this art form flourished, and it was from Cardinal Woolsey that Henry VIII developed his own passion for tapestries, commissioning over two thousand by the time of his death in 1547. Today only thirty tapestries remain from this magnificent collection, once the largest in the world, but many of these exquisite and complex works of art are still hanging on the walls in Hampton Court readily visible to visitors.
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Hampton Court is also a treasure trove of world class paintings, hanging on the walls of the sumptuous rooms where Henry VIII and successive kings and queens resided, including James I, William and Mary and Queen Anne. The Royal Collection Trust, one of the largest art collections in the world, displays some of its finest paintings, on a rotating basis, at Hampton Court. The Cumberland Art Gallery, which occupies four rooms in the palace, includes works by Holbein, van Dyck, Caravaggio and an exquisite self-portrait by Rembrandt. Joos Van Cleve’s famous portrait of Henry VIII as a portly middle-aged man in his mid-forties is also owned by the Royal Collection Trust and can be viewed at Hampton Court Palace.
 
Sadly for Cardinal Woolsey, Henry, once an attractive and athletic young man, became a narcissistic and power-mad tyrant later in life. In his youth, Henry never expected to be king, as his older brother, Arthur, was crown prince. However, Arthur died at the age of fifteen, shortly after having married Catherine of Aragon. Henry’s father, Henry VII, died in 1509, and his son became Henry VIII at the age of seventeen. Shortly after his coronation, Henry married his brother’s widow, and they remained married for twenty-four years, but in middle age, Henry became obsessed with the fact that Catherine did not give birth to a son who could succeed Henry as king. Henry wanted to divorce Catherine, and the job fell upon Cardinal Woolsey to convince Pope Clement VII to grant Henry a divorce. Woolsey’s efforts failed, and Henry retaliated by trying Woolsey for treason and confiscating his magnificent palace, Hampton Court, and all of its contents.
 
Henry solved his marital problem by separating England from the Roman Catholic Church and appointing himself head of the Church of England. He then was free to marry five more women in short succession, two of whom he had executed, and ironically none of them produced a male heir who lived into adulthood. Two of his daughters, Mary his daughter with Catherine of Aragon and Elizabeth, his daughter with his second wife, Anne Boleyn, (whom he had decapitated), went on to become Queens of England. Visitors at Hampton Court can see first-hand, the details of Henry’s self-indulgent lifestyle. The tour of his large kitchens and wine storage areas is breathtaking, as the amount of food that Henry and his courtiers consumed daily is almost beyond belief. Historians have surmised that Henry ate five thousand calories of food, mostly various forms of meat and poultry, daily and imbibed copious amounts of wine. Not surprisingly, Henry became obese as he aged and was no longer able to participate in dangerous martial sports like jousting and tournaments, so he turned to tennis and had an indoor tennis court built for himself. Tourists are welcome to visit Henry’s tennis court, which was actually in use when we were there.
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Like everything else at Hampton Court, the gardens are expansive and magnificent. You will need a map to guide you through all sixteen of the garden areas. Of course, I loved the rose garden, and there is also a maze, a kitchen garden filled with herbs, a fountain garden and an orangery where citrus and other exotic plants are grown in beautiful blue and white Delft pots. The Privy Garden, the private garden of Henry and the other British monarchs who resided at Hampton Court after him, has been beautifully restored as it was in 1702 during the reign of William III. The garden is laid out in small, patterned squares with statuary and carefully clipped shrubs, including yew and holly trees interspersed with flowering spring bulbs and annual summer flowers. One of the great surprises for me at the Hampton Court Gardens was The Great Vine, the world’s largest grape vine, housed in its own glass enclosure. This Black Hamburg grapevine was planted in 1768, and still produces about six hundred pounds of sweet dessert grapes a year. These are sold in the Palace Shop each year in September after the August harvest.
 
Not surprisingly, Hampton Court does have a place to stop for lunch, the Tiltyard Café, near the gardens. This pleasant little place, which has an outdoor terrace, was not overcrowded, and seemed to be occupied mostly by local mothers on an outing with their children. The Tiltyard Café serves tasty sandwiches, coffee and plenty of tea-time sweets, including pastries, cookies, muffins and cake. I was delighted to spy a beautiful, freshly baked Victoria Sponge Cake, just waiting to be cut and served with a nice hot cup of tea.
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You can read all about Victoria Sponge Cake, named for Queen Victoria, (and also loved at tea-time by Queen Elizabeth II), on this website in our Classic British Afternoon Tea menu in the World of Tea Parties section of The Tea Book. And I will share a recipe for Victoria Sponge with you. But first, you will be delighted to learn that as part of the joyfully over-the-top Platinum Jubilee, the Royal Family held a Platinum Jubilee Pudding Contest. Keep in mind, as we learned while watching “Downton Abbey,” that the word “pudding” is used as a generic term in England to refer to any kind of dessert. The winner of the Platinum Jubilee Pudding Contest is a very happy woman named Jemma Melvin, an amateur baker who created a magnificent Lemon Swiss Roll and Amaretti Trifle. Wow!
 
You can easily find photos and recipes for this masterpiece, as the internet is filled with articles about this exciting event. I downloaded the recipe including a photo of Jemma, holding her trophy, standing between HRH Camilla The Duchess of Cornwall and the charming BBC food hostess and cookbook writer, Mary Berry, who judged the event. Just type in “Platinum Pudding Recipe—The Royal Family,” and you will find the recipe. The steps to creating this innovative but still very traditionally British Trifle include making the following individual components: Swiss Rolls (called Jelly Rolls in the US,) Lemon Curd, St. Clement’s Jelly, Custard, Amaretti Biscuits, Chunky Mandarin Coulis and Jeweled Chocolate Bark. A caveat at the end of the recipe points out that many of these components can be purchased separately, simplifying the process considerably. Our website contains recipes for making Lemon Curd and home-made Custard. I offer a round of applause for any readers who feel inspired to make this new and historically significant dessert to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee at home with your own families.
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Meanwhile, as promised, I am happy to share the recipe for Victoria Sponge Cake.
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For the cake:

• 1 cup butter at room temperature
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons superfine sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs at room temperature
• 1 ¾ cup self-rising flour
• Baking spray with flour for the pans

For the jam filling:

• ½-1 cup cherry preserves or raspberry jam
• 1 (4-ounce) bar bittersweet chocolate (I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao,) chopped, grated or cut into chocolate curls with a vegetable peeler

For the whipped cream:

• 2 cups chilled heavy whipping cream
• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Alternate butter cream filling instead of whipped cream:

• ½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons heavy cream
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

For serving and garnish:

• Powdered sugar
• Fresh cherries or raspberries
• Additional chocolate curls

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Special equipment:
2 nine-inch round cake pans, parchment, large mixing bowl, medium mixing bowl, hand-held electric mixer, rubber spatula, table knife or offset spatula, food processor or vegetable peeler, wire cooling racks, wooden skewer, sieve, decorative platter or cake stand

​Serves: approximately 12 servings

1. Spray the cake pans with baking spray with flour. Cover the bottoms of both pans with two layers of parchment cut to fit, and spray again.
2. Measure the self-rising flour into a medium sized mixing bowl and set aside. Beat the butter in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, on high speed until creamy and smooth, about 1 minute scraping the sides as needed. Turn the mixer speed to medium low and add the super-fine sugar and vanilla until thoroughly mixed. Then turn the speed to medium high and beat the mixture until very light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, scraping the bowl often.
3. Turn the mixer speed back to low and add the eggs, 1 at a time, and beat just until incorporated, scraping the bowl after each addition.
4. Add one third of the flour mixture and mix on low just until no flour is visible. Add the remaining flour in two additions, just until incorporated each time, scraping the bowl. The batter will be thick.
5. Divide the batter equally between the 2 prepared pans, and carefully smooth the tops of the batter with a kitchen knife or an offset spatula. Gently tap the pans on the counter to release air bubbles. Bake for about 20 minutes until the cakes are golden and a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on wire racks for 15 minutes. Remove the cakes from the pans, peel off the parchment and allow the cake layers to cool completely on wire racks, about 30-60 minutes.
6. While the cakes cool, prepare the whipped cream or alternate butter cream filling. Wash the large mixing bowl and the electric mixer beaters, dry them carefully and chill them for a few minutes in the freezer. Add the chilled heavy cream to the mixing bowl and beat on medium speed until soft peaks start to form. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and continue beating until the cream becomes firm and holds it shape, 2 or 3 minutes. Refrigerate immediately.
7. To make the alternate butter cream filling, add the butter and powdered sugar to the medium sized mixing bowl and beat until fluffy and well combined. Add the vanilla and 1 tablespoon of cream. If the mixture is too thick to spread, add 1 or more additional tablespoons of cream until the filling is a good spreading consistency. Set aside until ready to assemble the Victoria Sponge Cake.
8. Assemble the cake shortly before serving time. Save the best shaped of the 2 cake layers for the top and place the other layer, top side down on a decorative platter or cake pedestal. If using whipped cream, stir the cherry preserves or raspberry jam and spread a layer evenly over the top and to the edges of the cake. Sprinkle some of the chopped chocolate (or chocolate curls) over the jam, saving some for garnish. Spread a one-inch layer of whipped cream over the jam and chocolate layer and carefully place the second cake layer over the top of the whipped cream, aligning the sides of the two cake layers. Press very gently to adhere. Using a sieve, sift a generous layer of powdered sugar over the top, sprinkle the remaining chocolate curls in the center, scatter fresh cherries (or raspberries) around the cake, and serve immediately with any remaining whipped cream, berries or cherries.
9. If using the butter cream filling, spread the butter cream over the top of the bottom cake layer first, and then spread the jam and chocolate curls carefully over the butter cream. Proceed as described above by adding the top layer, sifting powdered sugar over the top of the cake and garnishing with the remaining chocolate curls. Scatter fresh cherries and or raspberries around the cake and serve immediately. Refrigerate any leftovers.​

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My husband Wayne and I have just returned from a three-week adventure in London, Paris and a Riverboat Cruise down the Seine River to Normandy. Since the name of my blog is “Tea and Travels,” I will begin with Afternoon Tea at the venerable Savoy Hotel in London, but I hope to share many of the other highlights of this magnificent adventure in future blogs.
 
