Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea

The Perfect Mug

Mug is much too short and ugly a word for this beautiful cup.  For many years now my "favorite" cup has been a transient thing. I try on a cup for a while, get tired of it, find something better.  You've heard of the serial dater?  I'm a serial cupper.  I just never could find one that suited me in all respects. 

Well, I think I've finally found my perfect cup.  It has earned a place in my heart that is almost religious.  So I spent the morning formulating this:

Ode to a Cup

Queen of my morning,
oh vessel divine!
Your soft curving sides
your flaring base
graceful handle - not too fat, not too thin
slender rim, gently flaring to meet my lips...
No mere container, you
do not merely hold.
You cherish ...
you embrace ...
The dark liquid within your transparency
now blesses my eyes
as well as my nose
and tongue.
Your lovely rim
bestows just enough,
in careful measure.
You are the soul of discretion,
cautious, yet generous,
never slopping or spilling.
Divine queen of my afternoon,
generous enough for coffee,
but graceful enough even for tea,
I cherish thee!

I know, I should keep my day job.  If I had a day job.  And lest you think I'm nuts, well... maybe I am at that.  But at least I'm not alone.  I know some folx who understand the importance of the perfect cup / mug, and though they may not quite worship their mugs, they at least hold them (heh, hold them) in great esteem.


Mo' Mugs:
If you like mugs, check out these Flikr groups:
* The Coffee Mugs Pool
* Love My Mug

Coffee Quotes

Coffee quips from some famous females:

I began wearing hats as a young lawyer because it helped me to establish my professional identity. Before that, whenever I was at a meeting, someone would ask me to get coffee.
Bella Abzug

When traveling with someone, take large dose of patience and tolerance with your morning coffee.
Helen Hayes

I could serve coffee using my rear as a ledge.
Jennifer Lopez

If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.
Mae West

Chocolate Pasta

How did it get to be Friday already?  This week went by at light speed. 

This week for Chocolate Friday, spurred by something I saw on the travel channel (I watch a lot of tv), I browsed the net for chocolate pasta.  That's chocolate flavored pasta, not noodles made of chocolate.  You cook this stuff just like regular pasta, but you serve it as a dessert, with some kind of fruit and/or whipped topping.  There are quite a variety of shapes and sizes out there, unbeknownst to me.  I'm a chocolate pasta virgin, but not for long.  I've ordered some and saved a bunch of recipes and I'm going to try them all, starting with this one, from Chocoholics:

Chocolate Pasta Fruit Sauce
1 10 oz. package Chocoholics Chocolate Pasta
3 tbsp. Grand Marnier
1 cup raspberry sauce
1 pint whipping cream, whipped
Combine raspberry sauce and Grand Marnier.  Fold whipping cream into mixture. Cook pasta as directed and let cool.  Serve over chilled pasta.

They also have a recipe for something called Chicken Mole that also uses chocolate pasta.  I'll have to try it I guess, but I can't get my brain to wrap around the idea of combining chocolate and tomato sauce.

More chocolate pasta stuff:

• Chocolate Pasta Parfait recipe from yumyum.com - sounds very yumyum
• Chocolate Dessert Pasta - sounds like a sort of pudding
• Chocolate Lasagna - doesn't specify using chocolate pasta, but I'm going to try it that way
• Chocolate Nut Lasagna

And for the very adventurous, two recipes for making your own chocolate pasta!

• Italian Chocolate Pasta
• Chocolate Pasta Recipe - from Epicurean.com

Enjoy!

Tea Eggs - A Cut Above Hard Boiled

I found this recipe in The Tea Book, by Sara Perry, and I had to try it.  Apparently in the Orient, tea eggs are sold by street vendors.  This would be an interesting alternative to the usual hard boiled egg, served on a platter for afternoon tea.  Because the spiderweb pattern is so pretty, I would place some of the shells and even a whole egg or two on the platter with the cut eggs.  As usual, I modified it to what I had handy, so this recipe is not exact to the book. 

Chinese Vendor Tea Eggs

3-4 cups water
4-8 eggs
2 tbsp black tea leaves (4 tea bags)
2 tsp orange peel
1 tbsp salt

Put eggs in pot with water and bring to a boil.  Simmer for 12 minutes.  Remove from heat and put the eggs in cold water until they're easily handled.  With the back of a spoon, tap the shells of each egg to make a cobweb of cracks.  Return water to heat and add tea, orange peel (you can use fresh by stripping the peel like you would an apple, or buy dried in the spice section of your grocery store), salt and eggs.  Bring back to a boil.  Lower heat, cover, and simmer for 1 hour.  Remove from heat and let the eggs soak in covered pan for 30 minutes.

Remove the eggs from the water and allow to cool.  Remove the shells and cut in halves or quarters (lengthwise) to serve. 

The flavor is subtle and light.  The egg on the left here had a large crack in it, so it got a little too brown all over, but still, the marble effect is pretty.  The egg on the right is closer to the picture in the book. 

What I really like is the inside of the shells.  I'm trying to figure out some way to use these lovely shells!

UPDATE: The Carnival of the Recipes is up, hosted this week by the Feisty One.  Go check out all the goodies!

