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This will have to be my shortest post ever. I was late making this weeks Tuesday’s with Dorie selection, Granola Grabbers (out of granola!) and now I’m rushing out the door for a one night retreat with my grad cohort.
Quickly. These were a hit with my kids. They grabbed them off while cooling and gave them a thumbs up– even from my daughter who normally tells me she doesn’t like cookies with nuts in them. I liked the almost peanut brittle flavor they have. I wish they had a bit less sugar so I could feed them to my kids kind of like a granola bar– but I might mess around with the recipe in the next couple weeks. These would be awesome for the lunchbox!
I especially like these cookies because my end product looked a lot like Dorie’s picture!
Check out more (longer) postings on the recipe at Tuesdays with Dorie. I’m off to recharge before my semester starts next week!
An image from a past tea at my home (summer time requires lemonade too!)
I attended a tea yesterday for a fellow grad student’s birthday at a local tea house. It was a lovely lovely afternoon– child free, women only, lots of talking and tea drinking. I usually go to tea for my birthday, but somehow this year it hasn’t happened, so it was nice to revisit that wonderful afternoon ritual for another’s birthday.
The ambiance of the tea house was very nice, and the service impeccable, but the food, honestly, was disappointing (then again, perhaps I am never satisfied with anything less than homemade). My auntie has schooled me in throwing our own very satisfying teas over the years (I was lucky enough to have her throw my baby showers and my wedding shower teas) and so it is very very hard to meet my expectations for tea food. Thinking on that on the way home, I thought I might share a couple of my favorite tea party recipes (I’ll post them at the end).
One of my favorite sandwich recipes that is a little outside the norm is Cucumber and Roquefort Cheese Sandwiches from a book titled Afternoon Tea Serenade (These are the top sandwich in the 1st picture). The original recipe was collected from The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco, which I can say from personal experience, does one of the best afternoon teas in the San Francisco area– truly worth doing if you are in the area and feel so inclined (my other favorite tea place in the San Francisco is Lovejoy’s– less refined, more eclectic, but delicious food and welcoming environment).
The thing that was missing from today’s tea experience was a hot scone. To me the scone is the anchor of a good tea, and the quality of the scone speaks to the quality of the tea. No scone? It is just luncheon with hot tea. I have made a variety of scones, but my favorite are a quick and easy biscuit-like Orange-Cherry Scone. This recipe came to me from my Auntie, but she told me it was originally from The Honor Mansion B & B in Healdsburg (a stone’s throw from where I live). I like these as much for their flavor, as for their ease– particularly because they can be prepped and placed in the fridge, then popped in the oven when your guests arrive, so that you may serve hot scones!
And last, a tea is really not a tea with out a little sweetness. The highlight of all the teas my auntie has thrown are her Chocolate Dipped Shortbread. She varies the shape of the cookie cutter to fit the theme of the tea, so for my sister’s baby shower which had a little prince theme for my nephew, she made little crowns. She has done these in dark chocolate, but in the last few years she has moved to white chocolate and they are as delicious as ever.
With these recipes, a couple egg salad sandwiches (try these with a little curry powder in them), and perhaps some fresh fruit and a pound cake or box of chocolates you are ready to serve tea. The only thing left is to ask, “One lump or two.”
Ritz Cucumber Sandwiches (My simplified version)
10 slices Tea Sandwich Bread (you can use cocktail bread or any other thinly sliced bread– I think Orowheat makes some thin sliced– or just your favorite bread. These are open faced so the thinness is not as important is with some breads– you do want to make sure it is sturdy enough to stand up to spreading, some breads will tear.
2 small cucumbers, peeled and cut into thin slices (or one English cucumber peeled and sliced) You can trim the cucumbers to the size of your bread and slice lengthwise, or just slice as you normally would.
