Posts Tagged ‘Community Coffee’
Do you like iced tea in summer or hot tea in the wintertime? Or is tea just something that’s always in your pantry?
We’ve been drinking tea for hundreds of years. It’s so readily available that we don’t give it a second thought. In this first of two blogs, I’ll introduce you to tea. In the second, I’ll tell you about British tea and why I think it’s the best. Put the kettle on, make a cuppa, and I’ll tell you more.
Hello again, Dear Readers:
I intended to write this blog post weeks ago, but time got away from me again. Right before July 4th, we both got sick. No, it wasn’t that, just some weird Louisiana swamp bug. BF got sick first, then me. We didn’t visit a doctor or hospital, so no testing for the you-know-what. We’re fine now, so what’s the point?
I’m dividing this topic into two parts because nobody wants a 5,000-word plus blog post. Besides, after a certain point, it’s diminishing returns from Google.
If you haven’t seen the video of HRH Queen Elizabeth having tea with Paddington Bear, this YouTube link takes you right to it. The video became available after my last post.
Around The Casa de Rurale
It’s summer, and it’s HOT. Everywhere. Houston is again seeing multiple days of temps above 100F. At least there are amusing memes, like this one:
If you can bake lasagna in your mailbox, why not? Remember, your stove/oven is 220 volts, whereas your mailbox is free solar power.
Yes, that’s a joke. It also might be a violation of federal law, but I haven’t checked. In other news. . . .
Emilie Bailey, The Texas Granola Girl, has a new book on “dirty keto” coming out soon. The term means that you’re not a strict practitioner, and you bend the rules a bit—like me. I’ve signed up to be a reviewer—again. Emilie will be sharing some on Instagram soon. If they are kind enough to send me an advance copy, I’ll be doing a review and cooking some delicious food (whether he likes it or not.) But her recipes are awesome, and I’ll be buying a copy if they don’t. More details when I have them.
Blackberries
The wild blackberries are gone. I’ve picked a gallon-sized freezer bag of them like last year but should have picked more. (I still have last year’s harvest in the freezer.) Buddy, aka, Broccoli Stir-Fry, discovered their deliciousness when I took him outside and fed him some by hand. The pit bull doesn’t seem to care for them anymore. We’ve had little rain this spring, leading to the vines shriveling up early. Then a deluge followed.
BF requested a “real” dessert using our blackberries, “with flour and sugar.” While I was looking for something to make, a perfect recipe arrived in the mailbox. If you’re a subscriber to The Pioneer Woman Magazine, you’ve probably seen this galette already.
Isn’t it beautiful?
Guess what? He loved it. I’m planning to make another for him as soon as I get more ingredients. It’s easy, fast, and bakes up nicely. The second go-round will be both to make him another treat and for a blog post to publish here.
Speaking of animals, both the new cat and the dog had their vet appointment with destiny a few weeks ago. Neither has figured out yet about the trip to Hammond or what happened during their naps. They’re fine.
Ready for a cuppa?
Tea’s History
Legend has it that tea came from China in 2732 B.C. when Emperor Shen Nung drank hot liquid after some leaves blew into his cup of boiling water. (Would you do that?) Odd, but that’s what I’ve found in several references. He felt invigorated after this brew (hello, caffeine!) and the Emperor began encouraging people to cultivate this incredible plant. He became known as “The Father of Tea.”
My other favorite drink, coffee, was discovered around the 5th Century in Africa and the Middle East. Coffee reached Europe first, and tea shortly thereafter. So, tea is the elder statesman here, although coffee became the American favorite after The Boston Tea Party.
Leaf tea was the norm, until one day, tea bags happened. Legend on the Internet credits New York vendor Thomas Sullivan as the inventor in 1904 (or 1908, depending on your source.)
The story goes that he sent out his tea samples in little silk bags. People just brewed the tea with them because they thought that’s what you did. However, the first patent for a tea bag apparatus was filed in 1897, with another mesh-bag invention patent in 1901, so someone else got there first.
Eventually, tea manufacturing expanded, and American tea became primarily bagged. The British didn’t take to tea bags until the 1950s, although Tetley did bring the idea back to the UK.
