Tea and Cup Wisdom

Green Teas & Honey ~ No, not contraband!

Just a quick post to let y'all know that I am still here. This past week has been one of the more hectic ones, so this post is fitting in that it shows one of the little pleasures that I have had time for even in the busiest of times.

The above photo shows an old favorite and my new love in organic loose leaf teas. The jar on the left contains organic Gunpowder Green Tea. That's the old favorite. Its leaves are tightly curled up into little grey-green balls, I assume resembling the look of gunpowder, and it brews up into a strong, sort of musty cup of green tea, depending of course, on how much tea is used and how long you let it steep. It gives me a good kick-start in the mornings. I tend to just put a couple of teaspoons of loose Gunpowder green into the coffee filter of my automatic coffee maker and let the water pour through it to make a very nice, very easy pot of morning tea. Works great, although it doesn't sound like it would, does it?

My new love, is shown in the little custard cup on the right of the photo. That is organic Jasmine Green Tea. I have tried many jasmine flavored teas over many years, and so far, after just one cup, I proclaim this one the very best. The runner up jasmine tea was one I found about 20 years ago that had little white jasmine flowers in it, but it was expensive, kind of hard to find and not labeled organic. Now this jasmine tea is still quite expensive. It retails for about $36 per pound, but a pound of tea lasts a very long time. This is top quality loose leaf organic green tea in my opinion.

Both of these teas were purchased by me from the Frontier Naturals company. I am a retailer who sells Frontier Naturals products and their sister company products (Aura Cacia and Simply Organic) so I do have access to their wholesale quantities and pricing. From time to time I personally sample new products with the idea of adding them to my product inventory. These wonderful green teas have impressed me with their taste and their exceptional quality, so I will definitely consider adding them to my inventory. The only hurdle is figuring out some nice packaging to be able to offer smaller, more affordable quantities of tea to my customers. Not many would want to buy a whole pound of loose leaf tea, I think.

These teas have brought me comfort and pleasure, and I'd like to be able to offer the same things to my customers. Any ideas from you all on how I could package a few ounces of tea that would be attractive, sanitary and convenient for my customers?

One more thing to share with you before I go back to my busy work week:


Starbuck's Cup with Quote

This is a photo of a cup that I got at our local Starbuck's Coffee house last night on my way to class. I rarely go into Starbuck's since I pretty much stopped drinking coffee about a year ago, but I still had a bunch of funds left on one of my gift cards, so I thought I'd better go spend them before they close our local store, which could happen any time now if you've been watching the national news. I bought a tea drink that was very tasty and took it to my computer class with me. During a lull in the class activities I happened to notice that my cup had a quotation on it that I read and really liked, so I am sharing it with you today. You can click on the photo of the cup and read the quote directly, but here it is below to make it easier to read:

"The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you're not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don't take it personally when they say "no" - they may not be smart enough to say "yes". "

~ Keith Olbermann

I find that the universe reminds me of things that I may already know but have forgotten, right when I need to remember them again. I find quotes like this popping up, books falling at my feet, people I haven't heard from in ages, songs that have a message all presenting themselves to me right when I need to hear, see and know them the most.

They are little reminders to me that we are not alone in this life. We are all connected in some way.

Enjoy your quiet moments. Drink your tea or coffee or glass of wine. Ponder life in all its intricacy.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

OMG PB&J Sandwich-gasm!

Peanut Butter & Apricot Jam on freshly made white bread

It was so good that I almost forgot to take a photo for you all. That was probably the best PB&J sandwich I have ever tasted.

I like this bread baking stuff. Gonna keep doing it.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

White Bread Again

Farmhouse White Bread #2

Well, I decided to try baking another loaf of Farmhouse White bread that I wrote about in my previous post.

This time I used the same basic recipe as last time with just a few tweaks. I added 1/4 teaspoon more instant yeast and I cut way back on the salt, using only about 1/4 teaspoon this time, since I found the first loaf a little salty for my taste buds. I also didn't have any bread flour available, so I used all purpose flour with some extra wheat gluten added in (1 teaspoon gluten per cup of flour to make bread flour substitute). Again, I used my favorite brand of flour, King Arthur.

