Can Our British Friends Help?

[danemodsandy]

Ooh!

Home-made mince tarts! Yum!

I don't make mincemeat any more, and one of the regional peculiarities of this part of Iowa is that mincemeat is essentially unknown. My first few years here were spent without a mince pie at Thanksgiving; no store here carries them - and believe you me, I tried.

I laid in a few jars of Crosse & Blackwell mincemeat last year when they were marked down after the holiday; that's the only time TWGSITW * carries it. Even marked down, it was priced like a precious metal.

This Thanksgiving, there will be a mince pie if I don't eat another damned thing.

* The Worst Grocery Store in the World. I will not name names, but it's a very large chain seen all over the Midwest. Many people rave about it, but I notice they're from other cities. The ones here in Waterloo are absolutely horrendous, with stratospheric prices and belligerent management who take comments most unkindly.

 

[jkbff]

No No no.. Ya'll are doing iced tea wrong...

You put a gallon of water in a pot, add a cup and a half of sugar, bring to a boil then turn off.. Then you put two of those lipton gallon bags in the pot, let it steep while you entertain yourself on aw.org. After reading a few threads, ya go back and fish the two bags out, squeeze them gently and dump the elixir into a container that will hold a bit over 2 gallons. Mix with a gallon of water and place in the fridge.

The sugar can be adjusted to taste, my sister used to use 3 cups of sugar... I'd bring my own tea I'm actually using less and less each time because I am trying to get away from sugar.. I've stopped drinking pop so this is my replacement and I've started losing weight.

My alternative to sweet iced tea is the same lipton tea brewed with 6-8 bags of throat coat ( http://traditionalmedicinals.com/products/throat-coat/ ) and no sugar added. After the two gallons is chilled, you have a thoroughly refreshing tea. I'd make this more than sweet tea but the Walmart here can't keep throat coat in stock... I stock up when I can. Between the two brews, I make 2 gallons for my self every 2-3 days.

Sandy, congrats on the tea locker. I am wanting to experiment with loose teas but I've had enough bad brews to know I need to learn more first. When I lived in Kansas City, MO, a friend took me to a little herb/tea place that let you choose your own herbs and teas to make your own blends. It would have been cool had she not made a blend that had 3 of my strongest allergens in it.. :/ .. My sneezing/coughing fits in the store when she made me smell the blend should have been the first clue... 7 Years later my allergies have calmed down a lot.. Maybe I should give it another go.

 

[whirlcool]

We even have a proper tea cart in our living room. And we have a small collection of tea pots and proper tea cups from England too.

We use the large teapot on Sunday mornings when we are looking forward to a rather lazy day. We boil the water, fill the pot, then dump the water after a few minutes and then add the tea to sit in the steamed pot for about 5 minutes. Then we add fresh new water. We then let it steep to the desired strength. I feel that this method (shown to us in London by friends) makes the smoothest possible tea. We even have a tea cozy to keep the pot warm, which it does very well. We were using Fortnum & Mason's Coronation Tea, but F&M no longer exports to the USA. So we use Harney & Sons English Breakfast tea or plain old PG Tips or even a Twinings. Between us we can go through a pot to a pot and a half. By the time we are done with the tea we are quite ready to get on with the rest of the rest of our day. Harney also makes a wonderful Ginger & Licorice tea that's great for afternoon teas. BTW, did I mention that we use bottled spring water for tea making?

We like a full bodied tea. So because Herbal teas tend to be rather weak we don't use those often. We sometimes will use Green Tea but we have to use quite a bit of it to get the strength we like.

 

[danemodsandy]

Tea Caddy Arrived:

The green caddy in the photos above arrived today, safe and sound. It's not small, but it's not too big either.

I am still debating whether I can live with its Avocado-ness - the present finish is one of those '70s "antiqued" paint jobs, with wiping stain used over a base coat to simulate age. This technique never really looked old; the result was always a little too studied and precise.

Still, she's near, she's here and I just may get used to it.

P.S.: Marty cat is fascinated by it.

 

[frigilux]

I'd leave it as is; cats have exquisite taste. Marty will soon rub a corner of it with the side of his face to declare, "And this is mine."

 

[vacbear58]

Mincemeat

Sandy,

You might find this useful if you fancy trying your hand at mincemeat once again - you can always cut down the recipe to make more manageable quantities



Al

 

[danemodsandy]

Alistair:

I just don't do the quantity cooking and involved dishes that I once did. That looks like a wonderful mincemeat, though!

I should really get some Atora vegetable suet sometime and try it in mincemeat. On this side of the pond, real suet is very hard to get, and Atora beef suet is not legal here, owing to the fact that our Food & Drug Administration refuses to keep up with the progress the U.K. has made on BSE. We can only get the veggie Atora.

P.S.: A tea caddy spoon is on its way from a Canadian eBay seller; it's one of those little enamelled souvenir ones. The one I chose is from Blackpool, showing the Blackpool Tower. There was a terrific one from the Queen's Silver Jubilee, but it was much too expensive - so much so, that I was tempted to write the seller and ask, "You do realize this was just a commemorative, and not HM's personally?"