Our Brit friend WF, a UK ex-pat in the country of Turkey (officially, the Republic of Turkiye) wants you to know that her resident land is one of the biggest tea drinkers in the world.
Today about 96% of tea is in a bag, with loose tea being the outlier.
Pekoe And Black Teas
Black tea is from the Camellia sinensis plant. Once picked, it’s allowed to dry and oxidize. This tea is grown in Sri Lanka, India, and Africa, and was discovered in China in the mid-17th Century. This type of tea is most of what’s consumed in the US as iced tea. It’s a stronger flavor than most others.
You’ve probably seen the term “orange pekoe” for years. I didn’t pay attention until recently. But “orange pekoe” is tea grown in Sri Lanka and India, distinguished by its orange tips.
“Orange pekoe” is also part of the grading system for tea. It’s the lowest grade of tea, indicating that the tea is comprised of whole leaves, not bits and dust like some commercially produced types. But it’s a high grade of tea, meaning that it’s produced from the prime leaves. This tea doesn’t taste like orange, either.
Lipton Tea
Did you know that Lipton Tea is a British brand?
In our local Walmart
I didn’t, either. Still, it’s just regular tea in the US, available in every grocery store in America.
Like most people in the US, Lipton is just what you bought. Here in Louisiana people also buy Community Coffee’s brand of tea, or the store brands.
One of their many varieties.
That’s what we had. As kids, we had Lipton tea every night with dinner, freshly made with lemon and sugar by the pitcher.
Nobody considered decaffeinated tea. We just drank it and rarely had soft drinks. My mother believed every urban legend around, such as kids weren’t “old enough” for coffee. The old wives’ tale said not to give your kids coffee, “because caffeine stunts their growth.”
My siblings and I are all over five feet. I don’t know how it would “stunt growth,” since caffeine is a stimulant. And how many kids since then grew up with caffeinated soft drinks and Frappuccino?
Lipton’s website has more information on tea, including this primer on British tea time. I just can’t see Buckingham Palace staff serving Lipton to the Queen.
Hot Tea In A Cup
My Grandmother introduced me to hot tea when I was a teenager, but it was more of a treat. When I got older, I drank tea because that’s what I was used to having.
Green tea in a Texas cup.
Before coffee shops were everywhere, I’d have a cup of tea in the morning, whether at home or at the workplace. Coffee and tea were also available in the offices where I worked, or I just brought some as I did at Boeing.
Never mind that the tea had more caffeine than coffee. We didn’t have Google back then to find out these things. I started drinking coffee when I was about 22 after I’d married and moved away.
But I always kept Lipton around and sometimes had Twinings. Lipton was the standard, as well as store brand teas. Later I used decaf for iced tea so I could drink it all the time.
Then I discovered British tea, and that was the end of the relationship. I’ll explain that in the next blog post.
Yerba Mate
I’ve tried this a few times, and it’s quite caffeinated. It’s considered an herbal tea and is made from Ilex paraguariensis, a plant in the family of holly. Yes, as in the holly berries you see at Christmas.
Fans of Yerba Mate make multiple claims about it, including easing depression, relieving fatigue, helping weight loss, and other conditions. If it works for you, great. But there’s a simple explanation.
Hello!! Caffeine!!
Exactly—and if you have high blood pressure or another condition that caffeine aggravates, avoid Yerba Mate. (NOTE: I’m not a doctor, nurse, scientist, or medical professional, just someone who reads and speaks from experience.)
I tried it once or twice, and I think this is the brand I bought in Houston. Honestly, it didn’t do anything but give me plenty of heart-racing, no handsome guy in sight. Caffeine can also make me very hungry, grouchy, and jittery in large amounts, so it invalidates any other potential benefits. That’s OK, I’ll just have some PG Tips if I need that much of a jolt; it tastes much better. (More on that in the next blog post.)
The Mayo Clinic has more information on Yerba Mate on their website, as does WebMD. Use caution if you are so inclined. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Tisane: What Is Rooibos Tea?
One tea I do not like is Rooibos. It just doesn’t taste good to me. I’ve tried the Celestial Seasonings brand as well as one or two other brands. I tried to like it, but I don’t. Rooibos is a tisane, a fruit or herbal type of tea.