Just for experiment purposes and also because I was too busy today to tend to mixing and kneading bread dough all by hand, I put the ingredients into my bread machine and let the machine do the work for me. After first rise the dough was ready for me to remove and shape into a loaf. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I was distracted by other things and let the risen dough sit in the machine for about 30 minutes longer than I was supposed to.

Well, I took it out and flattened it out a bit into a large rectangle, then rolled it up like a jelly roll into a log shape and plunked into the same loaf pan that used for the first loaf I baked a few days ago. Making sure to crimp the edges together so it would stay together as a nice loaf shape. I covered it with a damp tea towel and set it on a TV tray in front of the fire in my woodstove to maintain a temperature of about 74 degrees F while the dough rose in the pan.

Well, either the warmer room, the little more yeast, the smaller amount of salt or the gluten enhanced flour made this loaf rise a lot more than the first one did. After about 60 minutes it had doubled in size and was pushing the tea towel up and up. So into the oven it went to bake for 35 minutes at 375 degrees F.

It came out fluffy and beautiful. Much more the shape that I desire in a homemade sandwich loaf of bread.


Better shaped sandwich bread

It tasted a better to me than my first try because it isn't as salty, and I like that better. I have already eaten 3 warm pieces of bread with butter, and I usually don't use butter even when I bake. I only use it on fresh warm bread, so this bread baking hobby of mine may not be so good for my saturated fat intake. Perhaps I should try my fresh bread dipped in extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yes, that might be good.

I will have to see how this second loaf performs as toast and in sandwiches. Will it fall apart or will it be elastic enough to hold substantial sandwich contents? How long will it stay fresh? So much experimenting to do!

I do plan to make bread completely from scratch, doing the mixing and kneading completely by hand again, but I had to try it out at least once using the bread machine. Now I know what results I will get on those days when I don't have time to do it all by hand. I may also have learned something about the kneading process from the bread machine. I may have kneaded the dough a little too roughly by hand, perhaps making more gluten than I needed to, in my endeavor to be thorough my first time out. I am after all, a massage therapist by profession, one whose specialty is deep tissue work which involves a lot of heavy kneading of my client's muscles. I may have taken the kneading job a bit too seriously when making bread the first time. So the next time I make fresh bread completely by hand, I will lighten up a bit, perhaps giving my bread dough a lighter "spa massage" instead of the full up "sports massage". Ha!

Happy baking everyone. Good thing to do on a cold winter's day.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Bread 101

Freshly Baked Loaf of White Bread

Well, since we have had Muffin Monday and Soup Saturday here at Mountain Harvest Basket recently, I thought it was time for "Bread Baking Sunday". Well, so much for continuing with the fun alliteration...oh well, maybe "Sandwich Loaf Sunday"...

I have baked bread before "from scratch", but always with the aid of a bread machine to do the mixing and kneading etc. I would usually take the dough out of the machine before the baking cycle, and shape and bake it in my oven since I don't like the way my bread machine baked bread turns out. Funny shapes and hard crusts come out of that bread machine, but it does make mixing the dough an easy task. However, easy does not always give a good homemade product. So this time I decided to try my hand at mixing, kneading etc all by hand. I really want to be able to make great tasting, healthy and less expensive fresh breads for myself and my family.

So I started with this recipe I got from Farmgirl Susan from her great blogs Farmgirl Fare and A Year in Bread. She calls this bread Farmhouse White. I have tried several of her other recipes over the past year and have always been pleased with the results.



Since Farmgirl Susan's recipe for Farmhouse White bread makes 3 loaves of sandwich style bread, I decided that for this first bread making experiment I would only make one loaf just in case I really screwed up and it didn't turn out. I didn't want to waste 3 times the ingredients my first time up at bat.