On this recent trip, on our way from Honolulu to London, we stopped in California, where Wayne and I both lived for many decades, from late childhood until our retirement. We wanted to visit the only remaining member of the Greatest Generation on either side of our family, Wayne’s one-hundred-year-old aunt, also named Rose Higashi.
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When Wayne’s cousin Doug and his wife Tomoko brought us to Auntie Rose’s small, neat and tidy home in Gardena, nothing had changed in the sixty years that I have known her—the same rattan furniture with the same floral cushions, and although she has aged and her black hair has turned white, Auntie Rose’s perky, chatty, optimistic personality remains.

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I told her that I still use the Japanese cookbook, Nisei Favorites, that her church published back in 1962, and we still use the set of silver-plated flatware that she gave us as our wedding gift, an act of astounding generosity for the wife of a postman. I tried to hide my tears when this brief visit ended and Doug and Tomoko drove us back for our flight to London. But now I see that this entire journey, from Los Angeles to Omaha Beach, was really about honoring the past and about thanking those who went before us for their courage, their hopeful spirits, their creativity and their love for our fragile world.
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For our fleeting four days in London, Wayne and I chose to focus on three areas of human experience, architecture, art and food. While we love all that is ancient and beautiful, the momentary world of sandwiches, scones and shortbread is of equal importance.
 
We had a reservation for Afternoon Tea at the Savoy Hotel, where we were staying, on the day we arrived. This two-hour respite of perfect food and ethereal tea in a breathtakingly beautiful environment was one of the loveliest tea parties I have ever attended. And it was a welcome reminder that the tea ritual itself is an art form of great beauty.
 
The Savoy is decorated throughout in understated Georgian elegance with classical and Baroque elements harmoniously arranged in a moss green, cream and gold palette. The Savoy’s tearoom, the Themes Foyer, is in the center of the hotel, just past the lobby and down a set of marble stairs. These stairs lead to an amazing Baroque wonderland with walls lined with Corinthian columns, a central dome decorated with green stained-glass flowers, and a crystal chandelier hanging above a creamy white gazebo with a green marble floor.
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In the center of this gazebo is a grand piano played by an elegant blonde woman in a black evening gown and matching spiked heels. Throughout Afternoon Tea, she played time-tested romantic songs, including “Blue Moon,” “Misty,” and “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” Our table was near the gazebo, and a large bouquet of pale pink roses and greenery had been placed there, ordered secretly in advance by Wayne, my true love, a master of symbolic gestures and few words.
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Our waiters were two young Asian men in impeccable white jackets with black piping, who turned out to be a perfectly synchronized team. Their name tags identified them as Avatar and Stephane, and their attentive service was worthy of their elegant names. From the long list of teas and tisanes available, we chose for the savory course Chinese Pu-er and an herbal tisane with ginger, lemon and fennel, and for the sweets course Japanese Gyokuro, a green tea, and the Savoy Black Tea Blend. Avatar and Stephane appeared at just the right moment with pots of steaming tea and silver strainers, pouring out tea for us into the floral Wedgwood cups designed exclusively for the Savoy. They returned repeatedly with silver pitchers of hot water, and we never had to fill our own cups.
 
The sandwiches, on perfectly fresh bread, and not refrigerated because they had just been made, arrived on an oblong sandwich tray of the same lovely floral pattern as the teacups. We enjoyed egg salad on white bread, curried chicken salad with raisins on brown bead, fresh ripe tomato sandwiches with avocado cream, outstanding smoked salmon with cucumbers, and open-faced sandwiches of tiny shrimps on rounds of black bread. A charming little tart of spring peas on pea puree concluded the savory course.
 
We were offered both raisin and plain scones, served with lemon curd, butter and strawberry jam. They were perfect, and Avatar assured us that we were welcome to have more sandwiches and scones at any time. We declined his generous offer, as the sweets course, on a charming, tiered server, was on its way.
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The sandwiches were fresh and delicious, and the scones were warm and perfectly crispy on the outside and soft within, right out of the oven. They were served with butter and Claridge’s signature Marco Polo Jelly, a tasty combination of mixed fruits. Although Claridge’s does not serve clotted cream with the scones, every customer is sent home with a complimentary and generously sized square of divine and decadent Clotted Cream Fudge.
 
The decor at Claridge’s tearoom evokes the Roaring Twenties, an era from a hundred years ago with Flappers dancing the Charleston, smoking cigarettes in long cigarette holders and drinking Martinis, although none of that behavior actually occurs during afternoon tea. The walls are covered with silvery arched mirrors, and a huge “modern” glass chandelier with undulating snake-like shapes hangs over a central table covered by tall clear glass vases filled with a profusion of white, pink and violet spring flowers.
 
Unfortunately, the room is much smaller than the Themes Foyer at the Savoy, and loud conversations filled the atmosphere. It was very crowded while we were there; the tables were close together and we felt cramped. Sadly, the service was also utterly neglectful, which was disappointing. There were lots of people working there, maybe even more employees than customers, but busy as they seemed, they were inattentive and careless, and nobody ever offered to pour our tea. Two women who worked at the front desk even dropped a three-tiered server, designed to stand on the floor, onto the back of my chair with a loud crash. Although the food was fresh and well prepared, nothing in our experience at Claridge’s compared to our magical afternoon at the Savoy.
 
In future blogs I hope to share the wonders of London architecture, including palaces and churches, and describe our adventures in the fabulous British Museum and the fun we had at the Beatrix Potter show at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Meanwhile, if our magical afternoon at the Savoy piqued your interest in the traditional English Afternoon Tea ritual, you are certainly invited to peruse “A Classic British Afternoon Tea” in the “A World of Tea Parties” section of this website. Our menu includes a selection of sandwiches, scones and sweets very similar to the memorable food we ate at the Savoy and Claridge’s.
 
Afternoon Tea in the British tradition does not rely on innovative, trendy, expensive or complicated recipes. It is old-fashioned, simple food, prepared with meticulous attention to detail and freshness, using seasonal ingredients and focusing on elegant visual presentation. Though Avatar and Stephane might not be there to pour your tea, you can host a tea party for your family and friends in the dignified tradition of the Savoy in your own home or garden. In fact, the “Tea Menu Basics” chapter of “The Tea Book” on this website provides you with free recipes for the sandwiches, scones and lemon curd that we recently enjoyed in Merry Old England. I hope to see you next month at Hampton Court Palace!
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When I first started writing this blog in 2016, I titled it “Tea and Travels.” Back then, Wayne and I traveled every year to some place we had never been before, eager to experience the history, art, culture, food, and of course tea and coffee customs of each new destination. I thought this pattern would continue. Then covid arrived, and my expectations had to change. Change is a natural aspect of human experience and can be good. And a curious mind can learn plenty without leaving home. You are welcome to review my earlier blogs, chronologically listed, right on this website, to share our food and fun adventures in lots of exciting places throughout the world. But when the covid crisis started to wane, and we accepted the fact that we would not be visiting Japan, a country we both love, any time in the near future, Wayne and I talked about the places we have visited and the experiences we might still want to pursue.
 