Turns out rooibos isn’t a true tea at all. It comes from a South African herb plant, the Fabaceae plant family. When the leaves are harvested and dried, they are brewed into a reddish-brown herbal infusion. It’s also called “African red tea” or “red bush tea” by the tea industry. It’s sometimes made with vanilla, as with the Celestial Seasonings variety. But it’s not enough to kill the awful taste. You can read more about rooibos here.
Orleans Coffee sells some very nice tisanes that are not Rooibos. This includes my favorite, called Blue Eyes. I have some in the pantry and make it now and again; I should get some more soon. It’s sweet and fruity but not overwhelming. I make it by the cup occasionally for iced tea.
Bonus: Cooling Off
I used to drink iced tea all the time. Period. I made it in great big plastic pitchers of decaf. I just let the tea bags sit out overnight in the water, and it was ready in the morning.
When I used to see Dr. Davis in the Woodlands, they always had a large pitcher of cucumber-infused water in the lobby. I loved it. But when I made a pitcher of it at home on a Friday afternoon, I couldn’t stand it on Sunday. I never made it again, but I will drink infused water if I’m out somewhere and it’s available.
One day, about 10 years ago, I just didn’t want iced tea anymore, and I haven’t had it since. After that, I simply added lime juice and Sweet N’ Low to a cup of ice water. Not lemons, just limes. That’s what I’ve been drinking since June of 2012, right after the Boeing layoff. I still have three unopened, plastic-wrapped boxes of H-E-B decaf cold brew iced tea in the pantry, because I’m too cheap to throw them away.
Still cello-wrapped and ready to use.
When limes recently became as much as $0.75 each, I went looking for something else to drink. I’m not accustomed to paying that much for limes. Then again, I’m not accustomed to paying $15 for a box of five dozen eggs, either. But that’s what they sometimes cost now. I wondered about a temporary replacement for limes in my water.
On a trip to our local Winn-Dixie, I was looking for my usual Community Coffee and Tazo Awake tea. They have a nice section with a good selection of local coffees and different teas, including Bigelow. But sitting there, on the shelf, were two boxes that caught my attention:
This picture is actually from Walmart, taken May 23rd.
Hello, What’s this? Bigelow’s new Cold Water Infusions! It looked too interesting to pass up, so I didn’t. Winn-Dixie only had two flavors, as did Walmart. Didn’t take long for inflation to strike a new favorite:
I took this picture at the same Walmart on June 27th.
When I went back to Winn-Dixie to buy more, I found more flavors. As it turns out, there are six flavors in all:
- Watermelon Cucumber Mint
- Cranberry Lime Honeysuckle
- Blackberry Raspberry Hibiscus
- Blueberry Citrus Basil
- Strawberry Lemon Orange Blossom
- Peach Lemonade Acai
That Amazon link takes you to bundles of packages, not individual boxes like you get in the grocery. Subscribe and save? Don’t tempt me.
These are caffeine-free cold-water infusions that you just add to ice water and let it infuse. If you leave the bags in the water longer than 10 minutes. . .nothing else happens. Tea, on the other hand, will get bitter.
Walmart had a couple of boxes of the Peach Lemonade Acai flavor, and I bought them. I think that was an accident that they had them. I finished that flavor first because. . .I don’t like that flavor much and just wanted to use up the bags. Much as I like peaches, this one just tastes funny.
As it turns out, there are multiple brands of these cold-water infusions. I’ll try them as I find them. Remember that I’m not in Texas anymore. Anything new on the market takes months if not years before it’s available on this side of the Sabine River.
Acai
If you’re not familiar with it (and I’m not, but it’s pronounced “AH-sigh-YEE”) it’s a berry native to Central and South America. It’s been promoted as a “superfood” here in the US, and sold as frozen puree or powder because they spoil quickly once they’re picked. No, I’m not jumping on that bandwagon, nor the one around goji berries.
Irony: my favorites are the first two, Watermelon Cucumber Mint and Cranberry Lime Honeysuckle. Those are the first two I found, and the two that our Walmart normally carries. Chances are I’ll be sticking with those going forward. But I have something to drink that isn’t as expensive as limes and is ready almost immediately.
