Tag Archives: tea

Tea and Tomatoes

food and cooking, friends, my garden, , ,

Turkish tea fr Kate 9-2014Kate brought me the most amazing tea from Istanbul. I keep sniffing it and trying to discern what all those exotic smells are — no label tells me anything about it. And I’m kind of afraid to make a pot of tea and end up disappointed, because you know how herbal teas often don’t taste as good as their dry aromas lead you to expect? It  Well, what do I expect, after all that watering down…

P1110230 new mugBut when I do take the plunge, I will drink it out of this new mug I gifted myself with. Big mugs, preferably those that hold a pint, are my favorites, but they usually aren’t so girly looking. When I saw this big and flowery one, there was little deliberating.

Today Mr. and Mrs. C. came over. The guys then went to Starbucks to drink tea and talk, and we “girls” worked in the garden. It reminded me of when I was in Turkey lo these many years ago, and in the villages the men would sit in the café and drink tea and play tavla (backgammon) while the women were out in the olive groves harvesting the fruit.tomatoes peeling 9-14

But today really wasn’t much like that – we also spent quite a while looking at pictures of Kate’s wedding for which Mrs. C. had arranged the flowers, and we talked to the man who delivered a cord of firewood on to our driveway. He is 83 and still does all his own busintomatoes peeled 9-14ess.

Mrs. C. is always glad to take cuttings from my garden to experiment with. This time I sent her home with some wayward sprouts of my mystery salvia, and some succulents. Also some of our lovely Yellow Brandywines. But we still have more tomatoes than we can use fresh, so I scalded and peeled a bunch last week and made tomato pudding.

tomatoes peeling ice

Not grumbling or visible.

quotes, work, , , ,

Sandra posted a stimulating group of quotes today for her Sabbath Keeping, with the theme of Work. I usually have to-do lists in many categories stacked on my desk, with some of the entries also boxed in on weekly calendars, so Work is an entity, an idea, a reality that I spend a lot of time on — I’m human, after all, made in the image of God, and in John 5:17, “… Jesus answered them, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.'”

I have a pretty good collection of quotes on this subject myself, and one anonymous maxim from The Salt Cellar collection of Charles Spurgeon is a favorite: “They never wrought a good day’s work who went grumbling about it.”

I also love this one by Teresa of Avila: “It is only mercenaries who expect to be paid by the day.” Those two might just about sum up, my apophatic theology of work.

But today I was comforted by Victor Hugo’s reminder that Sandra passed on: “A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”

Reading all these quotes about work and thinking about many things, I was fortified by drinking a new herbal tea that Soldier gave me a while back. It is my latest favorite. I made a potful to keep me going for a couple of hours of my favorite kind of work.

A saint, a party, a hot day.

church, food and cooking, garden, , ,

The most important thing, today, is that it is the day when we commemorate Saint Joanna, wife of Herod’s steward and follower of Christ, one of the women who came to the tomb to anoint His body, only to find that He was not there, because our Lord had risen from the dead.

I took the name of Joanna as my Orthodox, baptismal name when I converted, so “her day” is my day, and thoughts of her and her example, our communion in Christ, our prayers for each other, overshadowed the day with a sweetness. This evening, I was able to go to Vespers, always a blessed beginning of The Lord’s Day.

But I also went to a tea party given by a young friend. It was hot today, and we ate out of doors under an awning. The colors were refreshing, including the tea: green or passion fruit. It was iced tea, served in teacups.

My friends’ garden is always full of flowers, of few of which were happy to float in plenty of water, and in the shade, on such a day.

Salad was the perfect main course, followed by ice cream. I had no time to photograph the ice cream as I was too busy eating it before it melted.

When I came home, Mr. Glad let me know that as the forecast is for more heat tomorrow, he invited some other young friends to come and swim after church tomorrow. I immediately thought of how hungry kids get after swimming, and remembered that I had some cookie dough in the freezer. I can’t remember if I made the dough for Christmas or for a tea party, but no matter, it baked up into nice Cardamom Butter Squares tonight. Even on hot days, in our area, the nights are usually cool. If one has baking to do, it is best to do it in the evening so that all that oven heat dissipates before the next day. This is one way we manage without air conditioning.

In the background of the cookies, you can see some crayons and paper, tools for a very preliminary step toward designing a baby quilt I hope to make this summer. One step at a time…”inch by inch, it’s a cinch.”

It was a full and rich day, on many levels. As I drove home from Vespers, I even saw “my” goslings in the park!