We agreed that London would be worth visiting again, since “Tea” is the first word in the title of my blog, and Kathleen’s wonderful April 2022 blog featured the delightful art show “Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Once we made the decision, Wayne secured tickets to the Beatrix Potter Show and made reservations for Afternoon Tea at the Savoy Hotel and Claridge’s, two of the classic venues for traditional tea in London. Our thoughts raced on to the fact that we have never traveled through the “Chunnel,” and that there were several places in France that we had never visited. We found an excellent history and art tour that would take us to London, for two days of museums and Afternoon Tea, then through the Channel Tunnel and on to Paris by train, followed by a river boat cruise down the Seine.
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I continue to believe that Afternoon Tea is the best way to celebrate our mothers. What could be better than being the Guest of Honor at a special tea party? Your mother will not have to cook or clean up or participate in any of the planning. She can just get dressed up, if she wants to, and bask in the pure joy of being genuinely appreciated by all of the other guests. Obviously, this is not the time to remember any of your mother’s mistakes or character flaws. This is your moment to get on the high road and create the loveliest springtime setting you can imagine with your best dishes, linens and teapot and fresh, tasty and festive food.
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I admit that I have only made Chocolate Bounty Cake once, for a “family bubble” dinner during the pandemic. All of us loved it, and our agreement was unanimous that it was also the richest, most decadent dessert we had ever enjoyed. Serve this enormous dark chocolate, coconut and almond creation in thin slices and be prepared to send everyone home with a little gift package of leftovers to appreciate later. Chocolate Bounty Cake is essentially a Chocolate Brownie layer topped by a filling of Coconut Cream covered in Toasted Almonds and topped with a shiny Dark Chocolate Glaze. The good news is, although there are several steps in making this grand dessert, it’s a pretty simple process, and you will not even need an electric mixer. This is old school cooking with a wooden spoon, a nine-inch springform pan and a saucepan. It will take you a couple of hours to get this masterpiece assembled, but no worries. You can make it the day before Mother’s Day if you wish and refrigerate it overnight, adding the shiny glaze shortly before serving time.
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Special equipment: 9-inch springform pan, parchment, glass measuring cup, large mixing bowl, wooden spoon, 2 wire cooling racks, foil, cookie sheet, medium saucepan, rubber spatula, attractive serving platter, plastic wrap
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Makes: 12-16 small servings
 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

 No matter how sad the news may be, April always brings cherry blossoms, peonies, tulips and bluebells, and Easter is forever a time of renewal and rebirth.
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Newly blooming flowers and nesting birds lift our hearts when April arrives and appear in every form of spring-inspired art throughout the world, as birds and flowers are eternal symbols of spring. The egg, long associated with Easter, is also an archetype for new birth. In the Middle Ages, when serious fasting and abstinence took place during the season of Lent when the faithful embraced acts of penance, even eggs were prohibited from the Lenten diet. When Easter arrived at last, not only did Christians celebrate resurrection and renewal, but they were overjoyed to be able to eat eggs again!
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Our website and blogs are filled with all sorts of delicious egg dishes. One of my favorites is the Artichoke Cheese Frittata, loaded with eggs and cheese and featured in my January 2020 blog. I have been making this easy to prepare classic for years, as it is my guests’ favorite savory at Afternoon Tea and is also a perfect appetizer in any season. For an elegant and special occasion, you might want to make Arpege Farm Eggs, inspired by Alain Passard, chef of the three Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, L’Arpege. We enjoyed this astounding sweet and savory poached egg at Manresa in Los Gatos, California, founded by David Kinch, who was mentored by Passard and has now earned a Michelin star of his own. You can find the recipe, which combines, sea salt, chives, spices, cream and maple syrup with a subtlety that will take your breath away, in my October 2017 blog. Another timeless egg preparation is Tea Smoked Eggs, a Chinese classic, in which boiled eggs are gently cracked and simmered, still in their shells, in a lightly sweetened broth of Lapsang Souchong Tea and soy sauce. When the eggs are peeled, the dark broth which seeped into the cracks, leaves a unique, wispy brown pattern on each egg along with an enchanting smoky tea flavor. My February 2020 blog shows you the easy steps for making Tea Smoked eggs at home. My family loves them!
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Easter also brings the delightful challenge of figuring out what to do with all those beautifully decorated boiled eggs after the morning hunt is over. The answer is Deviled Eggs! Anyone who has looked at our website carefully has noticed that this treat, loved by young and old, appears on many of our Afternoon Tea menus. Who doesn’t love this pretty finger food, sprinkled with festive paprika, or even curry powder? And even a person who has no idea how to cook can peel some boiled eggs, cut them in two and mash up the yolks with salt and pepper, mayonnaise, a little mustard and perhaps a dollop of sweet pickle relish to taste. Some lovely fresh spring herbs, finely chopped and sprinkled on top, can turn this American icon into a work of art.
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In our family, it isn’t a party if there are no Deviled Eggs. My niece and co-author Kathleen carries this philosophy forward by offering some easy adaptations to add extra spring charm to Deviled Eggs in two of her April blogs. Her beautifully photographed April 2021 blog highlights Deviled Eggs garnished with bright green asparagus tips. And her April 2018 blog includes the recipe for Lightened Up Deviled Eggs, a lower-fat version with clever ideas for springtime garnishes such as dill or pickled okra. My mother, Dr. Betty Murdock, also had some quirky and quite delicious ways of introducing boiled eggs into both our everyday and holiday meals. When she made meatloaf, she would put half of the ground beef mixture into the baking dish and place a row of three or four boiled eggs, end to end, down the center, and then cover them with the remaining meat mixture, patting it carefully into place to hide the eggs. The result was a delightful surprise of meatloaf with well-seasoned slices of boiled egg in each serving. Dear Betty was also famous for adding boiled eggs to the gravy on every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter family dinner. I loved to make a little dent in my serving of mashed potatoes, plop a boiled egg in the center, and pour my mother’s home-made gravy over this pretty little edible volcano.
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As you may have guessed, eggs are one of my favorite foods, and although they should be eaten in moderation, they are an excellent source of protein. And like so many of our other favorites, they can be enjoyed in either savory or sweet preparations. Also, like fish, nuts and cheese, eggs harmonize beautifully with one of April’s other precious gifts—spring herbs. When I was a child, eating my grandmother’s excellent Ozark cooking, herbs were never included in daily meals; in fact, salt, butter and pepper, and perhaps a bottle of Worcestershire sauce in the cupboard, were the only flavorings used to enhance the natural tastes of our daily diet, which consisted primarily of potatoes, corn, beans, chicken and eggs. An occasional green onion or tomato pulled out of the back yard garden was about all we ever did to perk up the subtle flavors of these food staples.
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When my family moved to California, a whole new world of flavors entered our lives. California is indeed a paradise of multi-cultural cooking, influenced by the cuisines of Mexico, Italy, Japan, South-East Asia and all the Mediterranean areas, each of which is loaded with fresh herbs. And California cuisine, inspired by these and other cultures, is itself characterized by the inclusion of fresh, local and natural herbs. In fact, many restaurants in California today, have their own herb gardens. The first fresh herbs I remember eating were bright green chopped chives sprinkled over baked potatoes with sour cream. So simple, but so delicious and still popular today.
 
Fresh herbs, which pop up in grocery stores and home gardens every April, include not just the four favorites from the song “Scarborough Fair,” parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, but also mint, cilantro, basil, dill, bay leaf, chervil, coriander, marjoram, oregano, savory and tarragon. As the ever-reliable Fanny Farmer Cookbook points out, “Herbs should never overwhelm a dish. The purpose of any seasoning is to provide an accent that enhances natural flavors.” I have found that cooking with these lovely little edible green plants can add a special note of fresh and cheery zest and indeed enhance the flavor of even to the most ordinary dish. Try stirring a little chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley or basil into the scrambled eggs for breakfast, and voila! Gourmet eggs! Parsley can also be added to melted butter to pour over lightly boiled tiny red potatoes and fresh spring peas or as a bright, edible garnish to soups, stews, any roasted vegetables or spring salads.
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Fresh herbs are not very fussy about whether you add a lot or a little, and many herbs bring delightful color as well as subtle flavor enhancement. Rosemary is one of my favorite herbs, as it blooms in the spring with beautiful, fragrant blue flowers and has an enchanting aroma. I like to add a few whole sprigs of rosemary to oven-roasted vegetables, such as carrots, potatoes, onions and whole heads of garlic, lightly sprinkled with sea salt and coarse pepper and drizzled with olive oil. After roasting the vegetables for about an hour at 350 degrees, the rosemary sprigs will have shriveled up, but the fragrance will remain. Before serving, I simply remove the cooked rosemary sprigs from the roasting pan and replace them with fresh, bright green uncooked sprigs for a beautiful and enticing presentation. Indeed, sprigs of rosemary look beautiful as a garnish on any spring vegetable, meat, egg or cheese dish, gently placed on top of a quiche, a pan of macaroni and cheese, beside a plate of warm, buttery mashed potatoes, or on a platter of spring lamb.
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You can cook with either dried or fresh herbs, although fresh herbs are preferable. Just remember that dried herbs, which have been dehydrated, provide a more condensed flavor and should be used sparingly. At least double the quantity of fresh herbs can be used to enhance the same dish. A well-known dried herb combination used in French cuisine is Herbes de Provence, a mixture of rosemary, marjoram, thyme, savory and sage. Usually no more than one half teaspoon to one teaspoon of dried Herbes de Provence is needed to flavor a vegetable soup, roasted chicken or fish dish. A few sprigs of the fresh versions of these herbs can be tied together with kitchen twine in a small piece of cheesecloth to form a bouquet garni, a little bundle of herbs which can be tossed into the cooking pot or casserole dish to flavor sauces, soups, stocks and broths.
 
Bay leaves are also often included in bouquet garni, or simply added to the roasting pan when cooking meat dishes, especially pot roast. Bay leaves impart a fragrant and pungent flavor, but they should be removed before serving the meat to your guests. Basil is another beautiful herb, which is easy to grow in a home garden and is an essential element in Thai and Italian recipes. Basil pairs perfectly with tomatoes and is one of the key ingredients in the world famous Italian Caprese Salad, a simple combination of slices of fresh mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, chopped fresh basil, salt and drizzles of olive oil. And what would lunch at a Vietnamese Pho restaurant be without fresh basil? With every serving of this delicious noodle soup, enhanced with thin slices of beef or other ingredients of the diner’s choice, a plate of fresh basil, still on the stem, beans sprouts, sliced jalapenos and fresh lime wedges is brought to the table so each guest can tear off some basil leaves and add them, along with the other offered fresh ingredients, right into their bowl of Pho. All of us can learn, through experimentation, to make our home cooking even more delicious by adding fresh herbs. Nothing bad will happen if you use too many or not enough, and many herbs are happy to be combined with other herbs that flourish in the spring.
 
I hope you will enjoy including eggs and herbs in your Passover, Easter and other spring family celebrations. And let’s not forget that most of our favorite cakes, custards and desserts include eggs. This year, for our Easter family meal, I plan to bake Ellen’s Fabulous Coconut Cake, featured on our website in the American Southern Tea menu in the “A World of Tea Parties” section of “The Tea Book.” I have baked this beautiful cake, shared by Kathleen’s dear friend Ellen, (see Kathleen’s March 2017 blog) many times, and it always makes any special occasion even more special.
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This beautiful white cake is loaded with coconut, coconut extract and five extra-large eggs. If you have a cake pedestal, use it, and as this regal creation deserves to be elevated and celebrated. It is elegant in every season, including Christmas, but since I will be serving it this year at Easter, I plan to surround it with pretty pastel chocolate covered almonds. Fresh roses or other spring flowers circling or topping the cake would also be nice, perhaps even a few sprigs of rosemary in bloom.
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For the Cake:​

•  2 cups sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 5 large or extra-large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
• 1 cup very lightly toasted sweetened angel-flake coconut
• 1 ½ teaspoons coconut extract
• Cooking spray with flour for the pan

 

Special equipment: 12-cup Bundt pan, large mixing bowl, foil-lined cookie sheet, two small bowls, heat-proof spatula, wire cooling rack, hand-held electric mixer, medium sized mixing bowl, flour sifter or sieve, large (1 quart) glass measuring cup, wooden skewer, attractive serving platter or cake pedestal
 
Makes: 12-16 generous servings
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March has arrived with fresh green leaves, blossoms, and birds chirping everywhere. Spring is here! It’s time to think about all those wonderful tea parties we hope to celebrate in this joyful season. And it’s always time to learn more about tea. Six years have gone by since Kathleen and I completed Sharing Tea: The Road Back to Civilization and created the website, myteaplanner.com, to showcase our book and our blogs, along with a wide range of additional tea-related information. Since then, tea culture world-wide has experienced an exciting renaissance. Tea production has increased world-wide, as has tea consumption. Economic studies estimate that the growth of the international tea market is expected at an annual rate of 5.5% from 2019 to 2025, and by that date tea is projected to become an annual 18.42-billion-dollar industry. China is the world leader in both tea production and consumption with India close behind.

The expansion of tea production and tea consumption has brought a wider range of teas that are readily available along with a larger selection of equipment and tea kettles for brewing tea. The internet has become a treasure trove for finding every imaginable variety of tea or tea blend along with elegant teapots, cups and tea accoutrements. In addition, Tea Associations in the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom provide their members with information about the latest Tea Trends, offer courses and Tea Talks and keep up with governmental regulations of tea production and marketing. World Tea Media, www.worldteaexpo.com is an international tea trade show and conference with tea-focused seminars, business education, tea tastings, and of course networking and making friends with other tea lovers.

 
While these associations cater primarily to the trade, contemporary tea culture for ordinary tea lovers offers new and exciting adventures. In some ways, tea has taken on a role similar to wine among those who prefer the hot, non-alcoholic beverage. For example, today it is possible to be trained and certified as a “Tea Sommelier” and work in a restaurant or tea shop to recommend appropriate pairings of tea with various foods such as cheese or chocolate. And many tea shops now offer tea tastings modeled after the wine tastings hosted at wineries and restaurants. This allows guests to sample a variety of different teas and to learn more about the wide choice of tea blends and herbal tisanes that are now available.
 

The American magazine, Tea Time, is a great source for keeping up with all of these trends. This beautifully photographed magazine offers at least three Afternoon Tea menus in every issue, now including a “Tea Sommelier” section for every menu suggesting appropriate tea selections for each of the courses, scone, savory and sweet. Every issue also includes a “Tea Events Calendar,” highlighting special Afternoon Tea gatherings and tea-related celebrations and events in various locations throughout the United States. And the “Necessary Things” section of every issue features the latest new tea-related products such as linens, china, jams and preserves and gift sets including the newest tea blends and herbal teas.
 

And for those of you who, like me, are addicted to life-long learning about tea, there are plenty of books all about tea, cultural tea traditions and tea parties. I received the book Modern Tea: A Fresh Look at an Ancient Beverage by Lisa Boalt Richardson as a Christmas gift. I read it from cover to cover with delight and fascination. The author, who refers to herself as a “tea geek,” is especially interested in tea cultivation, harvesting, production and marketing. She has visited tea-growing fields throughout the world and has personally participated in hand-harvesting and processing tea leaves. She goes into extensive detail about the various types of green, oolong and black tea and how they are handled during production. This section of the book certainly answers the old question: Does green tea come from green leaves and black tea come from black leaves? The answer is, all tea comes from the same plant, Camellia sinensis, but black tea, which is far more popular throughout the world outside China and Japan, is made from leaves that have gone through an oxidation process, turning the leaves black.
 

Richardson’s book also includes chapters on buying, storing and brewing tea as well as pairing tea with various foods, cooking with tea and even making cocktails that contain tea. Her chapter on “Tea Ceremonies and Rituals” provides accurate information on the Chinese, Japanese, English, Moroccan, French and Russian tea rituals, but I would have found this section more satisfying if she had relied on actual tea masters from these various cultures rather than on Americans who have studied these subjects for many years. I prefer to go to the original sources whenever possible.
 
Modern Tea also includes information about the health aspects of tea and global issues such as Fair Trade and Ethical Tea Partnerships. And the “Resources” section at the end is a delightful list of tea shops and “reputable online resources” for buying tea and tea equipment. I can certainly recommend one of these resources, Le Palais des Thes, a French company that offers a splendid assortment of teas from all over the world to order on-line as well as multiple retail locations throughout Europe, Japan, Israel and the United States. Another wonderful Christmas gift I received recently was the fabulous Le Palais des Thes Advent Calendar that provided me with a different cup of outstanding tea every night leading up to Christmas.
 
Overall, I enjoyed reading Lisa Boalt Richardson’s Modern Tea. As a writer she has a friendly, self-deprecating voice and expresses a deep knowledge and genuine love of tea in all its myriad aspects. For used book lovers who prefer to focus more on the menu planning, food preparation and ambience of Afternoon Tea, my favorite is Teatime Celebrations by Patricia Gentry, a California-based college cooking instructor and member of the Southern California Culinary Guild and the International Association of Cooking Professionals. Gentry also has experience managing a tea-room, and the subtitle of her book, “Eighteen Menus for High Tea and Teatime Meals,” tells you everything you need to know about this wonderful, competently written treasure trove of tea menus and recipes. Kathleen and I both rely on Gentry for the accuracy and reliability of her recipes. In fact, the recipe for Cranberry Curd in my November, 2019 blog was inspired by Patricia Gentry’s recipe for Cranberry Curd Tarts.
 

If you are up for more reading—all about tea, Kathleen and I invite you to take another look at “The Tea Book” section of this website. As women who love to host and attend Afternoon Tea gatherings, our intention was to cover every aspect of tea and the tea party experience. “The Tea Book” explores the history of tea in ancient China and the philosophic and aesthetic foundations of sharing tea in the Chinese and Japanese traditions. Our chapter on “The Philosophy of Tea” brings this historic foundation into contemporary life based on the tea traditions developed in England and other European countries centuries ago after the export of tea from Asia spread throughout the western world. For us, Afternoon Tea provides an opportunity for ethical and elevated interactions with other people of goodwill. Thus, “the Philosophy of Tea,” which encourages harmony, humility, respect and creativity brings these age-old values into ordinary life as we drink tea with friends as our best selves.
 