I followed her instructions carefully and I was very pleased with the results of my first time making and baking a loaf of bread completely from scratch. Of course, her loaves of bread look so much better than mine do. Mine wasn't as tall and fluffy looking as hers were. She gives some hints on which loaf pans to use to get that tallness, and my pan was not exactly the right size. This does give me a good data point from which to progress with future baking projects.

I was very pleased with the taste and texture of this bread. It was moist yet not soggy. It was elastic enough to make a good sandwich without falling apart as my previous breads had. It tasted great, perhaps a bit salty for me (since I don't use salt in much of anything), and the crust turned out a beautiful light golden brown.



I will make this bread again. I will find better loaf pans. I will experiment with different kneading techniques and play with the ingredients.

Someday I want to make whole grain breads and crusty artisan loaves as well as this basic white sandwich style bread. I had a fun time baking on a cold and rainy Sunday. I just might enjoy this as a new hobby. I'll see how it goes.

Any suggestions from you all on which bread baking book I should buy that will tell me the basic methods and also have other recipes for me to try?

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Chicken Soup for the Cold

It is cold and rainy here today. I've had about 4 inches of rain in the past 48 hours here. So says my nifty new digital rain gauge that I received from Bob for Christmas. It actually says 3.99 inches, but I call that "about 4".

Anyway, the skies have dumped a whole bunch of rain on me and my little plot of earth. Everything is wet, cold and muddy outside. I just built a nice warm fire in my woodstove, so it's getting nice and warm in here. I love that lasting, penetrating heat that the woodstove provides. Both of my indoor kitties, Jessie and Frieda, are curled up by the fire as I type this. I love that.

I woke today feeling like maybe a cold was coming on. A little sinus congestion. A few more body aches than usual. I wrote it off to the cold, wet weather and tried to ignore it. Then this afternoon I got a craving for homemade chicken noodle soup. So I made some in my big pot on the stove. Good thing too, because as of about two hours ago, I can feel my ears starting to stuff up, with a pronounced ache in the right one, and a sinus headache starting. I really don't want to get sick. I hate that.

So here's a few shots of my homemade chicken soup:


Sauteeing the veggies: carrots, onion, celery, a little bok choy, a lot of garlic, some fresh from the garden parsley...

I like to have lots of veggies in my homemade chicken soup, and I usually have a nice selection of fresh ones available due to our local organic farmer. I added some chunks of cooked organic chicken breast to my soup and simmered it with the veggies and some homemade turkey stock.

While the soup simmered, I turned my attention to the noodle part of the soup.

I have always wanted to make homemade pasta and noodles, and I even have one of those cool hand crank pasta machines around here somewhere that I bought a few years ago and never used. So I decided that I would search for it another day and just roll out my simple egg noodle dough by hand with a rolling pin:


Noodle dough rolled out as flat as possible, drying before cutting into noodles

Now that I have done the rolling by hand this one time, I plan to find that pasta machine in whatever deep cabinet I've hidden it in. It was not that easy to get that noodle dough to stretch out thin enough for the soup noodles I wanted to make. It kept trying to shrink back up into a thick slab! I coaxed it to lay out pretty flat and thin, but I wasn't that happy with the results.

After letting the dough dry flat for a few minutes, I then rolled it gently and sliced it into noodle ribbons, which I then cut in half because I was making soup not pasta:

Raw noodles dusted with flour drying a bit more before being cooked

Then when the rest of my soup was ready, nicely simmered with the veggies tender, I added the freshly made noodles to the pot and made sure the heat was high enough to boil them gently for about 15-20 minutes.

Here's what the finished noodles and soup looked like in a bowl. Actually this was my second bowl of soup. I ate the first one so fast I forgot to take a picture of it for you.

Chicken Soup for my cold ~ some heart shaped noodles floating on top

So even with big fat noodles that took over the whole pot of soup because they swelled up when cooked, the homemade chicken soup was very tasty, warm and comforting. Two bowls filled me up for a late afternoon dinner on this cold and wet rainy day. I sure hope it makes my cold go away.

Now to go sit by my warm fire and relax.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

More Muffins

Freshly baked banana nut muffins!