Woo Hoo!
Is it any good?
It is, but it’s not heavily flavored like, say, Hawaiian Punch. It’s an infusion, which is probably a $20 word for tea, but you don’t need hot water. Just add it to ice water and leave it to sit for eight to ten minutes.
It’s a bit like that cucumber water at Dr. Davis’ office, but a tad bit fruitier. In my steel Starbucks venti (24 ounces) cold tumbler, I use two of the bags, along with a single packet of Sweet ‘N Low. But that’s just me.
It’s tasty and less expensive than the limes right now, so that helps. But people are buying those limes in Walmart and Winn-Dixie because I see the supply decrease. I also hear Spanish here, which was unusual a few years ago.
I do need to make a trip back to Los Primos in Hammond one of these days to get more chorizo and a few other things. Time to make more Salsa Macha, too.
Until Next Time
The next blog post will discuss my full introduction to British tea. It includes a very nice gift of British tea and other goodies from the UK that LH sent from California. She sent them in April, and delays mean I still haven’t finished the blog and uploaded the pictures.
Our friend Beverly is also working on another blog post for us.
Also in the queue are blog posts that are a little more serious. Yes, they’re food related, but I haven’t finished them yet.
Stay cool and Enjoy!
Hello, again, Dear Readers:
OK, so it’s been a month, and you’re probably wondering what happened to me. Join the club, me too. And by the title of this post, you’re probably getting a fair idea of how it all went down.
To follow up on the last post, I eventually did bring back the oversized microwave and got. . .another small Rival microwave. But it’s not even plugged in. There’s a reason for that.
I’ll be as blunt as I can be: I am not living anywhere in Texas. Will I ever return? I don’t know, that depends on a number of factors. I hope to at least be able to go back and visit occasionally, since Houston is a five-hour drive from where I am now in. . .rural Louisiana. Someplace I never thought I would ever see, and never planned to be. But sometimes life takes you in different directions, no matter how you try to take your preferred path.
Take in this scene, which I politely call Cow Road:
That’s not the real name of it, of course, but I didn’t know that until the third time I went on it. But there are two farms on the right side of this scene, and one of them, I think, is a dairy farm. Do they sell raw milk? He doesn’t know. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Texas Isn’t Texas Anymore
Texas, and in particular, Houston, is changing fast. (Just today there was a shooting in a high-dollar affluent neighborhood, with six people injured, one of those neighborhoods where “this sort of thing never happens.“) Things have been changing quite radically for a few years now, and if it continues, well, Texas will probably not be Texas anymore, and then the rest of the US will be hosed too.
Lots more people moving in than there are jobs available, and a lot of people are being left on the side of the road. Governor Gregg Abbott’s office estimates 340+ families migrate into Texas every month, primarily from California. It’s obvious with large numbers of new, high-end vehicles you see driving down the street, and paper dealership tags riding around Clear Lake and throughout Houston.
Everywhere I went, someone talked about “how it works down here in Texas,” or the more offensive, “you people down here in Texas.” Without showing my ruffled feathers, I politely asked each one of them, “and where are you from? What brings you to Texas?” They’re quick to tell, and I’m quick to say, “oh, so that’s why I can’t find a job for more than 2 years.” Yeah–don’t mess with Texas women. (I now have a coffee cup and a small sign that say that.) After 18 years of living in the Houston area, I’m a Texan, and nothing will change that, including a change of address form.
Not Everyone Is Welcome Now
People like me, over 50, are routinely being shunted out of the workforce in favor of the so-called millennials and those under 40. Neighbor E is still looking for work as well, and while we hope he finds work soon, it’s not looking good.
That folly will catch up to industry eventually (and if you click around the ‘Net, you’ll see articles on both that and the forced removal of over-50’s), but it means that I have had to take refuge in a different kitchen, if you know what I mean.
A cute little calf comes by to see what I’m up to. Cows startle easily, if you didn’t know that.
