Locally Grown Girl

horror/happiness

I have never before been so simultaneously horrified at and delighted by a licensed product.

Behold. It's Hello Kitty wine. Please little baby jesus, let there be a Domo wine box in the works.

 And thanks/groan to Julien for pointing this out.

One, Two, Chai-Chai-Chai

(The title is in honor of my 10th grade gym teacher, a 4.5' tall woman with a 2' beehive, who taught me how to do the cha cha. I doubt Mizz Willkins would much like chai, unless it was iced, non-milked, non-spiced, and ten times sweeter than normal. Southerners will recognize the final result as being simply "tea".)

About a year ago, I started wondering whether I liked chai or whether I only thought I liked chai. Ordering it in cafes, it often seemed both bland and too sweet, but what I got in Indian restaurants was never bland (if occasionally sweeter than I like) and always pretty likable. I figured out that there was a specific brand--Morning Glory--that a bunch of cafes sold, which I liked. I still do like it.

But what I've found from them in shops is the pre-mixed boxed blend, and I wanted something a little more customizable, especially after reading the whole strange history of British tea companies giving tea away all over India, for several years, to create the now gigantic Indian tea market. The spices were added because spices are added to everything there--and the tea companies kept trying to lower the proportions because more spice/cup = less tea/cup. (There's also a whole thing related to caste and the type of tea cup used, which led to a few riots--it's sort of a Jim Crow story, but you should just read the book.)

There's one other reason--a minor one--that I didn't really want to suck down a couple of cups each day of the Morning Glory version: They load it up with five herbs meant to be medicinal. Because I happen to think that a great many herbs are, in fact, medicinal, I would prefer to only take them when I want them--not as an unnecessary "tonic". (The alternative, I think, is assuming that each cup of tea has unnoticeable amounts of each herb, in which case they still shouldn't be there.) It's not like I avoid the brand--I think the flavor's vastly better than the other boxed chais I've had. But until I'm convinced that I need a daily hit of astragalus to avoid diabetes, I'd prefer it not be in my afternoon tea.

I tried a few chai-spiced loose teas, and bleh--I didn't like any of them. Some whole spices were usually visible, but the taste was that of cinnamon and/or clove oil--Red Hots plus toothache remedy. Because the tea had already been mixed in with the spice, it meant that either the spices were under-steeped, or the tea was over-steeped. I was reluctantly considering going to the fussbudgety zenith of hand-blending spices and keeping a tub separate from the tea--but that would've led to a whole round of testing plus about 30 minutes of delayed gratification everything time I thought, "hmm, chai sounds good".

Then I wandered into Travelers looking for lentils and saw an interesting packet of chai, which included a bag of spice blend and a separate bag of black tea. The directions had each packet steeping for different times, and a note that the final blend could be stored in the fridge for a while. It was good--the right spice blend for me, and the steeping times seemed accurate--and duh, storing a non-sweetened, non-milky, pre-made blend in the fridge is just what I needed. A more recent trip turned up an improvement: The spice blend packet is available separately, without the tea packet, which means I can use my own preferred tea to mix with it.

My tea leaves are larger than the Travelers brand, so the steeping time needs a bit of fiddling, but in general, it's still yummy. I'm not sure why or how--let's say epiphany--but I determined that evaporated milk is part of the proper taste and texture for my ideal chai. Lastly, the tea and spice mix has to be strained through a double layer of cheesecloth, because I hate the grainy spice sludge that's fine enough to make it through my sieve. (I am not an oyster. My liquids should come pre-strained.)

Two Kinds of Tea

I struggle against being a beverage snob. Of all the assorted sub-types of food nerd, I have found wine, beer, coffee and tea nerds to be the most tiresome, although in all cases I sincerely appreciate a really excellent version and the effort that goes into making it.

With wine, I've decided that it's so personal that there's no determining a "great" wine from an "ok" wine on a uniform basis. I have about six beers per year, and they're generally PBR, so clearly I shouldn't add any sort of opinion to what's already out there (unless "I like PBR" counts). Coffee is trickier, because I can identify a well-made espresso from a bad one (live in Seattle for a few years, and you too will date at least one barista).I know enough about bean freshness and grind to matter--but I don't drink enough to have ever invested in good equipment (in fact--thanks, Dex--the current coffeemaker was free!).

That leaves tea (ha!), and since I just spent 30 minutes reading about my preferred tea (Sri Lankan, and I cannot emphasize enough how important fair trade is with tea), it has become apparent that I am at least halfway to Destination: Tea Snob. I started brewing it from loose leaves about two years ago. The microwave allows me to have gotten embarrassingly precise (44 seconds!) about water temperature so that the water zooms up to an actual boil when I mess up its molecules by dropping in the in-cup filtering unit. (And yes, this bit of pop science every morning is still fun, even after two years.) Since the water's the same every day, I've been able to learn with a glance when the tea leaves are fully unfurled but not, to my taste, oversteeped...although I know my tannin-loving brother would leave the tea in all day and be perfectly content until it actually solidified.

Because I make myself a single large cup each morning (and my cup is actually a 12-ounce heavy-weight glass with no handle, so it helps my hands warm up), my technique falls apart when friends are over and I try and make a pot. It's difficult to time the boiling of a quart of water precisely to the boil-when-you-displace-it point, and without that burst of heat, the leaves unfurl differently and then the steeping time is all messed up. Part of me is content to leave it like this (take that, hostessing guilt!) but not all. It's odd to think about a choice between excellence and normality, but sooner or later it happens to everyone--but probably over a sport or a career, rather than the making of tea.