 

[gizmo]

tea in the USA

pardon the almost hijack, but...

my partner and I will be going to the USA in April/May 2015. My partner drinks black tea from (cough!) teabags but is choosy about brands. Is Dilmah tea in teabags widely / easily available in USA? It is his preferred brew. Or any recommendation for an English Breakfast tea in teabags that can be bought easily all over the joint?

thanks

Mr decaf espresso coffee drinker.

 

[davey7]

I've never heard of Dilmah tea, so I'm guessing it isn't readily available Stateside, certainly not in restaurants or the majority of supermarkets, though it may be in regional ones/specialty stores. I usually have some Twinings on hand.

 

[danemodsandy]

Chris:

I have never seen Dilmah here in the States. It may exist, but I have not seen it.

Twining's English Breakfast is in nearly every large grocery store. Bigelow also makes an English Breakfast blend. Both are in teabags; loose tea is not easy to find in a grocer's here, except in very large cities.

If you don't want to pay the rather high prices charged for Twining's or Bigelow's, Tetley makes a "British Blend" - also in most every grocer's - that makes a good, stout builder's cuppa.

You will also occasionally find Typhoo, if you're in a large city.

If you're eating out, you need to know that most Americans have little familiarity with tea, which leads to cups of tea that are not what you're used to, at least in everyday restaurants (fine restaurants are another matter, of course). It's seldom ordered in most places, which means that when it is ordered, what comes is a cup of hot (microwaved) water, with a teabag on the saucer, if indeed there is a saucer. A wedge of lemon will come with it, but you will have to ask for milk, which is often not available except as a glass of milk. The usual in chain restaurants is "coffee creamer," which I'm sure you know is a non-dairy or semi-dairy substitute for coffee cream.

It can also be a bit difficult to get your tea with breakfast. Not that they won't bring you the obligatory cup of hot water and a teabag, but they will almost certainly bring it at the wrong time, not being used to the proper timing in relationship to the rest of your breakfast. You can anticipate getting your tea almost immediately, with a wait for everything else, by which time the microwaved hot water used for the teabag will have cooled. This timing works for coffee, because they have huge vats of that on hand, ready to "warm up" cups of coffee for diners waiting for breakfast.

You will also run into a bit of "tea discrimination." Coffee drinkers often get free refills - that "warm up" I mentioned. Tea-drinkers are usually charged for every single blessed cup. It sounds unfair. That is because it is unfair. But it is the way things are here.

If I may make a suggestion or two: First, I'm not sure you should bring your favorite tea with you, because of our airport security. Anything that looks remotely like it could be marijuana in disguise is going to delay you, trust me. That sounds insane, but our government has no more imagination or sense of humor than any other, which is to say none at all. You're already going to spend two hours clearing security at our airports; I wouldn't do anything to make it longer.

Second, an immersion heater would be an excellent idea. This is a small electric coil on a flex; you put the coil into a mug of water and it heats the water to boiling very quickly. It makes a hotel room very bearable in the morning. A link to an immersion heater is below, so that you can see what one looks like if you don't already know. A good hardware store, such as Ace Hardware, will have one. By purchasing some teabags, a mug or two and an immersion heater when you get here, you'll have the makings of tea wherever you go in the States.

I hope something here is of help.

 

[gizmo]

Thanks Sandy for your advice.

I was planning to bring a starter amount of tea (and rooibos for me) but I guess I can give that a miss and buy it in the US rather than create an ordeal in customs.

Re: humourless officialdom - New Zealand customs are great. On a trip there a year or two ago, we stopped at a motel in Melbourne the night before we flew to NZ. We had a couple of items left over in the morning including some cheese. As I hate throwing out good food, I decided to bring it and declare it on entry to NZ. If they say no, I throw it out. No downside.
When I declared the few food items I had, the customs officer in NZ said "gee, it must be pretty special cheese. We do have cheese in NZ you know." I explained my tight-fisted reason for bringing it, and said "I know you have good cheese in NZ, you sell Mainland cheeses in Australia, and for about half the price you Kiwis have to pay." We had a nice chat about how a New Zealand company could sell cheese in Australia for about $7 for 500g when the same block sells in NZ for about $11. I was able to bring in my little block of cheese - NZ accepts Aussie cheese as safe to import.

but New Zealanders are always lovely to deal with.

I had to phone US Consulate in Melbourne this week about filling out my entry paperwork. The official I spoke to could not have been less helpful or caring if he tried. A complete lack of interest. A good display for his country...

We are bringing a dual voltage travel kettle - one of these...

Chris.

http://www.kenwoodworld.com/en-int/products/breakfast/kettles/jkp250-kettle

 

[danemodsandy]

Chris:

I apologize for neglecting to put a photo and link of the immersion heater I was referring to. I'm a huge fan of these, because they make packing much lighter. The only thing is, you need to put it in the plastic bag of items you'll carry through airport security, so they'll see that it's a harmless personal item. Because of the coil shape, if they spot it on X-ray, you're in for a wait:

You just stick the coil into a mug of water, plug in the flex, and within a couple of minutes, you have boiling water.

They're about $10 USD, and they're to be found in grocery and hardware stores. You could pick one up when you're here, and give it away before you leave, which would bypass security hassles entirely:

http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1333319

 

[danemodsandy]

Caddy Spoon:

Came today. A little Wenol metal polish made it shine like new; you can now read "BLACKPOOL" underneath the depiction of Blackpool Tower clearly.