The Relationship
I’ve been in a long-distance relationship with a nice man for quite some time now, but haven’t mentioned it much here. He’s cute, smart, funny, lovable and a pretty handy manly man. We’re not connected “in a relationship” on Facebook at his request just to keep things private. I’m OK with that, and I won’t say too much about him here. OK, I have to–but I’ll have to keep identifying details to a minimum, because he’s a rather private person. (I know–what was he thinking?)
This came as a complete surprise, and he knew my situation at the outset. He has offered for months to drive to Houston and “rescue” me, and every time he said it, I said “no.” Louisiana was someplace I escaped from and never wanted to go back to.
When I visited him in January, it was the first time I’d been over the Sabine River since evacuating from Houston for Hurricane Ike in 2008. I always presumed that things would, eventually get better, and he would visit me in Houston, but it didn’t happen that way. At least not until this month, and he showed up with his white Chevy truck (we call it “The White Knight“) and an 18-foot trailer.
Scenes like this are common along the small-town roads I now travel.
I Wanted To Stay In Texas
I waited until the last minute, hoping that the last interview would be a successful hire. When that didn’t happen, then I pulled the trigger on the “rescue.” It was a writing job, and as part of the interview process, I was required to take two sets of tests–one grammar, one writing–and I did well with the first one, I was told.
The second I worked off and on all Labor Day weekend. Sent it back to the recruiter, and then I waited, but not for long. A couple of days later, I got that “no thanks” email, for which I have a less polite name. With only a phone interview with someone in Ann Arbor, it was decided that I “wasn’t a good fit for the position.” Never met anyone. That’s when I called BF and said, “OK, it’s time.” It was not a decision I made lightly, but when you’re backed in a corner, there aren’t always many ways out.
Cow Road, farther down
Mad Packing
Neighbor E and AC offered lots of help with packing, and we packed as fast as we could. Correction, THEY did, and I looked at what they did and realized I didn’t really do anything. (That’s what it felt like, anyway.) They worked their paws off, and as much as I appreciate their generous time and help, it’s a favor I may never be able to return. The GER came by with some tarp, too (I still owe him $28 for that) met my BF, and gave him some help tying down cargo. They started talking about cars, because both are petrolheads, and I knew they were bonded at that point.
And that’s how I came to be The Dislocated Texan. Friend of the blog AK says that I should start another blog on being over 50 in America now; she’s not far behind me. I’m still thinking about it, but if I do, you can bet that’ll be the blog’s name. I’m returning to Houston this week to retrieve what I hope is the last of my stuff, which is now stored in Neighbor E’s place. If I can, I’ll get me another one of those coffee cups from Buc-ee’s that says, “Don’t mess with Texas Women.” Preferably one that isn’t pink, to keep on my desk at my next job. I’ve also got a small sign with the Texas flag that will be going up in the kitchen where everyone can see it.
I am now a Dislocated Texan.
These cows are actually in Louisiana. You can tell by the look. (Yes, that’s a joke.)
Living In Rural Louisiana
I hope I can go back and visit Houston, and Texas, again one day, do some shopping at IKEA, Central Market, and maybe even my fabulous HEB. Get some Texas pecans from Buc-ee’s or Frohberg Farms one day. I finally took my BF over there to see my HEB, the day we started moving me. I said goodbye to the nice ladies who always helped me out and fed me deliciously every Saturday after the Buddhist meetings at LK’s. (Even HEB turned me down for part time jobs.)
BF was impressed, enjoyed the sampling and the company, saw what I’d been telling him about for a long time, and then we left. For now, locally my choices for grocery shopping are Walmart and Winn-Dixie. In Baton Rouge, there is a Trader Joe’s and a Whole Foods, thank heavens, and if I find myself working down there (I have an interview tomorrow and continue to apply there and other local cities), there will be regular grocery runs on the way home from work on payday or Fridays. I’ll eventually find the equivalent of an HEB, or something as close as I can get to it. If not during the week, it’ll be when he’s working on Saturday or Sunday, and he can’t stop me. (HA!)
