Teatime in Spring

Spring is here, my friends! Are you rejoicing in seeing the clear blue skies and fluffy white clouds? Are you running and playing barefoot in the green grass? Are you getting your hands dirty to plant seeds and anticipate their harvest in the coming seasons? Go on, take a deep breath; inhale the perfume wafting strongly off the flowers.

Ah… Wait a minute...

Ahhh...?

Ahhhhh… ACCCHHOOOOO!!! *sniffle* *grumble* So much for breathing in spring.

With spring's frivolity and warm weather, it also means the dreaded snot and sinus monsters have come out of hibernation. It means piles of crumpled tissues everywhere you walk. It means sneezing and coughing and probably nose spray and decongestants. It means tea… lots and lots of tea.

March was a bitter pill to swallow, but despite the annual allergies April is showing itself to be more productive and bountiful. The stress has become manageable (it’s amazing what sleeping a full eight hours can do for a person), and the semester is a shy couple of weeks away from being over. Even more exciting is that the GFRR seems to have come back stronger than ever!

I mean, who doesn’t love a good shortbread with their tea? The participants of this month's GFRR sure do.

Shortbread is considered a cookie in the United States. I don't know about anyone else, but when I think of a biscuit I think of the savory, fluffy kind. In Ruhlman’s (2009) book Ratio, the classic recipe for shortbread is the exact same as his cookie dough (p.37) ratio (1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour), while his biscuit ratio (p.33) contains no sugar at all and is 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. So this could be another reason why the U.S. views biscuits differently. It’s all about the ratio of the ingredients that differentiate the two.  

This delectable treat is so named because of its crumbly texture, the cause being to its relatively high fat content inhibiting the formation of long gluten strands. When you are gluten free, however, it’s not much of a problem to begin with. In fact, substituting sugar with honey was relatively easy to do as well.

Instead of baking it like Ruhlman suggests (as one would a typical cookie), I chose a lower temperature and a longer baking period. Shortbread is typically baked at a low temperature to avoid browning; and when done, it is nearly white, or a light golden brown. It may even be crumbly before cooled, but will become firmer after cooling. In other words, I had to not eat them all when coming right out of the oven if I wanted to know how they actually turned out. Like my tendency with gluten free bread, I needed to be patient and leave them be in order to enjoy them at their best.

And thank goodness I waited, because shortbread and tea were meant to be together.

Earl Grey Shortbread

60 g Honey
120 g Unsalted butter, soft but not melted
150 g Brown rice flour
30 g Coconut flour
Pinch of Sea salt
1 Bag (2 g) of Earl Grey tea leaves

Preheat the oven to 275°F.
Cream the butter with the honey until light and fluffy (either by hand or with an electric mixer/food processor), and add the tea leaves and sea salt.
Slowly add the flours into the mixture until completely incorporated.
Shape the dough into a ball (will be soft and buttery but should not stick to your hands) and roll out to about 1/2 an inch thick.*
Use cookie cutters or a knife to make them into the shapes you want, and transfer them onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.**
Bake for 40 – 45 minutes or until the shortbread is lightly browned.
Leave them on a cake rack to cool, and store in a cool place in an airtight container.
Serve with hot Earl Grey tea during any time of the day throughout the year.

Makes 13 servings.

   

*I found it was easier to roll out and flatten by covering the dough with parchment paper on both sides and using a rolling pin (less of a mess too).

**You can make any shape you want, or you can cut into squares or rectangles and prick the tops with a fork in two parallel lines as it is traditionally formed.

I was beyond ecstatic to see so many participants for this month’s challenge! Meaghan (i.e., “The Vegan”) of The Wicked Good Vegan was our lovely hostess. She is thorough, hysterically honest, and a wonderful person in general. And how awesome is she to make gin and tonic shortbread cookies? I’ll drink (tea) to that!

Here is the complete list of those who participated. Welcome back!

*Meaghan | The Wicked Good Vegan    Gin and tonic cookies: Lime shortbread cookies with juniper berry glaze    

Rebecca | Salts Kitchen    Rosemary, Lemon, and Toasted Pecan Shortbread and Espresso and Bittersweet Chocolate Chunk Shortbread

Mary Fran | FrannyCakes    Gluten-Free Jammie Dodgers   

Meg | Gluten-Free Boulangerie    Lemon Bars with Lemon Shortbread Crust   

Heather | Discovering the Extraordinary    Buckwheat Shortbread Cookies with lemon curd

Jonathan | The Canary Files    Black Sesame Teff Shortbread Cookies   

Morri (me!) | Meals with Morri     Earl Grey Shortbread   

New Priorities

As I worked to finish my midterm by the deadline, another week between posts went by. The realization of no longer having a plan still lingers in the back of my mind, but a new realization has taken its place for introspection.

That is, I’m going through the process of deciding what my priorities are. 

Tell me, has your Mara come to Tea lately?