Watercolor Coffee

I've been meaning to post this link for a few days now, but stormage and other things kept putting it out of my head.  Just Coffee Art is two creative people producing the most lovely paintings, done entirely with coffee.  They have a very different style from Chanisa Arthachinda; if pressed I don't think I could choose which I like better. 

The idea for using coffee as a painting medium came from a coffee house.

It all started one summer when they planned their first art show in a coffee house in Duluth, Minnesota. They wanted to come up with something unique and creative. Since their show was going to take place in a coffee house, they thought it would be appropriate to use coffee as their medium. They tried several techniques, such as using the coffee bean to sketch with and making pastels out of coffee grounds. These techniques were not successful. So they finally decided to use the coffee as a watercolor.

They've done a variety of subjects, including portraits (the sample shown here, whimsically titled Mocha Haze), nature, and a whole collection of coffee theme paintings.

Visit their website: http://www.justcoffeeart.com/

Tea Gadgets & Coffee Tunes

Happy Coffee Day!
May your cup always be full.   

Couple of items I missed when I was abducted by aliens the other day.  :)

Kat posted this great song on Friday - St. Caffeine by John Gorka.  What a great companion song to The Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree!  While you're there, have a listen to Ray Charles singing Oh What a Beautiful Morning - great way to start the day.  And remember, these songs don't stay online forever, so download them while you can.  If you see something in her archives that's not online though, just contact Kat.  If you whine enough, she'll send it to you.  :)

Cin sent me this link to a cool tea gadget, the Tea Stick made by Gamila.  Similar to a tea spoon, but in a stick shape.  Scoop up tea leaves, slide the sleeve down, steep.  Gotta love those little gadgets. 

Artsy Fartsy Coffee & Tea

I was playing around with Photoshop this morning, and tried out a new filter.  The result - Antimatter Teacup:

(I haven't been happy with the Typepad photo album setup, so I'll be posting any new coffee/tea art and photos on my new Flikr account.  Please feel free to come and visit and leave comments!)

Audrey at CoffeeSage has added some new coffee icons and avatars.  I've updated the coffee / tea clipart page with this link and some others, so if you're looking for clipart, be sure to check out the new stuff.  Audrey also does coffee art - go have a look at her creations.

Chocolate Friday: Fun & Games

For Chocolate Friday, some online chocolate-related games.  Gathering these links was a lot of fun.  I spent an ungodly amount of time playing the games ... errr, ummmm ... testing the links and validating the software functionality. 

Nothing terribly challenging here, just silly fun:

Cadbury - my favorite kind of egg - has a page of fun stuff, including a match card game (flash and non-flash), send an e-card, make chocolate w/ a chocolate machine, and something called splurge, that appears to be wallpaper and a game combined.

Hershey has quite a lot of fun stuff online.  First, their Hershey's Syrup Games page, where you'll find the Hershey's Syrup Blot Personality Quiz, a Historical Trivia quiz, Hershey's Syrup Solitaire, and the Squirt game.  All are flash games, but you can download the solitaire game for free.  Also find two Hershey's Kisses games:  - Way to Go and Word ladder.

Pemberton's Chocolate has two games: Chocolate Hangman and Chocolate Concentration.

Mountain City Elementary has a whole section on Chocolate Games including 3 match games, hangman, jigsaw puzzle and a crossword puzzle.

Nestle's Nesquik has a list of games and activities.  I tried to make my own music, but I guess I need more coffee to figure this one out.

Baked Comfort Apples

Looking for an afternoon treat, I found these old-ish apples.  Not moldy, just oldish, a little wrinkly.  Kinda like me.  Heh.  Normally I would think of a baked apple as a winter treat, something for a cold evening warmer.  But in the heat of summer, when I dasn't turn that oven on for anything?  The solution: Nuked Comfort Apples.  I found destructions for microwaved apples, and just made a couple to suit my taste. 

Baked Comfort Apples
2 medium sized apples
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp butter or margarine
1-2 tbsp Southern Comfort
1/2 cup dried cranberries, orange flavored if you can find them
Slivered almonds, walnuts or pecans

Core apples.  Remove top third peel.  Place in a microwave safe bowl.

Combine brown sugar, margarine and Southern Comfort in a small bowl, microwave about 1 minute.  Combine cranberries with nuts.  Stuff cranberries into center of apple about 1/3 full.  Drizzle a spoonful of sugar mixture in.  Add remaining cranberry mixture, pour remaining sugar mixture into center and drizzle over top.  Cover with wax paper.  Microwave for 3-5 minutes.  Allow to cool for a few minutes before serving with a healthy dollop of vanilla ice cream.

Hemingway & Coffee

Happy Birthday Ernest Hemingway, born today in 1899.  In his honor, a few Hemingway & Coffee tidbits:

* Hemingway & Coffee quote from The Garden of Eden
* Ernest Hemingway Coffee (100% Hawaiian) Papa loved this coffee with a heavy pour of cognac.
* Ernest Hemingway Tours, Key West - where you can find the EH Coffee Roasting Co.
* Papa Good Eats - the man did love to eat and drink

That's all for now, gotta dash!