The Cow Posse
If HEB or Publix ever make their way into Louisiana, it’ll be a happy day for me. But Albertson’s, Rouse’s Walmart, Winn-Dixie and other local chains are likely to dominate for many years to come. Still, if they’d build an HEB in Baton Rouge like the one on Clear Lake City Boulevard. . .I’m just saying. But if you like HEB coffee, or lots of their other great branded products, you can buy much of HEB’s things online now.
More suspicious cows.
Keeping A Footprint
I will, at some point, try to get back to see Dr. Davis and Woodlands Wellness, because I’d really rather not change doctors, but that may be what I have to do to get back on my hormones and back on the health track. (I have just started sleeping a little better after 4 years of not sleeping well at all.) We’ll see. I really, REALLY need to get back on all that, I’m feeling it, and it hurts.
Moving into someone’s house, away from everything I know in Houston, also means I now have ONE taste-tester, and he’s what us foodies call a “fussy eater.” This morning I offered him a bite of my Wheat Belly Apple Quick Muffin, which he sampled after having a bowl of some kind of sugar-coated wheat cereal with whole milk. (UGH.) He said it “tastes funny.” Interesting, since I made it with almond flour, just like the pork chops I made on Saturday, at his request, along with some black-eyed peas in the Crock Pot and some hurriedly cooked white (!) rice.
He went back to work, I turned the classical music station back on the TV (there is no radio in the house, and cell phone service is spotty) and I later received a text message: “Lunch was awesome.”
YES!
He wasn’t wild about me using up that sausage in his freezer and pairing it with the last packet of Halloumi cheese from Trader Joe’s, out of my kitchen in Houston. (He thought the jarred roasted red bell peppers were tomatoes.) The next day’s slow-cooker meatloaf went over a bit better, but the pork chops and black eyed peas made up for all that.
It’s A House With A Kitchen
I have more room to cook in. However, I will need to eventually clear out all the cabinets, put down more shelf liner (I think I have plenty), and organize everything so that we can put our hands on the stuff we more frequently use. There may be shelves hung at some point, and the pantry space will be getting more of those white wire shelves to use up the wasted space (I’ve done that before for stock and seldom-needed things.)
But I’m telling you, that George Foreman thing has to go–it’s a huge pain to clean! And somehow, I’ve got to replace the grease trap on my Cuisinart Griddler–I just waffled a pizza the other day, but now I can’t find it! GRRRR.
The Pantry
His sparse pantry, not much bigger than mine in Houston, has been filled to overflowing with everything that came out of my smaller kitchen in Houston, including what are the last few remaining cans of SomerSweet in existence. I just found out today that SomerSweet, through a series of events, is no more. I’ll visit the Baton Rouge Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods soon for reconnaissance on powdered erythrytol and powdered agave, as well as other possible solutions.
The look on BF’s face was pretty funny when he looked at organic this and gourmet that stacked up around his boxed stuffing mix, macaroni cheese and canned chili. I said to him, “I know there’s a lot of new things in your pantry, but please, if you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it. Many of these things are expensive and will be hard to find around here.” He just smiled and shook his head.
What did you expect a foodie to bring to your house–a checkers set? He doesn’t know what most, if any, of it is, but he knows I need it for cooking. Eventually we’ll be adding more of that white-wire shelving in there to use up the wasted space, like at the top and on the sides, and maybe something new for the inside of the door. I’ve added some small shelves I bought at IKEA several years ago that doubles space in spots, and he really likes them. I just wish I could get a few more of them for us.
Unpacking And Starting Over
I offered to make him some Overnight Oatmeal, but he passed–he prefers the “instant” sugared stuff out of a box. UGH!! When I mentioned getting organic milk at Trader Joe’s, he said, “Don’t go changing my diet!” Just improve, not change, that’s all.
I removed my Suzanne Somers’ EZ Gym from the suitcase last night, but it’s all rolled up in the storage bag. BF took one look and said, “are you going to kick my butt with that thing?” No. . .I suggested he go look at it on her website, but I don’t think he did. I hope to start using it again, and maybe hit the bike now and again, once things settle. No bike lanes in rural Louisiana, though, so I’m a bit skittish about riding on these skinny two-lane back roads. A bike trainer might be in my future.