It's almost warm enough for me to not think about it again. Once spring is really here, Cap'n will start making pitchers of his chem-class-calibrated semi-sweet tea. I know he started with the iced tea recipe in one of the Cook's Illustrated books, and I know that I add so much simple syrup I might as well drink it straight and throw the tea down the drain. That is all I want to know. Let him pursue the excellence of iced tea; I will pursue excellence in lolling about on the sofa pretending it's too hot to do anything.

Maybe it's not willpower that will save me from tea snobbery--it's laziness. 

When A Sweater Isn't Enough

First off, a weather note: it's flood season around Puget Sound. Now is an excellent time to go out of your way to support your favorite local farm. Spend the extra to pick up Golden Glen milk at Whole Foods, brave the rain at next weekend's farmers markets, get on a list for next year's CSA programs, place an on line order for Christmas presents from farm stores. A soon as the flood waters recede, go buy a local Christmas tree. Dig around for products or sources right here.

A couple hours before it snowed on Saturday, I was attempting to look cute at the University District Farmers Market for a photo shoot (photographer: "can you look a little less cold?" me: [grimace, shiver, shiver, grimace]). I thawed slightly, thanks to the generous cups of exceptionally tasty hot apple cider from Rock ridge Cider. We sipped the plain (unsliced) country apple cider and I was blown away by the goodness--a pleasant sweetness in addition to so many different flavors I at first thought it was spiced with a bit of cinnamon--no wait, brown sugar--no wait, honey, no wait--nutmeg. I've never met a non-alcoholic cider that deserved tasting notes. It's also got good country-apple texture; it doesn't just look like juice. I grabbed a gallon jug and a wine-sized bottle of their Asian pear cider as well. The website says they're at the U District and Ballard markets all year and--not sure if this is retail or just in the restaurant--that their products are carried at Seattle Art Museum. If I hadn't been quite so stupidly cold, I would've caught that this is the same farm in Inimical I was so excited about this summer; they grow tea. Among many other wonderful plants.

And while officially standing around in 34-degree cold doesn't actually give a person a cold, I sure do have a sore throat, cough and sniffle since yesterday. I'm using it as an excuse to drink lots of one of my favorite childhood beverages: hot lemonade. The easy way to make it--and one can even find it on the menu at Hagen Daze shops--is to add a scoop of lemon sorbet to a mug of boiling water. The more complicated way is to simply make a glass of lemonade with hot water and skip the standard ice level. Since I've never met two people with the same precise preferences for sweet-to-tart-to-water, it seems silly to give a recipe. I usually use a couple teaspoons of sugar to a quarter lemon and around nine ounces of water. When my throat hurts a lot, I make it even sweeter, and will only add honey under extreme raw-throated duress: if I wanted it to have that healthy honey flavor, I would just make a hot toddy. (Which should give y'all a fine idea for what qualifies as "healthy" in my diet.)

This Milkshake Is Better Than Yours

Last year in Ecuador, I developed a fondness for the batido--basically, a fruity, creamy milkshake/slushy that is thin and free of ice cream, but fulfills the same sweet, cold and non-alcoholic role that the milkshake fulfills in the US. I've experimented a lot at home over the summer making my own versions, and it's weirdly hard to make them thinner than a slurpee. Best combination so far: frozen peach puree, frozen Goya passion fruit puree, nonfat milk, and mango juice. Second best: pineapple, pineapple juice, ice, nonfat milk and frozen Goya naranjilla puree. Unfortunately, I've found that the Goya purees are pretty tart, and not very much like the perfect candy-fruits that were all over Ecuador. It's probably the same problem that canned and frozen US fruit has--picked too green to actually be all that good. Still, it's the only way I can get a naranjilla in Washington, so I'll add sugar and enjoy. (I suggest the nonfat milk because the whole point is to be a little milky, not all rich and filled with butterfat. It's one of the rare times in life I find the lower-fat option to be the tastier choice.)

So far in Seattle, I've only found batidos at two restaurants. Galerias, over on Broadway, has a delicious mango, orange and peach slurpee-style one they call the Tropical. (Last time I was there, the machine was broken. Here's hoping it's fixed quickly.) La Casa del Mojito on Lake City Way usually has a few kinds, including narajilla (they call it lulo there--same fruit, several names). One place I haven't ever been to lists batidos on their menu: El Diablo Coffee Company, on Queen Anne. I've heard great things about both their coffee and their hot chocolate, but it's the batido I will make a point of trying.

We're off to the Yucatan in September, and verifying the local existence of batidos was one of the first things I did when I got my hands on a guidebook--they're called licuados, but it's the same idea. A quick google of the word licuado led me to the gotmilk website, where--how brilliant is this?--they have four California regional guides to places you can get licuados and what flavors are the most popular at each establishment. It strikes me as a well-done publication; along with a listing of type (restaurant, deli or juice bar), it lists which places are bilingual Spanish/English and which are Spanish only. I tried googling Seattle and licuados, and all I got was an old KIRO thing for Cinco de Mayo. The headline refers to "sassy sippers".

I don't normally say--or think--"look at how much better LA is than Seattle", but the difference between a concise and helpful booklet on my favorite drink and a single cheesy headline for an equally cheesy beer marketing holiday? Dear GotMilk Dairy Board Heroes: Please come to Washington and present me with a licuado guide for my home state. I have gotten your researcher started with the above entry.