Well, true to my word, I baked another batch of my banana nut muffins the other night. You know, just to keep the house warm with the heat from the oven.

This batch of muffins was even more delicous than the last. I've been using more King Arthur brand flour in my baking lately, and I've been loving the great results. The texture of these muffins are really nice. Moist with great crumb, but not soggy. I used half King Arthur all purpose flour (white) and half King Arthur "white whole wheat" flour in these. I am very pleased with that combination. I try to add as much whole grain healthiness into my cooking and baking as I can.


Ready for the oven

I was also pleased to note on the King Arthur flour bag that their flour is milled from all US grown wheat. I like that. They just seem like a really good solid company. I will be using more of their flour in my baking and cooking from now on.

I was watching a Good Eats episode on TV the other night that had Alton Brown telling us all about making muffins. I recall he said we would get more volume out of our muffins if we cooled them upside down on a tea towel. So I tried it.


Muffins cooling

Not sure if I got more volume in my muffins, but it did work well for allowing them to cool nicely. I had them upside down for awhile on a clean tea towel placed over my cooling rack. The tea towel prevents the cooling rack from leaving marks on the muffin tops. It worked.

You will notice that I used paper baking cups to line my grandma's old muffin pan that I use. Keeps them from sticking, reduces clean up and gives them a nice wrapper when sharing with friends. I usually use the standard pastel paper cups that I find for sale in my grocery store. You know the ones, they come in pastel pink, yellow and blue. Well, about a week ago, I was in the baking supply aisle of our Whole Foods market, looking for something else, when I spied some new, more environmentally friendly baking cups.

Natural muffin cups

They are natural brown, made from unbleached paper and compostable. The cardboard box they are packaged in is made from 100% recycled paper. They cost a little more than the regular cups, but not much more.

What I liked best about their performance is that the muffin paper peels off so easily from the muffin, no sticking at all. And they look really nice on the muffins. A toasty brown color instead of the pastel colors. I think it enhances the rustic muffin look. Also I don't have to worry about who gets the pink one or the yellow one etc, because they are all brown... Ha! Yes, I need a life...

Anyway, more environmentally friendly muffin cup info can be found at the If You Care website. Apparently, they make coffee filters and other paper products too. Not a great website, but it does give more info.

Happy winter baking to you all!

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Spring in January?

Spring bulbs emerging early

I know that many parts of the US are having very cold weather right now. Lots of snow, ice and rain going on out there according to the weather news. Here in the Sierra foothills we have been having unseasonably mild weather all week. It's been very sunny and warm during the day with mild breezes. Feels like Spring is happening in the middle of January.

A couple of days ago, I donned a short sleeved tee shirt and a pair of summer shorts and sat in my lounge chair (you know, the lounge chair that was covered in 6 inches of snow not very long ago) to soak up some sun and get my natural vitamin D while reading my newest herb book. I must have stayed out there about an hour just enjoying the quiet day and relaxing. Something I don't do very often. I even heard a few frogs/toads waking up and talking to each other. Sure seemed like Spring was starting in the middle of January.

The photo above shows Spring bulbs, they are either crocus or grape hyacinth, that are planted in my terra cotta bowl on my porch, emerging from the soil as the weather warms up this week. They are even bigger today than when I took this photo earlier in the week.

I know we will get more cold, rainy and even snowy weather before Spring really arrives in March, but for now we are having a nice Spring preview. It is confusing the plants though. They will all pop out and then get snowed on in a few days or weeks. Always an adventure with nature.

For those of you who have colder weather where you are right now, take heart that Spring is not very far away. It will be here soon.

The nights are still cold here. Each day in the late afternoon the temperature drops and my house does get quite cool. I haven't been building many fires in my woodstove yet this winter, but I have been baking things in my kitchen. You know, just to help warm up the house...

Last week I baked a batch of banana muffins to use up the overripe bananas, and to warm up the house, of course.

I need to make another batch, as these are long gone by now, and I have more overripe bananas sitting around. And I need to keep my house warm on these cold nights....yeah...that's it...keep the house warm.

What's the weather like where you are today?

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket