Random things I’ve found on the web this week.

Garden Fairies: Hand Embroidery Book Catalog

Beginners Guide Books: Beginners Guide to Berlin Woolwork, Blackwork, Crewel Work, Drawn Thread, Goldwork, Mountmellick, Silk Shading, Stumpwork

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Random things I’ve found on the web this week.

Is Maman mean or magnifique? - Telegraph

Tea and the Guillotine

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

I bought my first tin of Taylors of Harrogate’s “Scottish Breakfast Tea” last Spring, and I fell in love. But as the weather got hotter, I decided it was a tea for cold Winter mornings, and I look forward to buying more now that the weather is chilly and the mornings are turning frosty.

This is really a great tea for the cost. It’s a blend of Assam and Kenyan leaves, and it’s warm and bright in the cup. It’s nice and strong, malty with hints of oak, and I find it on the brisk side so I brew it 190º and take it with a little milk. I get compliments on it whenever I serve it to guests. It’s a favourite of mine that I can’t do without!

It’s a fascinating interview (punctuated by many lovely photos) with the president of the foundry, who says Kikuchi Hojudo was founded during the Azuchi-Momoyama period (c. late 16th century). Go see!

Jelly made with muscat (champagne) grapes. Jonathan made this beautiful-tasting stuff.

Now to check out the stationery section. . . .

Tea Party Girl warns us of The Top Seven Mistakes Tea-Drinkers Make.

Oops, I think I may be guilty of some of these, and probably all of them at some point in the past! I rather like cream or half-and-half in my tea, but maybe I should try milk again? But I like the way the cream sort of swirls at the top . . .

I just put some teas out in glass jars, exposed to light. I don’t want to put them away (they look pretty) so I’ll just see how long it takes me to drink the tea before I change that habit.

While we huddled in the corridor, we ran into a vendor who had decided to take it over with her sparkly body paint and aromatherapy products. She told my niece to taste something, and after my niece did so without thinking, the vendor informed her, “You can get really high off that.” My niece giggled anxiously and then we hurried into the candy store. What the heck?! I think she meant a “spiritual high” or something. I hope. After the candy store we went to a bookstore with a lot of neat books on architecture, design, local history, field guides and the like. I picked up a mushroom field guide, All That the Rain Promises, and More . . . by David Arora, who, merely guessing by his picture, is clearly insane.

Then we went to look for food. The flyer for the fair listed mushroom dishes at various local restaurants. Lobster-stuffed mushrooms looked good, so we headed to the River Bar & Grill. Unfortunately, they weren’t serving their mushrooms until after four, and it was about noon. I gave them back my soda, and we took off, looking for mushroom-laced provisions. We went back to main street and settled in a café, White Mountain Fountain, where they were supposedly serving mushroom risotto; after all the cold and rain this sounded fantastic. . . . Unfortunately the cook had gone grocery shopping and not told the person who made the risotto what it was (!), and so no risotto.

“Okay,” I said, pointing to the Railroad Roast Beef, a roast beef sandwich with plain sauteed button mushrooms, arugula, brie and aioli. “What’s ‘aioli’?”
“It’s like a garlic and mayonnaise spread.”
“Okay. And arugula, that’s a vegetable, like lettuce, right?”
“Right, but we don’t have that. It’ll probably be some other greens, like spinach or romaine . . . And we don’t have brie. It’ll be fontina.”
“Er, okay, well I’ll get the Railroad Roast Beef then, without aioli.”
*panicked look* “But we don’t have arugula, and it’ll be fontina instead of brie!”
“Uh . . . yeah. I’ll take that, and fries with a side of ranch.”
“Ranch?” *more panic* “Okay!”

I think there were about two mushrooms on my sandwich. The waitress ignored us the rest of the meal, and we left, feeling disgruntled and not having eaten a single exotic mushroom of any kind. Finally, we went back out to the booth with the mushroom and lamb stew, the only booth that was apparently serving anything other than button mushrooms (gimme a break!) and had some porcini ravioli which were excellent! We also learned about candy cap mushrooms which apparently are sweet enough to use in desserts and make into syrup.

After that, we went to the rained-out car show in Dunsmuir, looked at ten classic British cars (I think they were all MGs and Austin Healeys), and went to get Frosties in Mount Shasta, the only real success of the day. I had a chocolate and vanilla swirl.