Our chapters on “Guidelines for the Host or Hostess” and “Guidelines for Guests” offer practical advice on the “etiquette” of tea and suggest ways to create beautiful, comfortable and welcoming settings in which to gather with friends. Other chapters in “The Tea Book” provide you with a detailed checklist for planning a tea party, a survey of tea utensils and equipment and a chapter including recipes for the most basic savories, scones, sweets and condiments that you will need to master the art of offering Afternoon Tea. “The Tea Book” also includes detailed menus and recipes for each of the four seasons, meticulously created by Kathleen based on her years of experience as a caterer, cooking teacher, wedding cake baker, chef and manager of a Bed and Breakfast Inn. Her gifts as a painter, photographer and flower arranger also inspire her vision for menus and table settings. Since spring has arrived and you may be thinking of inviting a few friends over for a small but elegant gathering, I highly recommend the Spring Tea, loaded with luscious savories and sweets that showcase the freshest spring vegetables, herbs and fruits. Our “Calendar of Tea Parties” takes you through the year and provides innovative menus and recipes for all the special holidays including of course a splendid Afternoon Tea menu for St. Patrick’s Day, which we will celebrate this month.
 

As this haiku, written in Hong Kong, suggests, my favorite section of “The Tea Book” is “A World of Tea Parties,” a trip around the globe with menus and recipes from places where my husband and I have traveled and experienced Afternoon Tea based on local customs and traditions. We start in China where tea originated and move on to Portugal, the first European country to experience tea. Then we visit several other tea-loving countries, including England, France, Italy and Russia, before returning to the USA, where we feature regional menus from California and the American South.
 
Our “Tea Book” also anticipates special occasions, such as a home-made Wedding Reception Tea, a Vegan Tea or a Tea for Children, several of which include grocery lists and planning guides to help you attend to every detail of these memorable gatherings. We also provide our readers with a Resources section containing a detailed Bibliography, a Menu and Recipe Index, a list of recommended Commercial Food Products and a Glossary of Culinary Terms. Kathleen and I have tried to anticipate everything our readers need to know to create beautiful and unique tea parties in their own homes or gardens with their own friends and loved ones. We also remain open to new possibilities and options in the ever-changing and magical world of Afternoon Tea.
 

​For your St. Patrick’s Day celebration this year, whether it be a family dinner or Afternoon Tea, I offer an elegant and classic cake from Patricia Gentry’s Teatime Celebrations. I have slightly adapted Patricia’s Orange-Glazed Oatmeal Cake to emphasize the Irish connection by suggesting an Irish Whiskey or Bailey’s Irish Cream glaze. This moist and hearty oatmeal cake can also be enjoyed for breakfast or even, as Patricia suggests, on camping or fishing trips, as it keeps and travels well. It is also a “cake for all seasons,” as the basic batter can be adapted for other seasonal holidays and celebrations. I include my suggestions for seasonal adaptations at the end of the recipe. For St. Patrick’s Day, serve this luscious cake with Irish Breakfast Tea.
 
For the Cake Batter:

For the Soaking Glaze:

• ½ cup water
  
• 4 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 2-4 tablespoons Irish Whiskey, Bailey’s Irish Cream or Orange Liqueur such as Cointreau
•             (If you prefer to avoid alcohol, use 4 tablespoons orange juice.)

 

For Garnish:

• 1 cup freshly whipped heavy cream lightly sweetened with 2 tablespoons powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla
  
• Fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced in two

 
Alternate Garnish:

• Freshly hulled whole strawberries
  
• Small bowl of sour cream
• Small flat bowl of brown sugar

 

Special equipment: extra-large mixing bowl, 2 medium sized mixing bowls, flour sifter or sieve, hand-held electric mixer, rubber spatula, 12-cup Bundt pan, decorative serving platter or cake pedestal, small attractive bowl for whipped cream, wire rack, medium saucepan or microwave-safe 1-quart glass measuring cup, wooden skewer
 
Serves: 12-16
 
Preheat oven to 350° F
 

1. Preheat the oven and spray the Bundt pan with cooking spray with flour. Place the oatmeal in a medium bowl and pour the 2 ½ cups boiling water over. Set aside.
2. In an extra-large bowl with a hand-held electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time and beat well after each addition. In a medium sized bowl, sift together the flour, salt and baking soda.
3. Add the flour mixture, oatmeal and vanilla to the creamed butter mixture and mix thoroughly, but do not overmix.
4. Turn the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 70 minutes. (Start checking at 60 minutes, as oven temperatures and Bundt pans vary.) Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes.
5. While the cake cools, combine the sugar and water for the glaze in a medium saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar (or microwave the sugar and water in a glass measuring cup until boiling, remove and stir to dissolve all the sugar.) Add the whiskey, liqueur or orange juice for flavoring and stir to blend. Use 2-4 tablespoons of the flavoring liquid depending on how strong a flavor you prefer.
6. Invert the cake onto a decorative platter or cake pedestal. Poke holes in the cake with a wooden skewer and slowly pour the soaking glaze over the cake. The glaze will disappear and become invisible. To serve, place fresh strawberry halves around the outside of the cake on the platter and offer freshly whipped cream on the side.
7. For an alternate garnish which children love, place whole hulled strawberries in an attractive bowl near the cake platter with bowls of sour cream and brown sugar nearby. Let the guests dip their strawberries by hand into the sour cream, then into the brown sugar and eat the dipped strawberries along with the cake.

 
Seasonal Variations for Brown Sugar Oatmeal Cake:
 

The recipe above is a spring presentation.
 
Summer: Add kirsch or other cherry flavored brandy or cherry juice to the glaze. Serve with Fresh Cherry Sauce and Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia Ice Cream or any other summer berries such as raspberries or blueberries and vanilla ice cream. Serve with iced Rooibos tea or hot Japanese green tea.
 
Autumn: Flavor the glaze with Calvados or apple juice. Serve with Home-Made Apple Butter (recipe in Rose’s November 2020 blog) and Dulce de Leche ice cream. Serve with a strong black tea such as Keemun or warm apple cider.
 
Winter: Flavor the glaze with rum, an orange liqueur such as Cointreau or Triple Sec, or orange juice. Add to the dry ingredients for the cake: 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1 ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg and grated zest of 1 orange. Add to the batter, 1 cup raisins, dried cranberries or chopped candied orange peel or a combination of all three. Serve with hard sauce and cranberry curd or rum raisin ice cream and Earl Grey Tea.
 

February is the shortest month of the year and one of the most interesting. In some places, notably California, it is in February that the first tentative signs of spring appear.
 

​In other places, February is still a full-on cold and snowy winter month.
 

​No matter what kind of climate you are in, Valentine’s Day arrives every year on February 14 to warm our hearts and to remind us that we all love to be loved. Here is a Valentine Tanka (a 31-syllable 5-line Japanese style poem) I wrote last year as a Valentine’s Day gift.
 

 
There are many ways to express our affection on Valentine’s Day. Each of us has some special gift or talent, and right where we are is the best place to look to convey how much we care. Those of you who can draw, paint, take beautiful photographs or write in elegant calligraphy have everything you need to create a lovely valentine. And if you have a good visual and tactile sense but cannot find the words to share your feelings, the great poets of the world are always there for us when we need them, and they would not care in the least if we borrowed a few of their heart-felt words.
​
Here are some little gems from the Sonnets of William Shakespeare:
 

 
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate.” From Sonnet 18
 
“…I think on thee, and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From the sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.” From Sonnet 30
 
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,” From Sonnet 116
 

My favorite Romantic poet is John Keats, a sweet and kind young man who wrote all of his poetry by the age of twenty-four and died the following year. Here are the beginning lines of his lengthy romantic poem, “Endymion.” Wouldn’t these words be charming in a Valentine?
 

 
Then there is Elizabeth Barrett, the most famous British poet of the Victorian Era, who eloped with the poet Robert Browning at the age of forty, became Elizabeth Barrett Browning and lived happily ever after in Florence with her true love. The following quotations come from “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” which she wrote to express her undying love for Robert.
 

 
“Say thou dost love me, love me—toll
The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence with thy soul.” From Sonnet 21
 
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, …
… and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.” From Sonnet 43

Those of you who can sew, knit, crochet or are gifted crafters do not need words at all to express your love for your Valentine. And of course, the cooks among us can always prepare a special meal for the one we love. For tea lovers there is no more precious Valentine than an invitation to Afternoon Tea. I invite you to view the visually delightful chapter on this website, “A Valentine’s Day Tea” in the February calendar section. In this menu, my co-author, Kathleen has created a glorious assembly of savories and sweets, featuring heart shapes and red, pink and creamy pastel colors for both the food and the decorations. Some of my favorites from “A Valentine’s Day Tea” include the bright pink Cherry Coconut Pom Pons, Chocolate Heart Sandwich Cookies with Sour Cherry Filling, Battenberg Cake in a stunning Checkerboard design, and the always beautiful Strawberry Charlotte, filled with vibrant red berries.
 

