Tea geekery
I’m a green tea geek. Okay, no, honestly, I’m an aspiring green tea geek. I like the stuff a lot, but I don’t know much about it.
At my old job in the States, I regularly worked with several Chinese scientists. When they learned I liked green tea, they kept me supplied with it. Unfortunately, none of the containers had a word of English on them. This makes the learning curve really, really steep.
I’m posting this picture in the hopes that Bob (welcome home, Bob!) can help me work out what this is. It’s the last of my stash. Yellow cardboard box with red lettering, the same front and back. On the sides, small type that looks like instructions, maybe.
Boy, they sure go in for minimalist packaging over there, don’t they? Stupid FDA ruins our food package aesthetics.
After the second infusion, this stuff unfurls into a…a…shrubbery. Seriously, it’s like a freaking Christmas tree in a pot.
Meanwhile, I’ve been hanging out with these people. It’s like tea porn. Really, really expensive tea porn.
This is the one I’m drinking at the moment. Let’s see…£10 for 50 grams…28 grams in an ounce, buck sixty to the British pound, I make that somewhere in the region of $10 an ounce.
Ugh. Pass the Lipton’s, somebody.
May 7, 2012 — 9:06 pm
Comments: 32
Balls, cried the queen!
Bull testicle pie. For Valentine’s. Not kidding. Would I kid? I would not.
Because nothing says romance like cow balls in pastry.
It’s a bit of a send-up, this. Oh, it’s from Charlie Bigham‘s, which is a mainstream food supplier. Offered exclusively through Ocado, which is our best grocery home delivery service. But they’re warning of “very limited availability.”
Read: cheap publicity before Valentine’s.
No, I’m sorry. You’re just going to have to make the Aunty’s Spotted Dick jokes for yourself.
February 8, 2012 — 11:19 pm
Comments: 25
And this marvelous bird is called a what, now?
It’s official. We’re all turkeyed out for the season.
Here’s Asbo, our outside cat, enjoying a well-deserved leftover. Poor old boy; it was so delicious, it frightened him. He was sure we were giving him the good stuff by mistake and he was going to have an old shoe pitched at him any minute.
Oh, must tell you a chicken story. This time of year — if I let them out at all — the girls put themselves to bed about four in the afternoon. Evening comes, they trundle off, hop up on the perch and I come out a few minutes later and lock everything up.
Well, two days ago, I looked out around 4:15, the two younger girls weren’t anywhere to be seen and the two older girls were milling around outside the hutch. They caught sight of me at the window and came running up, all excited.
So I shoo’d everybody into the run, where I found the two little girls sitting on the floor of the henhouse, miserable. Someone had managed to knock the wooden slat down and there was nowhere to perch. And so the big girls came to get me to fix it.
No shit. It was a total, “what’s that? Little Timmy fell down the well?” moment.
I’m telling you, those damn chickens are smarter than Lassie.
December 28, 2011 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 37
Hey, how about a tall, frosty glass of…
What the hell…?
Angina?
Mangina?
Well, actually, it’s Orangina (and very nice it is, too), but I have to stop and remember that whenever I open the fridge.
Wednesday is Life Drawing class, so I’ve been spending the last few hours staring at a naked lady. The model was a couple of minutes late, and she swept in with a little old blue-haired lady in tow.
“I have my mother with me tonight. She can just sit in the back, if that’s okay.”
The whole class froze. The embarrassment threshold of British people is generally set somewhere well below sea level. Then a little voice to my right piped, “I’m just going down the pub. See you in a couple of hours!”
November 16, 2011 — 11:23 pm
Comments: 37
I love bacon SO much…!
I love bacon so much, I get lardons! (They used to be called bacon bits before people starting vacationing abroad, apparently).
So! Not much to do but sit around, eat lardons and wait to see if London goes up in flames again tonight. I have to be up early in the morning, so it had better get a move on.
Mono the elderish just wrote to send me some video links of the rioting and ask what I thought was going to happen. I’ll steal tonight’s post from the answer I gave him.
Errr…I don’t know. I’ve been coming to the UK for almost fifteen years, and the whole time I’ve wondered what it would take to get the Brits riled up enough to push back. They have plenty of provocation — a rampant nanny state, swingeing taxes, out of control immigration, Islamist terrorism, now riots in the streets — and I keep thinking now they will boil over, surely.
I keep thinking wrong. I’m too American to read the vibe right.
See, the Brits make a positive virtue of putting up with shit. I don’t know if it has its roots in WWII or if the Blitz just tamped the attitude down into their DNA, but “Keep Calm and Carry On” is not mere ironic kitsch. It’s deep in their self-image. We are the unflappable people. Let lesser people flap.
It’s not cowardice — far from it! — we’re talking people who faced down nightly bombing raids with a shrug and a cup of tea. It may be that not ‘overreacting’ to the riots is the way they will choose to distinguish themselves from the rioters. See: tea served on a riot shield.