This can be an ever-consuming venture, as I’m the sort of person with a plethora of big dreams, seemingly bigger than my life can permit simultaneously. To an extent, my dreams are too large to manifest themselves at the same time in the here and now, but I still dream and want and need.

The Burt-man, being ever observant in my turbulent changes these last few months, provided me with his Pennsylvanian Dutch wisdom the best he could (Dad figures tend to do that). He told me that life was like a chessboard and I was chess piece on that board. As a singular chess piece, I only have a certain number of options of squares to which I can move to, and each piece on the board plays the game differently. You play the game with the options you have, and work with the strategies to move from square to square to ultimately assist in best playing the current game.

In where I ultimately plan to be, I cannot move through life thinking “if only I had so-and-so’s life” or “why is it easier for so-and-so to do this or be that.” They’re just a different chess piece in a different game.

I bring this up because I still struggle with wanting to do everything and do it right the first time. I want[ed] to be a full-time graduate student with a full-time job of my dreams (with benefits), live on my own, heal whatever is conflicting my body, become amazingly fit as I excel at rock climbing, weight lifting, running, and yoga, blog beautiful posts and recipes five times a week, have an active social life and time for a significant other, learn the cello, sing jazz, travel often, have daily enlightening meditations and philosophical realizations… 

And this all had to happen at the same time in the course of a year or I viewed myself a failure to all Morri-kind.

I still want to do and be all these things, and I am confident that at the right time and place I will. It’s a matter of priorities, of deciding what move on the chessboard you position yourself first.

Not surprisingly, the personal growth my blog has nourished has become a top priority. This isn’t about the site itself, but more what it had manifested: self-awareness, confidence, the evolution of my passions, and a focus of my creativity. And though I have a few of the things I want to do in life underway (part-time graduate school, part-time work, part-time social life, working to become awesomely fit and healing holistically), fueling and nurturing my creative outlet has taken center stage.

For one, that means taking photography seriously and actually understanding why I produce the photos I take, and how to make them more professional looking. It also means taking the recipes to a higher standard.

Here goes everything.

Pumpkin Chai Latte

480 ml Filtered water
2 Chai tea bags (or loose tea equivalent)*
120 g Pumpkin puree
1/4 tsp. Cinnamon
1/4 tsp. Nutmeg, plus a dash as garnish
1/4 tsp. Allspice
1/4 tsp. Coriander
1/2 – 1 tsp. Unrefined apple cider vinegar, optional **
Sweetener, to taste ***
120 ml Almond milk (or whatever “milk” you prefer)

In a medium saucepan, cook the water on high heat until it simmers, and add the tea bags to steep for three to five minutes.
Remove the tea bags and lower the heat to medium-low, and add the remaining ingredients save for the almond milk.
Pour the chai tea into two mugs and set aside.****
In a separate cup, froth the almond milk with an immersion blender, milk frother, or simply put in a lidded jar and shake rigorously.  
Pour the milk on top of the tea and garnish with nutmeg.
Serve hot.

Makes 2 servings.

*I used Trader Joe’s Rooibos Chai Tea
**When I was sick this time last year, the old boyfriend put apple cider vinegar in my rooibos tea and it tasted like a tangy hot apple cider. He had read somewhere that it helped with sore throats and the overall feelings of crumminess.
*** I used honey, about one tablespoon per serving. (I get such a sweet tooth for my tea as it gets colder.) But this can be easily made herbivore using maple syrup, stevia, coconut sugar, date sugar, or left unsweetened.
****The pumpkin puree has a tendency to separate and sink to the bottom. Simply stir until you add the almond milk.

Ginger Lemon Tea

It has come to my attention that I have to rethink my life a little bit. My last semester as an undergraduate is less than 1.5 months away from ending, and my schoolwork just sits there, mocking me with its incompleteness. I have been going to class, and it’s not like I don’t have time to do it all, but when I actually get around to reading the books and doing the assignments... let’s just say trying to stay awake is hard enough.

Does this mean I’m lazy? Does this mean I don’t care about my academic career? I don’t think so. I love George Mason University, and I love my major. Without it I don’t think I would have realized my love for food and the magic of bringing people together. In fact, my final project in my Integration class is all about the crime of hunger, and why food from restaurants and supermarkets in the United States are thrown away and not donated to people in need. But even then, as I try to bring it to focus, it remains slightly blurred around the edges.

As you may know, I’ve been sick since last Thursday. With a sore throat, losing my voice every other day, an achy body that especially hurts when touched, and a strange fatigue even after taking naps in the mornings and afternoons, getting glutened didn’t help very much. My immune system was totally compromised. As a result, my stomach was unable to digest the last of the congee without cramping and bloating. Even rice crackers have become a no-no. All that good gut bacteria had been killed off because of the whole flu-gluten thing. As of this morning (i.e. Saturday), the congestion is finally breaking apart and I’m not coughing up what feels to be my good lung. Hopefully by Monday I can resume my running.

I mentioned my undergraduate career is almost up, but I have yet to mention my birthday. The big 2-2 on Wednesday the 16th. Did anyone else have a mid-mid-mid life crisis in their early twenties or before graduation? Despite all of the things I do, I just feel I’m not doing enough or not doing it well enough. I’ve been considering my restaurant idea that has evolved into a café that has evolved into healing resort type thing. I’ve also fretted where I’ll be working to make this dream a reality. But I have to consider the people I love (namely the boyfriend) into my life plans. Life isn’t all about Morri’s, you know.

Life doesn’t start after graduation, and I have to continue to believe in the process and believe this is the path I’m, err, we are meant to take. Everything happens for a reason. And yes, that does include getting sick and getting glutened. Luckily, because of feeling meh, I came up with a delicious tea recipe. When you lose you voice and your tummy is queasy, ginger, lemon, and mint have great healing properties. 

Ginger Lemon Tea

1.5 oz (or more) Fresh ginger, peeled and chopped into big piece
1 Lemon, juiced
32 oz Filtered water
1 pinch Sea salt
1 Mint sprig (with at least 10 leaves), left whole
Honey (or maple syrup), to taste

Bring the water to a boil and steep all the ingredients (sans the honey) on medium-low heat up to an hour.
Turn off the heat and let sit for another hour.
After the water has taking on a light golden color, bring to medium heat until hot.
Pour into up to four teacups and add the amount of sweetener to your preference.

Serves 2 – 4.

Rainy Days and Lattes

As I waited for yet another Morri “Classic” to finish up in the oven, my self-reflections were continuing on where my last post left off. I felt the heat coming off in waves from the kitchen in comparison to the coolness of the rest of the house, and how people embody that warmth with the meals they cook.

This is it. This is the reason why I cook, the reason why I love cooking for others. The warmth from the kitchen is born from the oven turning on, the stove-tops alight, and the presence of the person preparing their latest masterpiece. That same warmth seems to travel from the person cooking the food to the appliances to the food to the person cooking the food to the people eating the food.

Truly it is a phenomenal cycle, filled with loving intentions and care. I may have said I was joking about opening a restaurant, but after Andy Shallal’s talk and the image of Busboys and Poet’s dancing in my head, it has become more than a consideration.

It is becoming a vision.

Bella's Bistro in Simrishamn, Sverige

I romanticize the restaurant business, the dynamics beyond what guests see. Though it’s not just any type of restaurant I idealize, but the quaint locally owned café. Coffee and I go way back. As in, almost eighteen years back. Yes, I’ve been drinking coffee from a sippy cup since I was two, three parts milk and one part of the dark stuff with a little sugar. Shaken, not stirred.

When I graduated from high school I realized my passion for coffee went beyond big business, and I set out for locally owned establishments to work part time. I found myself behind the counter, completely Zen while learning the art of coffee, perfecting the espresso, making a café latte from scratch. Opening and closing were my favorite times, turning on and off the machines, wiping off the counters, listening to music play, and talking with my coworkers. Oddly enough, my times as a barista didn’t last very long. The first time I went to art camp for the summer and came back to the coffee shop overstaffed. The second time I came back from being in Sweden, and it ended up closing down.

I still remember the aroma of the espresso heavy in the air, the heat of the milk as it was frothed and foamed, the smell of chocolate, the taste of quality tea behind the counter. I miss those days, but I still remember the art.

The boyfriend's and my tea date last year

And I took the art home with me.

In Sweden they have this thing called a fika. In my travels blog, I wrote about the wondrous fika often. Fika means "coffee break", which in Sweden implies a true-blue break in the day with a cup of coffee or tea and a sweet. Along with paid lunch breaks, the Swedes are given two fikas during their workday, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. I fell in love with the concept so much I even hosted a few while abroad, but tea was my drink of choice. After getting sick early in the semester, I started having tea in the afternoon before dinner. Since I came back, the tea has been altered slightly into various chai latte concoctions of my own design. 

And on this rainy day, I tried Yerba Mate for the first time. It warmed me to my toes.

So, for those who do not know about coffee and tea, they are prepared in different ways based on the ratio (there's that word again) in which they were prepared.

There is the cappuccino: 1 part espresso, 1 part hot milk, and steamed milk foam on top.
There is the Americano: 1 part espresso, 2 parts hot water.
There is the black eye: 2 parts coffee, 1 part espresso.
There are countless variations to your personal taste, but lattes are my drink of choice.

The Yerba Mate latte didn’t disappoint.

Yerba Mate Latte
3 parts steeped Yerba Mate in hot water for three to five minutes
1 part frothed or steamed milk
Sweetener, to taste
Dash of nutmeg

In your favorite mug, add the Yerba Mate and sweetened.
In a smaller mug, froth up the milk using a hand blender (or if you prefer steamed milk, put it over the saucepan until hot).
Add the milk to the tea, with a dash of nutmeg on top.

Serves as many as you like. :)