Lapsang Souchong
When I was in college, my aunt sent me a box of Lapsang Souchong tea. Winters were long and cold, rainy and windy, and lapsang souchong has a very smokey taste. Often as I was studying, I would have a cup next to me to warm me from the inside, but also because I was so totally addicted to the smell, which is like that of a wood-burning fire.
I checked lapsang souchong on Wikipedia, and this is what they say:
Lapsang souchong is a black tea originally from the Mount Wuyi area in the Fujian province of China[1], sometimes referred to as Smoke Tea. The tea leaves have been withered over pine or cedar fires, pan-fired, rolled and oxidized before being fully dried in bamboo baskets over burning pine.[2] The result is a smoky, robust tea with an overriding scent and flavour of wood smoke, which dominates the flavour of the black tea itself.
The name in Fukienese means “smokey sub-variety”, and is a variation of the older WuyiBohea tea.[3] In popular legend the tea was created during the Qing dynasty when soldiers camping in a tea processing company delayed the drying of the tea leaves. After the soldiers had left, the workers sped up the drying process by hanging the tea leaves over burning pine wood. [4]
Lapsang souchong from the original source is expensive, as Wuyi is a small area and there is increasing interest in the tea. [5]
the Wikipedia article on lapsang souchong (which you can read for yourself by clicking on the blue type) also says lapsang souchong is “an acquired taste.”
They are right. It is strong, not at all refined. I haven’t seen Lapsang Souchong on the menus anywhere in Kuwait. It is beginning to appear on a menu or two back in Seattle, where tea shops are plentiful and tea is widely appreciated.
I fixed some for a friend who dropped by the other afternoon, and revelled in the smokey scent that lingers, even this morning, in my clothing from having brewed it up.
I wish I had a fireplace!
(It is 2°C this morning in Kuwait (36°F) at 0800, and tonight is expected to be even colder than last night.)
Baked Apples – So Simple, So Good!
Cold weather is the perfect time for baked apples. Apples are good for you, cinnamon is good for you, the smell as they are cooking is divine, and the heat from the oven is welcome in these cold winter evenings. 🙂
I slice a little bit off the bottom for the apples, so they will sit flat in the dish – not too much, just a little:
Use a knife to take out a cone from the core, then use a melon-ball maker to scoop the seeds out of the center of the apple. Don’t go through the bottom if you can help it. If you do, it’s not a big deal, but try not to.
Mix up about a cup of brown sugar with about 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and some small pieces of real butter – you can use a fork to break the butter up and mix it into the sugar. It doesn’t have to be well mixed, some lumps are OK, you just want small pieces of butter.
Stuff apples with cinnamon butter, pack firmly into each apple cavity, and top with a small pat of butter:
Bake at 180 degrees C. or 350 degrees F. for 50 minutes.
This is how they look coming out of the oven:
Put each apple into a bowl, spoon sauce over apple, then top with a big dab of whipped cream:
This whipped cream is whipped with confectioner’s (powdered) sugar and a drop of vanilla flavoring. YummmmmY!
Not So Fast!
Have you looked at Weather Underground: Kuwait?
Don’t be to quick to put those sweaters away; the forecast for Saturday, Sunday and Monday is BELOW freezing. The Qatteri Cat is snuggled up to me like some kind of weird appendage. He comes running like a heat-seeking missile! Bundle up!
Virus and Blonde
There was a time, this is a true story, when we had a friend who was both very beautiful, blonde, and also kind of dumb. We were at dinner one night and she told us you could catch the flu or a cold from a computer. She had been in her aerobic class and had heard people talking about it. They’re called “computer viruses”, she told us.
Her husband quickly diverted the conversation into another direction and we knew he would be explaining things to her in their car on the way home.
Here is what I feel like today:
moar funny pictures
A big croaky frog.
I have not caught this virus from anyone, I have caught it from visiting Swair’s Blog, I swear! It came over me the same day as the dust storm.
Oh? What? It might have been the dust?
*blonde moment*
As It Snows . . .
Catching up with the news, I was looking at the Thursday Kuwait Times when I came across a photo. I am not going to print the photo in my blog, but if you want to look at it, or one like it, you can see it at Yahoo News, just click here on the blue type.
The photo of the execution, titled Iran hangs 13 on a single day is extraordinary enough. I don’t think we print those kind of photos in American newspapers. Maybe in the tabloids; these photos are considered disturbing. I know they disturb me. This one in the Kuwait Times has big white balls in it and the caption reads: QOM, Iran: Three Iranian drug traffickers hang limply from the nooses as it snows in a square in this central city yesterday.
I remember cutting out a similar one from a paper in Saudi Arabia when I lived there. It didn’t have a photo, but the article was about the Taliban hanging of a convicted man in the stadium in Kabul. It stated the man was wearing a blue sharwal khamis. There was no mention of why this man was hung, of what he was convicted.
The Yahoo version of the same hanging of 13 states: Three Iranian drug traffickers hang limply from the nooses after being executed in a square.
To me, the mention of snow falling as people are executed, of the executed man seems . . . maybe poetic? Maybe some way of softening the horror? I don’t know. It’s not something we would do. Bad news is left bare, without a lot of dressing it up. I would love to get your input on this. For me, it’s a different way of thinking.
Saturday, 5 January Sunrise
Clear horizon . . . . looking for snow clouds . . .
Scary – that’s not the horizon the sun is over, it’s the veil of (smog?) (pollution?) (fog?) that seems to hang over the Gulf perpetually.
Why all these sunrises? Well, for one thing, because I can, because when I wake up I usually can’t get back to sleep, I am AWAKE and ready to go. My best time of the day.
Bundle Up!
If you’ve been following the weather forecasts, this week to come is going to get very very COLD. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are going to be getting down to freezing, below freezing in remote desert areas.
It’s so humid . . . is it possible to have snow in Kuwait? Has it ever snowed here?
Wait Five Minutes
When I first looked out the window this morning, you couldn’t see a thing. Looking closely, you could see a tiny glow where the streetlights are, but nothing else. The fog had rolled in.
Five minutes later, you could see the shoreline.
Now, there is still a thick fog, but you can see through it.
I didn’t have any hope for a good sunrise this morning, but I was pleasantly surprised. I had a gleam of sunshine about 7:30:
Five minutes later:
And five minutes later:
And in my head, I hear the ineffable strains of Break Forth, Oh Beauteous Heavenly Light, which when I went to U-Tube, I found this wonderful version by the Florida Agricultural and Mining University, beautifully done with another appropriate hymn, Deo Gratias, or, as we say in Arabic, Thanks Be to God!
Sunrise 29 December 2007
It may look like just another sunrise to you, but I LOVE this sunrise! Look at that flash!
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