God Talk and Tea

What's your comfort?

For many of us, tea is the start of a moment of comfort, a chance to unwind, regroup, slow down, physically and mentally. Sometimes, when the occasion is right, a "little something," to go with that tea brightens the moment.

For my mom it was soda crackers, round thick creations with almost no sugar, that you wouldn't eat dry but dunked in tea were a delightful treat.

For one of my friends, it's scones, for another, ginger snaps.

Personally, I'm fond of chocolate graham crackers, but when the prospect arose of having a group a friends over for tea I decided to branch out into something more adventurous.

Recently, my husband brought home a piece of bread pudding a friend had made for a get-together and it was wonderful. Then, when the diner we frequent offered bread pudding as a choice of desserts, and my husband raved about it,  I started to think I should check into making this dessert.

I’m a late-comer to the deliciousness of bread pudding, which has an ancient history in a variety of cultures, and was often favored as a means to prevent wasting left-over bread. In my home, with six sons, I guess we rarely had any bread left over, so the idea of bread pudding never occurred to me.

Now, I am amazed at the myriad recipes for this enjoyable dish.

What I discovered in searching for a recipe was that they all use the same, or similar ingredients, but in varying quantities. Some recipes using 6 slices of bread call for 4 eggs, which I used, but others called for 2 eggs.  The quantities of milk and sugar also changed, even when the amount of bread stayed the same, so I’ve decided that trial and error and developing a recipe that works for my taste is the way to go.

I’m posting the recipe I decided to use, adapted from a variety of others that I discovered.  Since I am just starting this pudding adventure I am planning to try a variety of breads, including challah, which seems to get rave reviews. 

More adventurous cooks, or just those interested in the history of bread pudding, may like to check out this article, “A New Story With Old Bread,” which includes a recipe using coffee porter aged in bourbon and rye whiskey oak casks.

With my recipe, several issues arose that I didn’t expect: the pudding was still very much liquid at the 45 minute mark of baking so I left it in another 20 minutes.  There is often a need to adjust baking time to your unique oven. I also think part of the problem was my choice of bread and the fact that it wasn’t dry enough, which, from what I've read, is also the reason why my beautifully risen creation took a dramatic fall when I removed it from the oven. It seems it has to do with bread moisture levels, though some falling is expected. There’s an interesting article on the problem here.

I used a buttermilk bread which, while well past the freshness date, had been kept in the refrigerator. It was a heavy bread and still moist, a situation that apparently prevents the bread from soaking up enough of the milk and egg mixture and leads to excessive fall, like a poorly cooked soufflé!

The solution to using fresh or moist bread, according to more experienced bread pudding cooks, is to cube the bread and bake it in the oven for 8-10 minutes at 300 degrees before using it in the recipe. This removes excess moisture.

In spite of the fall, the pudding was delicious, and worked well paired with whipped cream or a small scoop of ice cream.  The next time, I am going to experiment with less sugar and using brown sugar instead of white, and maybe adding some sliced apples or canned peaches.

Of course, my accompaniment of choice is a cup of strong black tea, which for me is English breakfast tea, which I find is great as an afternoon pick me up and is stronger than most of the common packaged black tea bags. 

So what do I drink for breakfast? Irish breakfast tea. It is generally stronger than English breakfast tea. Check out this article for an introduction to the differences between Irish, English and Scottish tea.

Enjoy your comfort moments!

 

FIRST-TIME BREAD PUDDING                                                                                                                                                                                                        

6 slices dry (stale) bread of any kind

4 eggs

2 cups milk

½ cup sugar (I think this could be reduced for those who prefer less sweet)

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. vanilla

2 tbs. melted butter

Optional

½ cup raisins (or other dried fruit)

½ cup chocolate chips

            ~ ~

1. Lightly butter an 8 X 8 baking dish.
2. Cube bread (if it is not stale, place on baking sheet in 300 degree oven for 8-10 minutes) and arrange in the dish distributing evenly. Sprinkle on any optional ingredients, like raisins.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and butter.
4. Pour the mixture evenly over the bread in the baking dish. Make sure all the bread is well-coated, pressing bread down into liquid if necessary.
5. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
6. While the oven is heating, let the bread mixture sit for 10-15 minutes to ensure the bread has absorbed the liquid. Cover lightly with aluminum foil, which will stay on for most of baking.
7. When oven is ready, place the bread pudding on the middle rack and bake for 45-50 minutes or until the top is set. Remove foil for last 10 minutes to brown the top.
8. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly. This may be served warm, or cold, depending on preference, alone or with topping of your choice.
9. ENJOY.

In gratitude ~ "For each new morning with its light, for rest and shelter of the night, for health and food, for love and friends, for everything Thy goodness sends." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Top photo by Clem Around the Corner.

Bread pudding photo borrowed from Vintage Cooking on Google Images.

Every circumstance is made better by tea

I love tea. I grew up with tea, for breakfast, a between meal treat, an after dinner relaxer, and, of course, whenever we had company.

Tea is a fixer, especially when things get a little out of hand – like the day, many years ago when my cousin invited a girl from school to hang out with us at my cousins' house. We didn’t know this girl very well, or that she had some “issues” which made her very high strung. What should have been a fun afternoon turned into a rowdy episode that spilled out on the front lawn.