8 oz Roguefort cheese
8 oz cream cheese at room temp
4 TBSP butter at room temp
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted (you can of course use the nut of your choice, pecans would probably substitute well)
Blend cheeses and butter together in blender or food processor until smooth. Spread a layer over each piece of bread (toast your bread if you like before hand). Place overlapping slices of cucumber on the toast. Trim off bread crusts (absolutely required for a tea sandwich– crusts are unsightly at the tea table), and cut into triangles. Sprinkle with toasted walnuts. Serve.
Orange-Cherry (or Cranberry) Scones
6 Tbsp cold butter
2 cups flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp finely grated orange rind
3/4 cup dried cherries ( I chop them into smaller pieces when them come whole– you can also substitute dried cranberries, etc)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup milk
Preheat oven to 400. Lightly grease baking sheet. In a large bowl, cut butter into flour, sugar, baking powder and salt until misture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in orange rind and dried cherries. Add egg and milk; mix until mixture clings together and forms soft dough.
Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead gently about 15 times. Divide dough into fourths and pat into squares about 1/2 inch thick. Cut each square diagonally twice to form 4 triangles. Place on baking sheet. (The scones can also be frozen after being cut, or place on sheet and refrigerate covered overnight).
Bake abt 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve warm with butter, lemon curd, jam, or Devonshire cream.
Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Hearts
2 cups unsalted butter at room temp
1 cup sugar
1 tsp almond extract (or vanilla)
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup finely chopped almonds (or pecans)
2 oz white chocolate, chopped
2 oz semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
4 tsp shortening
Preheat oven to 325. In a large mixer bowl beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add extract and dash salt; beat well. Add flour, beat just until well mixed. Stire in nuts. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with cutter. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes (cookies should not brown). Cool on rack.
Cook and stir white chocolate and/or semi-sweet chocolate and 2 tsp shortening over low heat (in seperate pans if doing both) until melted, stirring frequently. Dip half of each cookie into a chocolate mixture, or half and half. Let stand until chocolate is set.
School is creeping up on us. My children are chock full of excitement this year, with little worries bubbling over here and there. Each day I glance at our calendar I see the very clearly written: First Day of School. As a teaching grad student, this means my summer is ending soon too, and I must mentally prepare myself to reenter this other world away from my children and their concerns.
So today we escaped to the beach.
Absolutely lovely. We packed up around lunchtime, eating a small bit before we left and packing more (and more) for the beach. We grabbed pails, books for me, some sunscreen. It’s a little trek for us, but a nice drive, and we stopped on the way to pick up some local plums and apples (the Gravensteins are in!) to add to our basket. I wasn’t sure if it would be as sunny there as it was at our house (and had packed layers in case), but it was perfect. A little breeze. Sunshine. Happy kids.
Mrs. Miniver- Perfect Beach Read
While they played in the waves, being chased and chasing them, digging holes (there really is no substitue for digging and filling a hole at the beach), I kept one eye on them, and one eye on my reading.
One of the books I brought to peruse was Nature in a Nutshell for Kids by Jean Potter, which I saw recommended at Soulemama (I think). I’ve persused A LOT of nature and science books for children, and done a good amount of projects with preschool groups, but I’m always looking for new ideas. Usually I find a few scattered projects in a book, but this one is overflowing with great small scale experiments and exploration, and has wonderful explanations that can easily be explained to children. While this book would definietly be appropriate for preschool age children (3+), it would also work for up to 8 years, at least. One of my favorite aspects of this book is that it divides the projects based on season, which is exactly how I like to introduce science concepts to children.
For example: it is summer, so I go to the pictorial coded summer section. I want to do a project with my children about the ocean, or beach to follow up on our outing today and some of our talk on the way home about how much water is in the world, and how many oceans there are. In 5 minutes I am able to locate at least 5 different quick projects. A couple of my favorites (that we will probably try tomorrow) are: Dense Dip: Why is it easier to float in the ocean than in a swimming pool? and Wind Waves: How are waves made?.
Which brings me to two other wonderuful things about this book! The projects are based out of questions that children ask (that I usually can’t answer– like today’s question from my daughter: “Where did water come from?”), and the projects are done using mostly things you can find on a nature walk or nature exursion, or around your house. For the two projects I mentioned I will need: a large cake pan, water, drinking straw, 2 bowls, food coloring, salt, spoon, and two eggs. I should also only need about 20 minutes to complete both explorations/explantions with my children.
Which is a lot shorter than it will take me to explain where water came from, so consider this my diversion tactic until I can get a handle on that one.
You will probably note a flurry of sewing in the next couple weeks. My semester starts the last week of August and I can feel my sewing time dwindling and so many unfinished projects still staring me down. I decided that I would dedicate this afternoon to finishing the lunch mats for my children. The decision to focus on the lunch mats was strenghened when I came across a picture of some lunch mats in one of my newest Japanese craft books:All Your Kids Need
I like the one on the top right
These are a slightly different set up than mine, and give me something to try another time. I see lots and lots of embroidery work here, as well as all over the blogs I’ve been reading, and perhaps I will give it a whirl one day. My favorite from the book is the one with the embroidered spoon and chopsticks to show where they go.
With that inspriation I began my work this afternoon. It was quick and easy sewing and I have finished them all! Five for each of my children, so that we may make it through the weeks with clean mats and napkins for their lunches. Hopefully I won’t fall behind on laundry this year!
Hers
His
It was in fact such an easy project that I decided to let my daughter sew one for herself. She received a sewing machine for her 7th birthday last January, but we have just carved out the time for sewing lessons starting this week. We had a basic lesson a couple days ago, and today we dived right into her first project. I helped her as I’m a bit nervous still to let her go at, but she did stupendously and will be on her own soon enough. Today I handled the iron, but I do need to give her a chance to try that soon.
My proud girl!
As I was sewing the rest of them I began playing around a bit- trying pinking shears on some for finishing, my serger on others (I’m still using the serger in it’s most basic way as I haven’t had time to explore it more yet). I tried out a snap and a tie on my son’s, but after having him try to undo and then redo them, I’ve decided that no clasp or closure will work better. Sometimes, simplest is the best.
Pinking Shears
serger action
I just wanted to post quickly about two firsts this week- ok three.
The first I am so excited, and I dare say, proud about. My very first grown in my garden hollyhock is blooming! And it was worth the wait. I actually must admit I did not grow these from seed but purchased them as small plants at a local hardware store. The fact that I didn’t plant them from seed is probably a good thing since my zinnia seeds did not come up this year; doubly disturbing because those are the type of seeds a child is supposed to be able to grow! [Just in case you're interested in gardening with children here is another cool link that doesn't mention zinnias (maybe with good reason!) but looks like an excellent resource for gardening with kids. I'll have to post another time about my experiences gardening with kids; hit and miss as is the norm with all my gardening!]
Ok, to come fully clean, I actually planted 3 or 4 of these starters and only one is blooming but I’m calling that as SUCCESS! It is shaped like an umbrella handle, goes straight down and then hooks to the left- I’m guessing the sun exposure directly over the plant wasn’t suffiecient and I’m more then willing to overlook such faults. To me, like my children, it is gorgeous and perfect! And such a wonderful color! Unlike my dahlias, which disappointed me greatly as out of the many many (many many many) I planted ONLY the white ones bloomed, this hollyhock is studpendous. I guess I should quickly explain why the white dahlias were not met with such rave reviews– I had bought the white ones mainly to offset the other colors, but as the other colors did not bloom it is a little blah…. Ah well.
Before I gush on too long about my hollyhock, I’ll move on to my other first. We are joining a CSA! I wrote briefly about this in my first or second post, inspired and reminded by another bloggers post and promptly emailed a local farm about joining theirs. I was initially a bit dissappointed as their CSA is actually so popular there is a waiting list!!! I guess that speaks volumes about the area I live in- which I will take as a good thing- but I was still a little let down. Meanwhile I joined their waiting list and expected a 3-4 month wait until either someone decided to drop out of the CSA or they expanded their plantings. But!!! (of course there is a but, otherwise why would I spend all this time writing about it!) An email!!!
