Tea Caravan

I’ve been daydreaming about starting a Tea Wagon, in a lovely portable shepherd's caravan like this.  Afternoon tea, scones, jams, tea sandwiches, savory tarts, spindly bright-colored café tables with full-blown roses in vases, or peonies, and napkins in the colors of Provence...  A portable bookshelf as well, from which customers can borrow light or philosophical reading, and sit lingering as long as they like.

The café tables—two or three inside, a couple on the porch (if a different caravan) with a big pot of rose geraniums, and three or four in the shade alongside it—will have matching slatted chairs.  Plates of Majolica (melamine) will match the Provence fabrics, or coyly contrast.

The teas will be made in little individual pots, and will include:

Spring Cherry Green

Apple Green

Ginger Tangerine Sencha

Snow Leopard White

Lavender White

Blueberry White

Vanilla Coconut White

Melon Oolong

Earl Gray

Cardamom Black

Monk’s Blend

Orange Marzipan Rooibos

Wild Cherry & Chili Rooibos

Peppermint

Sage

Yanabah Navajo

Peppermint Chocolate

One or two will be iced, each day, depending on the season or occasion, and served with lemon or fresh mint.

And with them will be offered three or four things like

tangelo buttermilk scones

savory cheese and scallion scones

buttermilk biscuits

chard and prosciutto tart

old fashioned blackberry crisp

egg salad tea sandwiches with herbes de Provence

sauteed mushroom butter and bacon tea sandwiches

cinnamon toast

jams and preserves

herb butter

Greek pine, fir, and thyme honeys

cheeses

fresh figs and Mallorcan almonds

prosciutto and seasonal melon

I will park outside libraries, or under a redwood in some back-woodsy residential area; in places where there’s little hope of joy or romance, like in the parking lot of the new building in Redwood City, or of an assisted-living home.  Wherever there’s a need for a spot of color.

image:  Shepherd’s Wagon, A Gathering for Kindred Souls Looking to Live Off the Grid

Places I Would Rather Be Today

At Bamburgh Castle.

In a pleasant anecdote about the beach below the castle, Swinburne swam there, as did the novelist E.M. Forster—who adopted the Forsters of Bamburgh as his ancestors. (I've just adopted the apple farmers and Calvados-makers of Normandy as my own ancestors, not without linguistic cause.)


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Salad of the day: Kale with feta and onion mixed with quinoa, radish, and cucumber, and given radiant color with slivered carrots and beets.

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Iced tea of the day: Zhena's Gypsy Tea, Red Lavender



image: Christie B. Cochrell, Roses, Bamburgh

Spinning Straw to Gold

Happy discoveries of the weekend:

* Pear and Pecorino Ravioli (Santa Cruz Pasta Factory—wow!)
* the empanada cart at the end of the Ferry Building

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Today's salad:

Calafia's delicious New Bohemian Pork Salad, with queso fresco, avocado, basil citrus vinaigrette, organic baby spinach, and braised pork shoulder.

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Today's iced-tea:

Something ominously caffeinated which will keep me up all night. At least I have The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club on my iPod to keep me entertained.


image: Christie B. Cochrell, Spiderweb

A Year of Salads

Oh why not indeed! Having just read that if you eat a salad a day for a year, as either lunch or dinner, you can lose some thirty pounds. And remembering a similar story in the introduction to my favorite Mediterranean Light—in that case salades Niçoise. And finally seeing a coworker's lovely plate of carefully combined tofu and bright-colored vegetables.

Today's will be leftover wild rice with herbs, greens, and herbed chicken.

And my iced tea of the day: Zhena's Gypsy Tea—Pom and Petals (decaf green with pomegranate and rose petals).


image: Grape Tomatoes, Zeetz Jones