Our attempts to get things under control were to no avail, so I leapt to my feet and yelled, “Wait! I’ll go make some tea!”

A few minutes later my cousin came in the front door, slamming it behind her and said, “Tea? You left me out there with that crazy girl to make tea?”

“Well,” I pointed out, “she went home didn’t she?”

A typically British (or Irish) reaction, I would learn as I got older.

As one character in the well-loved British TV series, Midsomer Murders, said, “There's only one way to deal with other people's unpleasantness. Plenty of hot tea.”

Maybe my love of tea is one of the reasons I’m drawn to British mystery and detective shows. Only in Britain would the tea kettle go on every time the police show up at someone’s home to ask questions of potential suspects.

Ever wonder why Brits are so obsessed with tea? Check out this delightful video … after you’ve made yourself a delicious cup of tea, of course.

You might need it to read this great article on the decline of tea in Britain (really!), the rise of coffee and the influence of youth on the deteriorating tradition ... oh, and the quickly rising interest in tea in the US.

In the midst of all this change, and the absolutely dreary state of affairs usually revealed on the morning news, remember the wisdom of Terri Guillemets: "A crisis pauses during tea."

A moment of awe in the face of God's creation

Several years ago, while visiting my son at the Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, N.Y.,  he asked me to help an injured dragonfly that was sitting on the counter in the pub where my son was working.  I cupped the dragonfly in my hands and held it there for an hour or more while I decided what to do with it. I wasn't sure how it was injured or if it had just gotten into the mead! 

Finally, I realized there was a pond nearby and, while it was roped off, I was able to lean in enough to place the dragonfly in safety inside a bush near the water. I said a little prayer for it as one of God's amazing creatures and went back to enjoying the Faire with my husband.

Later that evening, after arriving home in N.J., another son called me to come out on the front porch. "You are not going to believe this," he yelled. I went out to join him and was stunned to see hundreds of dragonflies hovering over our lawn. We have lived here for almost 40 years and I've only seen a dragonfly once. I was speechless.

"They came to thank you," my husband said, laughing. I liked that explanation.  

A moment later they were gone, and I thanked God for the unexpected, memorable display of beauty.

A note of interest for those who love dragonflies or find them showing up in their lives -- The dragonfly, in almost every part of the world, symbolizes change, transformation, a deeper self-realization, a depth of character, potential, power and poise.

Jodi Bergsma image found on Pinterest

 

Grandparents are the best stewards of time, talent and treasure

As the weather grows warmer and we are able to spend more time on our backyard deck, it never fails to call to mind an image I have of my dad and one of my sons, a white-haired, blue-eyed handful of a child, perhaps four-years old at the time.

I looked out the glass of the sliding door in my dad’s kitchen to see them both, sitting in their respective lawn chairs on the patio, my dad with his customary “one can of beer on a hot summer day,” and my son with “one can of soda snuck out of the refrigerator by poppy.”

They sat next to each other without speaking a word, looking over the newly mowed lawn and my father’s many flowers with the satisfaction of lords looking over their manor.

My dad was the kind of man who made even the simplest of moments memorable and rich, especially for his grandsons who treasured long walks with him and an endless collection of rocks, coins, pine cones and paraphernalia gathered as they journeyed.

They fought over who would be next to play checkers with Poppy, who would stand next to him in church and wait for the surprise moment when he would press their unsuspecting fingers against the pew and chuckle under his breath, or who would be on his team for croquet. But most of all, I think, they loved when he would crack their toes.

I wish my grandchildren could have known him.

There is no doubt in my mind. God created grandparents to teach the rest of us how to be stewards.

Grandparents are those people who always have the time – no matter how busy they really are. They just seem to know that the most important way to use their time is to give it away to someone else. For them, the recipients are their grandchildren.

Grandparents are those people who can do anything, fix anything, know everything, and if they don’t know they will find out. In the eyes of their grandchildren they are among the most talented of God’s creatures.

Grandparents are those people who know, without a doubt, where their treasure lies – in the faces of little munchkins covered with peanut butter and jelly, or the wily teenager who knows just the right thing to say to wrangle a few dollars from a generous soul.

When parents are busy with the practical, grandparents give the precious – sharing stories, telling jokes, buying ice cream, playing games and giving hugs.

There is no mountain grandparents wouldn’t move, no river they wouldn’t cross, no cartoon they wouldn’t watch if it would make life happier, healthier or better for the children who add reason to their being.

In our house, being a grandfather means taking time from real work plans and loading up the van with make-believe materials and driving to a make-believe job site while your young grandsons (aka bosses) give you your amazingly well-thought out work instructions.

Being a grandmother means pulling the plug on my writing to take dictation from a five-year-old budding author who is writing her newest mini-book about the horrid, evil grandparents who move in to take care of two young sisters (“It’s only a story, Abuela, it’s make believe,” she assures me) or making noodles – again – for my three-year-old epicure who loves just the right amount of butter and cheese.

Alex Haley, the American writer and author of the 1976 book “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” said it beautifully: “Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.”

Stardust that will, hopefully, shine in their memories for years to come and remind them of just how special they really are and how much they are cherished.

For there is no doubt in my mind that God made grandparents to teach us how to love.

 “On the seventh day God rested. His grandchildren must have been out of town.”  ~Gene Perret

Photo by Sabine van Straaten on Unsplash 

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