Tag Archives: Tea Blogathon

The Pouring Teapot ~ Tea Blogathon

This week’s Gracious Hospital-i-Tea Blog-a-Thon is all about Teapots. Share your teapots and any stories behind them.

This was the first teapot I ever owned. Royal Albert Moss Rose. I bought a complete tea set when travelling to the UK on a Christian music tour/outreach in 1973.

These are the dishes I registered for when Dear and I set our wedding date. They are Pfaltzgraff Yorktowne. I did not register for China. I was happy to get both of these teapots as wedding gifts.

 

Dear and I bought this teapot in 1975 after we were married. It has a cylinder that you put the tea leaves in and it sets right down into the boiled water and the tea steeps without a tea leaf issue when you pour the tea into the cup. I don’t have access to the teapot right now to show you the cylinder.

When my parents were in their 70’s they went back to their hometowns in Russia and started a church and ministry to their relatives and others who lived in their village. These teapots were a gift to Dear and I from them from Russia. You would use the large one for hot water and the small one for a strong steep of tea.

They also brought us back the red and gold samovar. The Samovar on the right is a purchase I made from Goodwill. The little metal samovar is a gift from my SIL.

This teapot is a gift from my good friend Jody. She purchased it on a mission trip to China.

I found out during the blogathon that this teapot is from a nesting set of 3 pots and this is probably the creamer. It’s from Japan made in the ’30’s.

I purchased this during the blogathon at TJMax because of the English tourist spots pictured on it. Did I mention that I love the UK and love travelling there?

On Mother’s Day I purchased this Teapot at the Rose Bowl Flea Market. I just read The Wind in the Willows for the first time this year and this teapot seemed perfect to remember my quest to read Children’s Classics in 2008.

Last but not least, I finally made the plunge and bought myself an electric tea kettle this year. It’s fabulous. The water heats so quickly and I don’t have to worry about leaving the flame on under the kettle!

To see more Teapot Stories visit LaTeaDah at Gracious Hospitality.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage and they have blacked them all out. I’m slowly working at restoring my posts without their help. Such a tiresome bother!

Rose Bowl Flea Market ~ Tea Venue?

Although we couldn’t have a proper tea at the flea market, we could certainly buy everything we’d need to host a beautiful High Tea! So I’m going outside the box as LaTeaDah suggested and show you what we saw at the huge wonderful Rose Bowl Flea Market. I’m also going to include a couple shots of pretties for tea that I found at a local shop in Camarillo and a collage of Royal Albert goodies from the Royal Doulton shop in the Camarillo Outlet Mall.

The Rose Bowl is in Pasadena, California. It’s probably best known for the Rose Bowl Football Game on January 1st every year and for UCLA regular season football games. We arrived at 7:00am for one of the early bird entries for $15.00. The 9:00 am entry is $10.00.

 

We saw so many wonderful vintage hats and clothes.

 

These Russian “podstakaniki” (tea glass holders) were incredibly expensive.

 

Tables and ground space was covered with all kinds of oldies but goodies.

 

There were many vintage themed spaces.

Any kind of tablecloth you’d want. There was one stall where they just had piles of old vintage and lace tablecloths, napkins, tea towels piled in mounds. Tablecloths for $8 each and the napkin pile for $1 each. There were plenty with stains on them but a fair amount of them were stain free.

 

Rows and Rows and Rows of stuff. See how empty the walk-way is. That’s the advantage of coming in early. It was filled with people at 10:00 am.

 

There were many pretty tea cups and accessories. Some spaces had complete tea sets and old sets of china to sell also. They ranged from $75.00 to $700.00. The $700.00 set was a complete service for 12 with covered vegetable dishes, etc. (English) Now here are some goodies from my home town of Camarillo.

 

These first two shots are from a new shop in Camarillo. Most of this stuff is made in China. It’s priced reasonably.

 

Camarillo also has a popular Outlet Mall Center. One of the shops in the center is the Royal Doulton shop where you can buy Royal Albert items. Here’s a collage of some of the patterns offered there.

 

Before I sign off here are the 3 items I bought at the Rose Bowl Flea Market.

My favorite purchase was this The Wind in the WillowsTea Pot made by Sadler (England). This was fun for me to find because I just read The Wind in the Willows this year. I’m on a quest to read many children’s classics that I somehow missed reading in my youth.

A glass cake plate with a Thistle pattern

And this pretty Royal Albert teacup and saucer, “Blossom Time”

For more Tea Rooms and Tea Venues you can head over to Gracious Hospitality.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage and they have blacked them all out. I’m slowly working at restoring my posts without their help. Such a tiresome bother!

Set the Tea Table ~ Vintage Blue

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage and they have blacked them all out. I’m slowly working at restoring my posts without their help. Such a tiresome bother!

“American-style iced tea is the perfect drink for a hot, sunny day. It’s never really caught on in the UK, probably because the last time we had a hot, sunny day was back in 1957.”
Tom Holt

 

 

 The dishes are Johnson Brothers/English Chippendale/design pattern 103232.

For more Set the Tea Table click over to Gracious Hospitality.

Japanese Tea ~ Matcha and Katie’s Yukata

Here is the second guest post from my daughter Katie. She has included photos of her Yukata and a little description of the type of tea used in her Art of Japanese Tea classes.

“I finally received my yukata! Here are some pictures of me wearing it down at the arboretum. Don’t judge my obi tying too harshly, this was the first week that I dressed myself without help from my friend Mika or my teacher.

 

 

In the class we have now done the full procedure for taking a sweet from a bowl with chopsticks several times, have begun doing the full procedure for taking tea, and just started practicing the procedures for purifying all the implements before whisking tea. I got complimented by some of my peers and by my teacher for my tea-whisking skill. 🙂 The tea we use is matcha, which is powdered green tea. It’s…an acquired taste, but I think I’m starting to like it. Mika insists that it is addictive. I guess I just don’t have an addictive personality, haha.”

Thank you so much Katie!

For more posts on Favorite Teas click over to Gracious Hospitality.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage and they have blacked them all out. I’m slowly working at restoring my posts without their help. Such a tiresome bother!

Cherry Varenya ~ Russian Tea Sweetener

The Russian immigrants I grew up around would make and enjoy this Cherry Syrup made with whole pie cherries in their hot tea. They used this syrup in place of sugar to sweeten their tea. I called my mother this week to get the following recipe from her to share for The-Sweet-and-Savory-of-Yummy.

This is a very simple recipe for Cherry Varenya. This is a syrup made with Cherries to sweeten hot tea with.

Cherry Varenya

1/2 Cup Water
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Whole Sour Cherries (Pie Cherries)
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

You would increase the proportions of this recipe according to how many cherries you have on hand that you want to make into Varenya.

Boil the water and sugar to make a clear simple syrup. When the liquid is clear add your cherries and let it boil for 10 to 20 minutes (depending on how hard the cherries were to begin with) At the end of the boiling add 1 Tablespoon of fresh lemon juice to help preserve the brightness of the syrup.

You may want to can it at this point. (I don’t know how to can anything so you are on your own here!) 🙂

You can do this process with sliced lemons, too, to make a Lemon Varenya.

Lemon Varenya

When I was young our family would go to a Cherry Orchard somewhere near Lancaster, California in July when the pie cherries were ready to harvest. It might have been in the Leona Valley. We would pick cherries all day and take home upwards of 40 pounds of cherries. That’s a lot of Varenya. When we picked this much my parents would give about half of the cherries away to other relatives and friends who couldn’t make the trek out to the Cherry Farm. Then it was a full day of preparing the cherries for Varenya. Washing, cooking and canning.