This year I am also thinking of almonds, which produce elegant white blossoms in February and delicious, healthful and versatile nuts from August through October. Like the lovely Lemon, which I extoled in my May, 2021 blog, Almonds are the product of a Mediterranean climate and are delicious in both savory and sweet preparations. Our website features more than ten recipes for dishes made with almonds, from Almond Scones to Almond Madeleines, to Chicken Almond Salad in Lettuce Cups to one of my husband Wayne’s favorite desserts, Spanish Almond Cake. Any of our Almond-based recipes would be welcome additions to your Valentine’s Day Tea.
 

​An ancient food of pre-historic origin, Almonds first grew in Iran and gradually spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa and on to Spain and Portugal. Today, California, which also enjoys a Mediterranean climate, is by far the primary producer of almonds, followed by Spain, Iran, Turkey, Morocco and Italy. Almonds are packed with nutrition, filled with vitamins, minerals and protein. In fact, the United States Department of Agriculture recommends that regular consumption of almonds can reduce the risk of heart disease. I eat almonds every day because they are good for my health and because they are one of my all-time favorite foods. No wonder my blogs are filled with almond recipes.
 
My husband and I begin every day by eating Home-Made Almond Granola, which I bake myself. One batch lasts us about three weeks, and it is always in our cupboard. You can find the recipe in my June 2020 blog. A bag of this wonderful breakfast cereal/snack, filled with oats, almonds, cranberries and almond butter, tied with a red ribbon, would make a delightful Valentine gift for your sweetheart. A Chocolate Almond Torte, found in my April 2019 blog, would also be splendid for Valentine’s Day. And in my July, 2018 blog on Venice, I share one of my favorite Italian desserts, Fregolotta, also known as Italian Crumb Cake, filled with ground almonds and topped with whole almonds. And if you are too busy to bake, remember that almonds are fabulous treats as both sweet and savory snacks. There is nothing like Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds, or Sesame Honey Almonds, both easy to find at good old Trader Joe’s. And we have a bag of savory Sriracha Hot Chili Almonds in our pantry right now.

I also have a good supply of whole almonds in my freezer, and I am still thinking about Spanish Almond Cake. I sneaked our recipe for Pastel de Almendras, or Spanish Almond Cake, into our Portuguese Tea Menu in the World of Tea Parties section of this website. Wayne and I have traveled to neighboring Spain and Portugal and love the cuisine of both countries. But he fell in love with the Spanish Almond Cake which we bought at a bakery in Madrid shortly after it came out of the oven. The sales lady sprinkled this sublime confection lightly with powdered sugar, just before placing it into our eager hands. After our return home, I was able to find the recipe and have made it for special occasions, including Valentine’s Day, numerous times since. I am happy to share the recipe with you here.
 

This elegant pound cake filled with ground toasted almonds is very popular in Spain, Portugal’s now friendly next-door neighbor. This cake needs no icing or decoration, as it has a delicate dignity all its own. Serve it on a cake pedestal sprinkled all over with powdered sugar. It is best the day it is baked, but it is also wonderful for breakfast the next morning.

 

• 1 ½ cups ground toasted almonds (2 cups of whole almonds before grinding)
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• ¼ teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 large eggs, separated
• 1 cup flour
• powdered sugar for sifting over the cake

 

Preheat oven to 350° F
 
Special equipment: Cooking spray, 10” spring form pan, food processor, 2 large mixing bowls, small bowl, electric mixer, parchment paper, large baking sheet, aluminum foil, wire rack, rubber spatula, flour sifter or sieve, thin sharp knife.
 
Makes: One 10” cake, approximately 12 servings

​

1. Bring butter and eggs to room temperature. Separate the eggs, placing the yolks in a small bowl and the whites in a large mixing bowl. Set aside. If you are using whole almonds, toast them at 350 on a large foil covered baking sheet, for 10 minutes, stirring several times to ensure even browning. Remove the almonds from the oven and let them cool on a wire rack. Spray a 10” spring form pan with cooking spray. Cut a 10” circle of parchment, fit it into the bottom of the pan, and spray again.

 

1. Pulse the cooled almonds in a food processor until finely ground. Do not pulse until the almonds turn into nut butter. Set aside. Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer in another large mixing bowl until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

 

1. Add the egg yolks, almond extract and vanilla and beat briefly to combine. Measure 1 ½ cups of ground almonds from the food processor and add to the batter, mixing just to combine.

 

1. Clean the beaters and beat the egg whites until light and fluffy and stiff peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the butter mixture with a rubber spatula, using an over and under motion until the egg whites disappear. Sift the flour over the batter little by little and gently fold in the flour until incorporated.

 

1. Scape the batter gently into the prepared pan and smooth the top with the rubber spatula. Bake for approximately 40 minutes or until a cake tester or thin sharp knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. To serve, transfer the cake to a cake pedestal and carefully sift powdered sugar all over the cake. The cake can be served warm or at room temperature.

 

Another new year and another new virus! “Good grief!” as Charley Brown used to say. Nevertheless, we will power on and greet 2022 with grateful and hopeful hearts. It is still winter, which is a lovely time of year, the full moon over the ocean is glorious, and the humpback whales have arrived in Hawaiian waters after their long migration south from the icy waters of Alaska. Let’s enjoy the quiet serenity of the post-holiday season and nurture ourselves with the pleasures of solitude, healthy food and the eternal joy of Afternoon Tea.
​

Now is the time to enjoy Tea for One, those holy moments in the late afternoon, when, utterly alone, we create an environment of stillness and gentle beauty for reflection and renewal as we prepare for the evening and the year ahead.
​

​To help you reclaim the aesthetics of serenity, I invite you to review the shortest chapter in this website, “Tea for One,” in the Afternoon Tea for Special Occasions section of The Tea Book. This brief chapter reminds us that The Philosophy of Tea applies even if we are sitting alone drinking a cup of tea. This brief ceremony is, in itself, a special occasion and deserves the careful attention to detail and sensitivity to the season that we would apply to a larger gathering of several friends. Remember, you are the guest of honor at this event, and as the host as well, you will need to turn your attention to selecting an appropriate location, adding flowers or other decorations to create a pleasant environment, setting an attractive table and choosing an appropriate beverage and light savory and sweet snacks to complete the experience.
​

​​Today, I am thinking of enjoying a cup of Gokujo Hojicha from the Ippodo Tea Company of Kyoto, a gift from our friend Yuki Handa, who lives in Tokyo. This pure green Japanese tea will be perfect in my old brown floral teapot given to me and my husband years ago by his sister, Kathy. I will be sitting at my round, glass-topped table, gazing out at sea.
​

​A slight chill is in the air on the normally warm Oahu coast, and I am reminded of the exquisite winter poems of the greatest haiku writer of all time—Matsuo Basho. I will reflect with gratitude on all the things I learned from him, and smile at the thought that I consider him a dear friend although he was born exactly three hundred years before I was, in another country and spoke and wrote in a completely different language.
​

​I will decide to merge cultures by placing my teapot and cup on an old white linen place mat from a set my parents gave me after a trip to Ireland. And before my first sip of hot, pleasantly bitter tea, I will think about Basho’s concept of sabi, described by his translator and my professor, Dr. Ueda. “…one attains spiritual serenity by immersing oneself in the ego-less, impersonal life of nature.” This idea of sabi has also been described as a kind of delicious, impersonal loneliness or solitude, so beautifully manifested in Basho’s wild duck poem.
 
After all the fabulous foods I have enjoyed at the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year celebrations, I will choose something lighter for my Tea for One, party, although two of us or perhaps three are here, as I have invited Matsuo Basho and Professor Ueda to join me. I am thinking of a delightful cracker or cookie combination that I have recently discovered, Coastal Crisps. This thin, crispy snack contains both sweet and savory elements and is packed with nutrition. Although these amazing crackers are available commercially as Lesley Stowe Raincoast Crisps, I have made them myself and renamed them Coastal Crisps. They contain a marvelous combination of dried fruits, seeds and nuts bound together by a light batter of buttermilk and honey, creating a little meal that is both simple and complex, plain and fancy, humble and elegant. I think Basho will love them!
 

My friend and neighbor, Pearl Yee, gave me the recipe for these marvelously tasty and wholesome crackers. Apparently, her friends shared this recipe with her, and now all her friends are baking and sharing them. I admit that Coastal Crisps are addictive. I have shared two or three batches already with my niece and co-author Kathleen, for Thanksgiving, Christmas and her December birthday, and she loves them more than the fabulous Christmas cookies for which she is justly famous. They are also easy to make and store in the freezer to be baked on short notice for impromptu wine (or tea) and cheese gatherings. Coastal Crisps are made like Biscotti, baked twice, first in loaf pans and frozen, and secondly, sliced and baked on cookie sheets, and turned over in the middle of the baking time to insure crispness.
 
The procedure for making Coastal Crisps is fairly simple, and the baker has a lot of leeway in selecting the various types and even amounts of dried fruit, seeds and nuts to include. I have found only two challenges in producing these perfect little crackers. First, the frozen loaves must be sliced very thin, which can be tricky. You must give the loaf a few minutes out of the freezer to soften just a bit, but not too much, so you can make perfect slices. This is my husband Wayne’s job. He uses his electric meat slicer, but sometimes the motor starts to overheat as he presses the knife through the hard loaf. You can certainly just use a sharp serrated knife if you prefer. Secondly, here in Hawaii, the perpetual humidity of the air causes the Coastal Crisps to get soggy within a day or two, even if they are nice and crunchy when they come out of the oven. We have simply resorted to popping them into the oven for a third time to warm and re-crisp them shortly before serving time. Once, baked and cooled, they should be stored in air-tight metal containers.

Dry Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ cup brown sugar

Seeds: approximately 3 cups total. Suggested amounts and varieties

•  1 cup pumpkin seeds
•  ½ cup sesame seeds
•  ½ cup flax seeds
  
•  1 cup roasted unsalted sunflower seeds

Nuts: approximately 2 cups total. Suggested amounts and varieties

•  1 cup whole almonds
•  ½ cup pistachios
•  ½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

 Dried Fruits: approximately 3 1/2 cups: Suggested amounts and varieties

•   ½ cup dried cranberries
•   ½ cup raisins
•  ½ cup dried cherries or currants
•  2 cups whole dried, figs, stems removed (to be added to the dough in the loaf pans just   before baking)

Wet Ingredients:

• 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk (If you don’t have buttermilk, just add 2 tablespoons of vinegar to 2 cups of whole milk.)
• ¼ cup honey
• Soft butter or cooking spray for the loaf pans

Special equipment: 2-cup glass measuring cup, extra large mixing bowl, whisk, spatula, 3 loaf pans, 8” x 4” each, parchment covered cookie sheet, wire cooling rack, plastic wrap, cutting board, sharp serrated knife or electric carving knife, offset spatula, air-tight containers for storing, preferably metal.
Makes: approximately 8 dozen Coastal Crisps
Preheat oven to 350° F

Christmas
 
On Christmas morning,
She and the dog were up before dawn.
He ran in darkness so dense
The pines, the frozen oaks and the black air
Were all one.
Only the stars, like tinsel,
Glittered in the clear, icy sky.
She heard the dog’s heavy breath,
Heard his big paws crunch
Through the frost-brittle leaves.
Then, as her gaze tried to penetrate
The deep pre-morning,
Like reading a book printed on black paper,
Suddenly she saw his eyes--
Two golden circles radiating in the lightless world--
Then the stars seemed to fall like silver rain,
And she thought of the Christ Child’s crown of light,
Remembered his mother’s corona,
Warming the winter with a golden glow.
 

​ 
The week before Christmas, those last few days of Advent, can be the busiest of the whole year. And sadly for many of us, these days are often filled with hurry and stress, with last-minute shopping, gift wrapping and cooking along with all our other daily responsibilities. What a blessing it would be to slow down and treasure all the aromas, sounds, flavors and colors of Christmas that still animate all our childhood memories.
 

 
This year we are planning a quiet Christmas Eve with a simple meal that will retain the familiar tastes, smells and cozy moments of Christmas without the last-minute stress. I will still use my lace tablecloth, my best china, silver and crystal. The lights on our tree will glitter in the darkness, and the gifts will be wrapped with golden ribbons. Candles will light my nativity scene, and I will personally eat the last little chocolate hidden in my Advent calendar. But the traditional Christmas meal that I will be sharing with my husband and close friends will all be prepared in advance, ready to be warmed up and presented on that special night.
 

​ 
As our guests arrive, the scent of spiced apple cider warming on the stove will greet them, and the finest cheeses we can find on Oahu will be laid out on my best green marble platter, along with Panforte, baked weeks in advance. Christmas carols will be playing, and the table will glow with soft candlelight. Wreath-shaped Spritz Christmas Butter Cookies, decorated with sparkling sprinkles of red and green sugar, will share the two-tiered server with Toasted Oat Shortbread, waiting on the buffet with Gosby House Gingerbread and Lemon Curd, sending the aroma of warm ginger throughout the house. It is with true Christmas joy that I share this year’s international Christmas Eve menu with you. All of the items come from old recipes I have saved over the years and made many times during the Christmas Season for my loved ones.
 

​Cheese Platter with Panforte, Dried Apricots and Wheatmeal Crackers
 
Warm Spiced Cider
 
Old Fashioned Roast Pork with Onion Sauce
 
Danish Red Christmas Cabbage
 
Tomorrow’s Potatoes
 
Creamed Peas
 
Gosby House Gingerbread with Lemon Curd
 
Spritz Christmas Butter Cookie Wreaths
 
Toasted Oat Shortbread
 
Coffee and Hot Chocolate
 
 

 
For the cheese platter, I recommend a variety of hard and soft cheeses with contrasting mild and intense flavors. A good selection might include Brie, Jarlsberg, Leyden with Cumin, Irish Cheddar and a strong, soft French cheese such as Fourme D’Ambert. Another favorite is Manchego, a flavorful Spanish hard cheese that is often served with quince paste, (membrillo in Spanish.) This delightful pairing would make a festive addition to your Christmas Eve cheese platter. I like Carr’s Wheatmeal Crackers, sold in good grocery stores, to serve with cheese.
If you are not familiar with Panforte, you can read all about it and find the recipe in my December 2020 blog on this website. Panforte is a dense cake of ancient Mediterranean origin comprised of dried fruits, nuts and honey. It is wonderful with cheese, but just as good as a dessert. Panforte can be made well in advance and stored in the refrigerator or a cool cupboard.
 
You can also find the recipes for the desserts in this Christmas Eve menu on this website. Gosby House Gingerbread is included in our “A California Tea” menu, and the recipe for Lemon Curd is available in our “Tea Menu Basics” chapter. Spritz Butter Wreaths, popular throughout Scandinavia and Germany, have always been my family’s favorite Christmas cookies. Look for them in our “A Christmas Tea” in the December section of “A Calendar of Tea Parties.” Toasted Oat Shortbread is the newest version of my co-author Kathleen’s classic shortbread. She calls them Better Oat Bars and shows you how to make them in her June 2021 blog right here on this website. I didn’t think traditional Scottish Shortbread cookies could get any better, but these, which include toasted oats and almonds, are truly divine. The Cookies, Gingerbread, and even the Lemon Curd can all be made a few days or weeks before Christmas and frozen.
 
I am happy to provide the recipes for the main dishes of this old-fashioned Christmas dinner. Feel free to add even more festive flair, color and aroma to this menu by offering some traditional home-made relishes, such as Cranberry Ginger Sauce (my November 2016 blog) to accompany the Pork and perhaps Home-Made Apple Butter (my November 2020 blog) to be served with the Gingerbread along with the Lemon Curd. Both of these very flavorful condiments can be made a few days early, like the Pork, Cabbage and Potatoes, and kept in the refrigerator in glass jars. If small children are present at this traditional Christmas Eve meal, they might like the Apple Butter, spooned over vanilla ice cream along with their Christmas Cookies. And don’t forget to leave a few Spritz and Toasted Oat Shortbread Cookies out for Santa along with a warm mug of Spiced Cider. He will have a big night ahead of him! And a very Merry Christmas to you and all your family and loved ones!
 

 
This tender, juicy and aromatic Pork Roast gets its perfection through a fragrant spice rub of fresh herbs, seeds and spices, slow roasting at low temperature, the addition of onions and apple cider to form its own sauce, and a night in the refrigerator to mellow all the flavors. Start making this roast, which will be the star of your menu, the day before Christmas Eve. An hour before dinner, you will thinly slice the cold meat and reheat it in its simmering sauce as you prepare the Onion Sauce.
 
As you will see, there are many steps and several hours in the two-day process of making this Pork Roast, but all the steps are easy to follow, and may produce the best Pork Roast you have ever eaten. The entire hearty menu is designed to enjoy leisurely with loved ones on a cold winter night. There is a harmony of colors, flavors and textures that echoes throughout the meal. The taste of sharp cheddar in the Tomorrow’s Potatoes will hearken back to the cheese tray, and the Panforte served with the cheeses will foretell the winter fruit notes in the pork and the cabbage, both linked with the subtle inclusion of red apples, connected again with the hot spiced cider served to the guests on their arrival and echoing once more in the spicy gingerbread as your meal comes to an end on this Christmas Eve.
 

• 1 boneless pork shoulder roast (Boston butt,) about 6 pounds
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 teaspoons freshly cracked black pepper
• ½ teaspoons Kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds, roughly chopped
• 2 large red onions, cut into 1-inch wedges
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 cup apple cider
• ¼ cup apple jelly
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar

 

​ 
Makes: 8 servings
 
Special equipment: heavy deep-sided (3-inch) roasting pan, sharp knife for trimming the meat, kitchen string, meat skewer, large baking dish, sharp carving knife or electric meat carving knife, medium saucepan, medium sized bowl, small bowl, 2-cup liquid measuring cup, plastic wrap, aluminum foil.
 
Preheat oven to 300° F

This festive, colorful and flavorful pickled cabbage recipe is perfect for a cozy winter meal, especially Christmas Eve. Popular throughout Scandinavia, Germany and Iceland, this hearty dish pairs harmoniously with the Roast Pork on our menu but is also delicious with ham, smoked sausages or game. And this dish is the holiday cook’s best friend, as you can make it up to two weeks in advance and keep it stored in clean jars in the refrigerator.
 

 Makes: 6-8 servings
 
Special equipment: Large Dutch oven or stock pot, paring knife, hand-held grater or food processor with shredding attachment, wooden spoon, large glass jars or bowls for storage
​

​I found this recipe for luscious savory potatoes years ago in Sunset magazine and have been making it every year since for one or another of the big fall and winter holidays. It has the same warm, fluffy comfort food quality of mashed potatoes but does not have to be made at the last minute. The flavor is also enhanced with sharp cheddar cheese, and the entire dish can be prepared a day early, hence the name, Tomorrow’s Potatoes, placed in a casserole dish and warmed up just before Christmas Eve dinner.
 

• 2 pounds russet potatoes (4-6 medium to large potatoes)
• 1 ½ cups (6 ounces) shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• 6 green onions, trimmed and thinly sliced
• 1 ½ cups sour cream
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• Paprika (for and extra zip of flavor, use Spanish smoked paprika)
• Butter for the casserole dish

 

​Makes: 5-6 servings
 
Special equipment: 3-4-quart saucepan or Dutch oven with lid, cheese grater, large mixing bowl, rubber spatula, 2-quart casserole dish
 

 
As it turned out, we were able to do even more. With the help of my co-author, Kathleen, who is Margaret’s daughter, along with the entire family and a team of Kathleen’s life-long friends, we created a beautiful outdoor memorial service for my sister followed by a festive reception in the yard of her family home in Watsonville, California. How did we manage this complex event for about fifty people? We did what is required for every successful large-group activity. We planned ahead and followed the simple guidelines listed below. All along our primary focus was on giving dear Margaret the most beautiful and heartfelt memorial service and the most joyful celebration of her life that we had the energy and imagination to produce.

​Visualize the Location and Scope of the Event and Start Planning Early
​

​We decided to hold the memorial service in September when the weather was turning cool, all of us had been vaccinated and the California rainy season had not yet started. We chose Watsonville’s Pioneer Cemetery, an historic graveyard just a short walk down a steep hill from the Pedulla home as the site for the service and the interment of ashes. This decision inspired Kathleen to visualize a traditional family procession from home to the cemetery, and we all imagined the sound of bagpipes. The planning process had begun.
 

Create Detailed Lists
​

​The memorial event was two separate but interconnected activities: the service in the cemetery and the reception at the nearby family home. Each required its own timeline and set of lists. The service required the design, printing and mailing of invitations, a program for the ceremony, meetings with the cemetery staff and hiring a bagpiper. A detailed food and beverage list was necessary for the reception, including inventories of seating arrangements, linens, dishes, silverware, and a meticulously planned menu. Kathleen is the queen of lists, and she masterminded most of the details just listed while I planned the ceremony itself. Needless to say, she did far more work on this project than anyone else and deserves all the credit.
 
Kathleen’s “Food and Beverage Layout Plan” will give you some insight into the careful thought she gave to every aspect of organizing and serving the elegant lunch that our guests enjoyed so much.

​Enlist a Competent Team with Excellent Communication Skills
​

​Fortunately, the Pedulla family, who have lived in Watsonville for nearly sixty years, are blessed with creative, capable and trustworthy friends. The majority of the food and drink for the reception was prepared or provided by the team of family and friends. Kathleen’s dear friend Peggy Sue Welch arranged all the flowers for the memorial service, others created center pieces for the lunch tables, set up chairs and a tent, served as ushers, and Kathleen’s friend Polly, a concert musician, played a Bach Sarabande at the memorial service.
 

Clearly Define the Tasks and Responsibilities of Each Team Member
​

​We planned the cemetery service well in advance and enlisted various family members to speak or otherwise participate. Then we held a family meeting the night before the event to review the tasks of each participant, providing each with a folder containing specific instructions for his or her role at the service.
 
Kathleen followed a similar procedure for the reception, contacting each team member well in advance with a written copy of the menu and a detailed list of who was responsible for preparing or obtaining each item on the menu. Members of the team who were responsible for seating, table settings and so forth were given similar written instructions.

Pay Careful Attention to Long-Term and Short-Term Time Management
​

​Obviously, selecting the day, time and location is the first step in planning a complex event, but last-minute details can be just as crucial. Kathleen developed the amazing, multi-cultural lunch menu for the reception months in advance, and I did the same for Margaret’s biography, the eulogy and the chronology of the memorial service. However, some of the most meaningful details were completed in the very last seconds before we changed into our black dresses and put on our pearls to begin the family procession to the cemetery.
 
Kathleen was up before dawn on the day of the service, baking the Irish Soda Bread, Margaret’s favorite, and then putting the Blackberry Cobbler in the oven. Meanwhile, I assembled the Cheddar and Chutney Tea Sandwiches, which needed to be as fresh as possible, just as Kathleen’s friend Kristen arrived to make the luscious Macaroni and Cheese from scratch and bake it along with the refrigerated Lasagna and the Baked Beans as the service at the cemetery was taking place. During this final hour, team members were also dispatched to pick up the two items that were purchased rather than home-made: hand-made spicy cheese and chili tamales and a glorious tray of ultra-fresh sushi.

​We invite you to read and re-read Kathleen’s remarkably comprehensive multicultural menu, a marvel of California farm-to-table autumn cuisine. It produced a huge amount of food, served buffet style in three courses as Appetizers and Salads, Main Dishes and Desserts. There was truly something for everyone, and the guests were invited to take home leftovers. Katheen was going for the spirit of generous autumn abundance to honor her beloved mother, and she succeeded! I stayed with the Pedullas for a few extra days after the service, and we enjoyed fresh berries with vanilla-honey yogurt sauce every morning at breakfast and deviled eggs, ham and peanut noodles for lunch, all the while remembering Margaret with grateful hearts and living the joy of a harvest festival.
 

​Kathleen’s Memorial Reception Menu
​

Drinks:
Beer, Wine, Whiskey, Punch, Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider, Coffee, Tea, Cucumber Water
 
Appetizers:
Isaac’s Salsa and Pickled Okra, Guacamole and Chips
Antipasto Platter: cheeses, meats, olives, crackers, crudites, baguette
Kathy Lathrop’s Broccoli Spread
Kathleen’s Shrimp Ceviche
Irish Soda Bread with Irish Butter
Deviled Eggs
Sushi Platter
 
Salads:
Asian Peanut Noodles
Thai Green Bean Coleslaw
Potato Salad
 
Main Dishes:
Chili and Cheese Tamales
Baked Beans
Pulled Pork with Barbecue Sauce
Chutney and Cheese Tea Sandwiches
Isaac’s Honey Mustard Ham with Rolls for Ham Sliders
Kristen’s Macaroni and Cheese
Kathleen’s Spinach Lasagna
 
Desserts:
Fresh Strawberries, Raspberries and Blackberries with Honey-Vanilla Yogurt Sauce
Raspberry and Peach Trifle
Blackberry Cobbler
Red Velvet Bundt Cake with Cream Cheese Icing
Rose’s Triple Espresso Cake with Fudge Icing
Fregolotta (Italian Crumb Cake)
Three-Tiered Cookie Plate: Frosted Brownies, The Queen’s Shortbread, Lemon Bars
Bambi’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
See’s Candies
 

​​As you think about Thanksgiving with your family this month, you are welcome to include any of the items from our memorial menu along with your traditional family meal. You will find Isaac’s Roasted Tomato Salsa in my August 2019 blog on this website, Homemade Vanilla Custard for the Peach and Raspberry Trifle in my May 2020 blog, Blackberry Cobbler with Almond Streusel Topping in my August 2020 blog and Fregolotta (Italian Crumb Cake) in my July 2018 blog.
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​Our website provides another treasure trove of menus and ideas for autumn tea parties and feasts and for large gatherings now that it is safe for us to celebrate in family groups. If you are planning ahead to long-postponed spring and summer get-togethers, some of our menus also feature grocery lists and planning guides. Our “June Wedding Reception Tea” includes the menu, lists and planning guides for a home-generated reception for fifty guests. You might also find “Afternoon Tea for a Large Group” a helpful resource. And finally, our “August Family Reunion Tea” is filled with ideas for feeding the family with a variety of menu options, including North American food, Scandinavian food, Middle Eastern cuisine and a Kosher menu.
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​Though the last two years have been hard for all of us, we invite you to celebrate with us once again, the joy of family, the joy of food, the joy of Afternoon Tea. And a happy Thanksgiving to you all!