On the other hand…well. Sooner or later, all this world-going-to-hell stuff will surely be too much even for the Unflappable People.
August 9, 2011 — 10:02 pm
Comments: 23
Say, it’s been a while since I poked fun at the food
Oyster flavored potato chips. Hoo boy!
Not bad. Not all that oystery. But at £.79/40g (about $1.30 for a fun-sized bag), I probably won’t make a habit of them.
The chickens loved them.
Oh, and I tried my first barley water (the existence of which I only knew from that Mary Poppins song). It doesn’t really have a smell, so I don’t know what that was all about. The barley doesn’t contribute flavor either, that I can tell — just a slippery mouth feel. I got citrus flavored, so it was like thick, silky orange juice.
Do I like it? I’ll have a think about it.
Next up — Tizer and Vimto! Good weekend, everyone!
April 15, 2011 — 8:33 pm
Comments: 22
The more you know…
Did you know, Providence, RI is the home of the diner? I did. And then I forgot. And then my mother-in-law called up all excited to tell me it, after she heard it on the radio late last night.
It says here, Walter Scott pulled a horse-drawn wagon up in front of the offices of the Providence Journal and sold plain grub to the newspapermen in 1872.
It’s hard to believe that was the first time anyone pulled food by horse and cart to a line of hungry men, but Providence is jealous of the title, so humor them. To this day, there are a bajillion excellent vintage diners in and around Providence. I’m pretty sure I’ve hit every one on this list.
The American Diner Museum isn’t actually a museum yet, but they’re working to restore a couple of old classics. Some neat info there, including a list of diners for sale. I totally think you should buy one.
The diner in the picture is still going strong in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. I used to live in Pawtucket — Land o’ Limericks — and many’s a hearty Saturday breakfast I’ve eaten at the Modern. Mmmm-mmm!
No idea who the old geezer in the picture is. I stole it off somebody’s blog or Flickr stream or something. His name is Bob, apparently.
Everybody, wave to Bob!
March 3, 2011 — 12:51 am
Comments: 22
I’m so hungry, I could eat a huss
Also known as spiny dogfish, blue dog, common spinyfish, darwen salmon, dogfish, grayfish, Pacific dogfish, piked dogfish, rock salmon, spiky dog, spotted spiny dogfish, spring dogfish, spur dogfish, spur dog, victorian spotted dogfish, white-spotted dogfish, and white-spotted spurdog.
In Sussex fish and chip shops, they are known as huss. They’re related to sharks. We always get cod or haddock, but tonight we had to wait for our chips and we struck up a conversation with the fishnchips man. He told us the huss was local today. Eh, what the hell. Batter-dipped and deep fried, I’d eat worse.
It was good. Finer-grained flesh than cod with a slightly stronger flavor. They leave the backbone in and you eat around it. I’m not terribly keen on finishing my meal with a spine on my plate, but other than that…yeah, I’d eat it again.
I don’t experiment nearly enough with local food. I’d be missing the point of being an alien if I didn’t try some unfamiliar gnosh from time to time.
Of course, I yearn to discover the British equivalent of Ho-Ho’s, Ding Dongs and Suzie-Q’s.
January 27, 2011 — 11:14 pm
Comments: 29
I was brung up around here…
Whoa! Google Earth just totally flipping FLIES on my new computer. I’ve been sproinging back and forth from Tennessee to Rhode Island to England and it’s enough to give you altitude sickness.
WHEE! I AM SUPERGIRL!
Damn near impossible to spot my mother’s farm, though. It’s in one of the little folds in the picture somewhere. No, it’s not any easier in color.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re going to test-drive my new pressure cooker tonight. That thing scares me to death, so I want to make sure we’re both good an likkered up before we go anywhere near it.
December 28, 2010 — 11:34 pm
Comments: 22
It’s evilicious!
My Hallowe’en pumpkin looked MUCH eviller after a few weeks of neglect. (Note to self: wear glasses in the house more often).
This is not the pumpkin implicated in the making of pies. That was a nice, fresh one and it turned out very well, thankee. Though the recipe I used was a bit loose. And one tiny pumpkin made enough for, like, THREE pies.
Don’t know if it’s true, but while I was researching recipes, I read that the stuff they sell as pumpkin in cans in the States is actually butternut squash. Believe it or don’t.
Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! Much to be thankful for. Start with the fact you ain’t dead yet and move outwards.
You ain’t, air ye?
p.s. November 25, 2008, I arrived at Gatwick airport strung-out, jet-lagged, with one suitcase and a box with my terrified cat in. Hard to believe I haven’t touched ‘Merican soil for two years, but there you go. I’ve forgotten what decent pizza and Whoppers taste like, but I haven’t started to talk all retarded yet. So there’s that to be thankful for.
November 25, 2010 — 9:18 pm
Comments: 18