lists

[bedlamsbard]

1. I have felt kind of low-level nauseous all day, which is about as fun as it sounds. No idea why, of course.

2. Switched around part of my schedule for the fall, but Ancient Slavery & Society is closed and there's no waitlist available, so I'll stick with Later Medieval Spain, which ought to be awesome. Although I'll have to explain to the prof that I am not, in fact, writing my honors thesis on the Borgias. (Corollary: for some reason I still haven't seen the season finale of the Borgias. *hands*)

3. England gave me a taste for milky black tea (no sugar, please) drunk out of proper teacups with saucers, so I've been doing that. I really think I should probably get myself a bigger teapot. And possibly bigger teacups; the bad news I just bought a bunch of mugs before going to England and now I'm over the mug, unless I really just want a direct shot of tea without the ritual

3a. Corollary: Is there any really good way to clean out a teapot? I'm using loose leaves, and aside from scooping them out with a spoon into the trash and then rinsing out all the remainder, or dumping all the loose leaves into the sink and then washing the pot, is there any secret way of cleaning a teapot I'm missing?

3b. Friday reads: The Empire of Tea: The Remarkable History of the Plant That Took Over the World.

4. Yesterday I took a practice test on the GRE Quantitative Reasoning section and got 31/60. At this point I am kind of just freezing up when it comes to the math portions, which is, uh, not good. I know you don't need to have really good math scores for liberal arts programs! I just don't want to completely fail it, you know? Oh my god, I am taking the GRE in ten days, please do not let this be a disaster.

5. Quietly dreading the return to school. One: last year of undergrad, holy shit. Two: grad school applications, oh my god. Three: honors thesis, meep. Four: living with people again, *quiet sobs*.

6. There's a book I spent four weeks in England staring at lustfully but didn't buy because I kept telling myself I could just inter-library loan it when I got back to Tulane and now I really want it. (It is not that cheap on Amazon -- $34 used last I checked, so I really should have gotten it, because even at £12 and the exchange rate it wasn't that extortionate for an out of print book. *sighs* Wait! Found one for $17.95 + $3.99 shipping. *eyes lustfully*)

7. British foodstuffs I need to recreate: scones, clotted cream, flapjacks. I probably should have bought golden syrup while I was there, since it's not readily available in the U.S.

8. I am trying not to think about my textbooks for next semester. I am so tired of buying textbooks, y'all. I'm going to try and get as many of them as possible from the library this year. Although at least this semester I don't need thirty-five of them. (True. Story. And yes I bought them all. That was actually one of the semester I didn't spend $500 on textbooks, since I finally figured out that you don't buy your textbooks from the bookstore. It only took me two years.)

9. Kindle commercials piss me off.

Comments

[scy]

Scones are easy to make, and I recommend tweaking traditional recipes - that's how I ended up with the ones I make. Yummy and simple.

[autumnia]

3. I cannot stand milk (or cream, or any form of dairy) in my tea. A little lemon is okay but usually, I prefer it straight. As for the mug and teacup issue, what I do is drink from a mug on the weekdays (at home, at work) and switch to the proper teacup (with or without saucer) on the weekends. It's a little afternoon tea ritual that I can enjoy and I like to think of it as an indulgence.

3a. Have you tried using a strainer with the teapot? You should be able to just buy a tea strainer (comes in various sizes) and set it into mouth of the pot and be able to put the pot lid over it. Depending on the type of loose tea, I would either drop the leaves into the pot itself (as in the case of dragon pearls) or use a strainer (usually sencha, black teas, or herbals). If I don't use a strainer, I usally scoop the leaves out with my hands and drop them into the garbage before I clean the pot.

Also useful would be to get a thin bottle brush. I use it to clean stains from the spout.

7. You should be able to get clotted cream at places like Whole Foods. There's only one brand that I've seen readily available in the States. If they don't have clotted cream and you're just using it to spread on scones, you can probably substitute with double cream if that's available. I think Whole Foods also has cans of Lyle's Golden Syrup (or maybe I am confusing it with my local British grocery stores)? I know Dean & Deluca sells both too.

[bedlamsbard]

Yeah, I've got a couple of scone recipes that I really like (I have this fantastic one for maple oatmeal scones, nom), I just don't have any for plain scones, English-style! Or scones with...whatever were in them. Dried currants?

[scy]

Dried currants, dates, etc. My mother's recipe calls for dried fruit and white chocolate chips. :) Those are slightly fancier. I do plain ones too, with a splash of vanilla.

[bedlamsbard]

3. That's a good idea, about only using a teacup and saucer on weekends, or maybe afternoons. To keep it special and less run of the mill. *muses* When I'm drinking green tea, which is most of the time, I don't want anything else in there; I used to drink black tea black, but I've gotten used to it with a splash of milk. No sugar, though.

3a. The thing is that my current teapot is pretty small, so none of the strainers we have really work for that. This is the strainer I have for making a single cup of tea (I really only got into the teapot this week. *cough*). I have an over-the-cup strainer (like the one in your icon!) that I use when I'm using a teapot.

7. Oooh, will have to see if Whole Foods carries clotted cream when I get back to New Orleans. (We don't have a WF here.)

[autumnia]

Hmm. The strainers I use look kind of like this. No handles, just sits inside the pot. They're not that big so they might be able to fit your pot. The one in my icon is too fancy for daily use! :-) Also, I don't have one like that at all! (That photo's from afternoon tea at a fancy hotel I went to.)

When you find yourself at Whole Foods, look in the cheese aisle. That's where they store the Clotted and Double Creams at the ones in my area.

[pinesandmaples]

Flapjack, singular. Plural is a stack of pancakes. Singular is the British baked oat and honey stuff.

The flapjack recipe that the Iona Community publishes and uses is made with honey instead of golden syrup so you could get a very similar flavor with honey. (Bonus: honey is an authentic substitution.)

[bedlamsbard]

Yeah, I've seen those at Asian markets before; we just don't have any here.

With the one I use, it stays on the rim of the mug and I put the tea leaves in, then I pour the hot water over it and let it steep, and then I can remove the strainer and the tea leaves together. The handle doesn't get hot, and the leaves are easy to get out by banging it on the side of the garbage bin.

The other one I have is this one; I make my pot of tea with the loose leaves in, then put the strainer on the cup and pour the tea over it, and it catches any of the loose leaves so that they don't get in the cup. I got it at the Jane Austen Centre giftshop in Bath. :)

[highlyeccentric]

I will take the Australian Women's Weekly 1972 to uni and _scan you the scones pages_, how's that?

[bedlamsbard]

I would be duly grateful!

[bedlamsbard]

Honey is one thing that we definitely do not lack in this household. (We bought a giant thing of honey from Costco a while ago. Problem being that we don't actually use that much honey...)