Thursday, January 31, 2013

Foggy Morning Tea

The fog is still here this morning.  Just as it is a fresh, new day, there is fresh, new fog. I have made  Scottish Breakfast Tea because I figure that the Scots are well-acquainted with fog and created a tea that suits it well.



Scottish Breakfast Tea from Taylors of Harrogate seems to clear the fog at breakfast.


With the left over breakfast food, I created this blog-food. Blog food is the food that is used to create pictures for your blog.  After it is all over there will be people with their hands out asking, "May I have the blog food today?"  


In the photograph are two tea-time treats created with breakfast food. Sliced bananas drizzled with fresh-squeezed orange juice is served in those cute little bowls, and a scone is made into an open-face sandwich with cheddar cheese and bacon.

The reason the cheddar in America is orange is because carrot juice (or carotene) is added to give it color. I have no idea why that is, but I suppose just as the orange carrot was developed in honor of William of Orange, who led the Dutch to independence, carrot juice was added to cheddar cheese for great reason. 

The sliced bananas were served in this little bowl, because, aside from my interest in collecting tea cups, I like bowls. I especially like the Corelle brand, and as you can see, it is made in USA. They are light-weight, don't clang in your ear with a terrible noise when stacked,  and almost unbreakable, unless you took a sledge hammer to them. These are open-stock, meaning that they can be bought individucally, at Wal-Mart, and are perfect for small servings of soup, salad, sandwiches and fruit.


I enjoyed this recent Cottage publication, and took a photo of one of the inside pages. There are no ads in this magazine and the pages are high quality textured paper, similar to the old "Ideals" books.


 Also  I browsed an older publication of Victoria from January 1991, below.

It featured a marmalade cake, which had the same colors as the old Victorian house in the snow, in the same issue, pictured below.


There was even a fog-photo inside the January '91 issue.



All weather comes from the Lord, and fog is actually quite interesting. Photographers and artists forever seek to capture its essence, and many a story has been written featuring fog

Tomorrow I hope to have a tea outside in the fog. The front porch is shrouded in fog, so I will not have far to go.

7 comments:

Finding Joy said...

That's interesting about the cheese - we sometimes buy Kirklands Cheddar cheese from Costco (which is ok for cooking but not on crackers, I much prefer an Australian cheese or something from the UK) and it contains Annatoo which makes it yellow. Annatoo is from a tree in South America and used to colour many foods/drugs in the USA - they should have stuck with carrot! However, when I buy butter from Costco (made in the USA) its almost as white as snow, which our organic butter from Tasmania (with no added colouring) is bright yellow. I can't figure out why the American butter is so white??

Anonymous said...

I am enjoying this series on tea time! You know how to make every day special. I learn something I can use to make my own home life better in some way every time I visit your blog, which is quite often!

Lydia said...

A tropical seed called annatto is used to color cheese and butter. I am totally surprised you can get American butter in Australia, since we get no butter from Australia or New Zealand, and it is delicious there. We may get some foreign specialty cheeses, but I've never seen other butters. But it seems if Australians bought American butter it would not be good for their own dairy industry. And as for it being white, I do not know. It is not white here, but a pale yellow color, and admits it uses annatto in some butters.

Lydia said...

I read more about butter here and color here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter

Anonymous said...

My understanding about coloring butter is as follows: in the summer, cows grazing in rich green grass will give milk which contains yellow cream (something from the grass contributes to this). Hence the butter made from that cream will be yellow. In the winter when they are eating hay or other foods the cream is white. The butter will therefore be white. Coloring the butter with carrot goes all the way back to (at least) the mid 1860s as Laura Ingalls Wilder writes that her mother colored the butter in wintertime. (Little House In The Big Woods)She said that her mother wanted the butter to be "pretty". I do not know why the cheese began to be colored but perhaps it was to give the impression that the milk or cream used was richer, such as it was in summer. Side note: The flavor of animals' milk does change depending on their diet, just as the flavor of human milk will change with the food that the mother eats. Also, I have read that Abraham Lincoln's mother died after drinking milk from a cow which had eaten a poisonous plant. The poison entered the milk and this was referred to as "milk sickness". -Pamela

Anonymous said...

I, too, am enjoying your tea time series with the lovely settings and ideas!

We have been using our set of Corelle dishes for years - they hold up so well. Our set has a white background with a pattern of scattered rose sprays in different shades of blue. It also has small tea cups with saucers that are sweet for tea or French press coffee.

Thank you for sharing this series and all your homemaking knowledge. It is very encouraging and uplifting!
Lynne

Angela said...

Thank you so much for the posts you have been doing on afternoon tea. You have inspired me to start a tradition of doing this with my own children. This time of year finds me feeling a little blue and I know that looking forward to afternoon tea will liven up my day a little! I love the fog, it makes everything look soft and mysterious. Outside our house it is currently gray, muddy, and very wet. I feel as though I am in danger of molding! :)