They have an opening on the day I requested and I’ve repsonded that yes, yes we’d like it! So, hopefully starting next week- but I really have no particulars- we will begin picking up our year-round CSA veggies bin. There is also a fruit and/or bread option you can add. I had no idea there would be so many choices to make, but excited about the possiblities and yummy local organic produce we will be having from now on. The nicest thing is that the farm where I will be picking up is not too far from my children’s school so I will probably bring them with me after I pick them up and give them a little exposure to the rich agricultural world of our county.
Last first. (Love how that sounds.)
I finished teaching my first class as a grad student. I’d like to say it went fabulously, but… it went great! I didn’t connect as much as I would have liked to with the students but part of that is my personality and I’m just going to have to work with that. I did however stay fairly organized, on task and impart what I wanted the first day. Second day? No idea! I’ve got a “plan” but really need to look at it. And then there’s the issue of whether or not they will read their assignment. And what do I do about it if they don’t? And so on….. But for today I am feeling good. Glad I’m past the first day with only a couple minor clumsy mishaps in front of the students (rather good for me) and home with out tears (not so surprising since i”m not really a crier, but wouldn’t it have been terrible if I was in tears then?).
I guess today I’m just reveling in all the firsts I can still experience 30 odd years into life! So many experiences, oppurtunities, and plants out there to try. I don’t always feel this way but today I am in awe of all my options. Oh- and ready for a nap.
Summer for us is OFFICIALLY winding down. Today I start my first day of grad school-OFFICIALLY. I’ve been prepping for the last week, at various trainings, and working on my curriculm for the composition class I’ll be teaching, but TODAY IS THE DAY! I teach my first class this morning and my own coursework begins tomorrow. So summer is officially and completely over— except for this Friday!! Friday will be the true last day of summer fun for my kids and I– but I haven’t figured out what do to yet!
Last Friday, feeling the end of summer blues, and after a morning of volunteering in my son’s preschool classroom helping his teacher get ready for the new year, and then two hours of errands, I treated the kiddies to dipped Foster Freeze cones! We had to eat them fast and furious because the heat was back and they were drip, drip, dripping! Ahhh, but the semi -hard- starting -to- melt- eggshell- thin -chocolate shell, with little droplets of vanilla ice cream sweating from within! We had to eat fast, to keep up with the heat’s work- honestly that wasn’t really a problem.
Those cones for me are a quinessential summer treat. As a child my sister and I ONLY got a Foster’s Freeze cone on drives to our family camping destination (or at least that’s how I remember it and I’m stickin’ to my story!) As we headed north from our home town the dirt got redder, and the heat more stifling, especially in our unconditioned car. About an hour into our winding trip, our legs sticking to the vinyl seats, our heads against the back window to let the rush of air from the open front windows unstick our hair from our foreheads, we would see the Foster’s Freeze sign with relief. As children who did not routinely get to stop for fast food, let alone a soft serve cone, this was a moment to be savored. The hardest decision was trying to decide: chocolate, vanilla, or half & half! Either way we were happy “campers” after that armed with our sticky, yummy oozing dipped cones and a lap full of napkins!
My mom originally introduced us to their messy loveliness, and for that I will always love her from the bottom of my chocolate obsessed heart!
Well I picked up some more of my books for this semester today. I am comparing them to the leaning tower of Pisa. The pile is a little daunting, as is my growing “to do” list and my rapidly filling calendar. Did I mention I still have to buy 3 books! Where will they go? How will I find time to read them? Can I really do this? That is all flying through my mind right now.
On the other hand I’m really enjoying a return to the “natural cycle” of the year to me. Back to school is the true “new year”– even when I don’t go, so how much more natural it is to actually be going! Without getting ready to go back to school in August I’ve often felt as if December had come and gone with no xmas celebration. So this year everyone in my family is heading to school.
And I will chip away at the tower. Brick by brick; page by page; one sleepless night after another!