Slow Cooking
I now have four slow cookers at my disposal–two oval four-quarts (one mine, one his), my large round six-quart and the small “Little Dipper” I bought a couple of years ago to help get rid of the cooking odors in the condo kitchen.
Oh, and here’s the ultimate irony: the cat lady now lives in a house with three big dogs, one of which is a 75-pound pit bull that just loves me. No kidding. I keep telling him I’m a cat person, but he doesn’t seem to care.
Pallet Furniture And Other DIY
Because he’s such a manly man, he makes occasional furniture pieces from wooden pallets. You know, the stuff they use for shipping. I’m trying to get him into the mindset that we could pretty much rebuild the house with pallets, but he doesn’t see it that way yet.
I helped my dad when I was a kid in his workshop, so I’m not completely green on woodworking (oh, look, a pun!) I’m working on it. . .because I’d love to have a patio set, another kitchen rack, and lots of other lovely things that I see on Pinterest made from pallets. One thing at a time, of course.
New Directions
So what does a food blogger write about once everything has changed? Well, restaurants–I’ve been treated to breakfast at a local place called Master Chef, a local fast-food place run by a very nice man named Tony. I’ve also been in a Waffle House–no kidding, again, for breakfast. I don’t think I’ve been in a Waffle House since the 1980’s, but last week, that’s where he took me to breakfast on our way to visit his cousin in nearby Mississippi. Know what? Some of the best scrambled eggs ever–they use American cheese. And it was gluten free because I told them to give him my toast, ha, ha.
Our waitress had no idea that some Waffle Houses take reservations for Valentine’s Day. She’d just moved to that location from a New Orleans store, and had never heard that. In some very remote areas, Waffle House is the only place in town, and they serve steaks, so, yes, they do. (I wrote about that a couple of years ago but can’t find it now.)
The Local Library And Other Wi-Fi Spots
I’ll also be trying out more new recipes as I can, and bringing them to you as fast as I can get to the library. We don’t yet have Internet in the house, and as soon as I can pay for it, we’ll have it! Meantime, I have to find Wifi somewhere, and the local library is pretty nice too. Not nearly as big as my beloved Freeman Library on Diana Lane in Clear Lake, and certainly no gardening lectures that I’ve seen yet. But it’s a nice library and they’re every bit as helpful and nice.
There’s no Starbucks here (the closest is in Hammond), but there is one PJ’s Coffee, a New Orleans based coffee chain that was my first introduction into gourmet coffee shops with a friend who now lives in Boston. (They also have Wi-Fi.) So, if I’m working in Baton Rouge or Hammond, there will be trips to PJ’s or CC’s Coffee, the retail arm of Baton Rouge-based Community Coffee. Community is donating to help with flood relief here in Louisiana, so if you’re of a mind to do so, pick up a bag or two of your favorite Community blend next trip, please.
Hey–maybe I can take a ride and go visit Community Coffee sometime. I’m a food blogger, right? DUH. I did ask BF if we could, on his occasional Saturday off, take a ride one day down to Avery Island and visit Tabasco. He didn’t seem enthused about the idea.
Getting Better
I have not been well, for a long time, but I’m getting better, bit by bit, and I have the great support of BF. Even though he doesn’t read my humble blog.
Not long before I knew I was leaving, AC asked me to give her some help with her home computer, and uploading some videos of her work to YouTube for a job interview. I took care of everything, and I also installed an antivirus program and did a few other things to make it run better.
When I got there, I smelled some deliciousness going on. You see, AC, too, has a new BF, and was cooking some pinto beans in the slow cooker for dinner that night. “You want to try some?” (GIRLFRIEND–You have to ask?) Oh, my GAWD, they were the best beans I’ve ever had! I told her that too–no joke, they really were delicious, I wasn’t just telling her that to be nice. She texted me the stuff she uses to make it, and the only thing that’s holding me back is a bottle of Bragg’s Liquid Aminos. I can’t find it here, so I’ll try to get it either in Baton Rouge or on my next trip to Houston. I can’t wait to make them for my BF, and show you how to make them, too.
Cooking Conflicts
My biggest challenge as a home cook and blogger is going to be reconciling BF’s love for junk food and processed stuff containing wheat and toxic chemicals with making healthy, tasty food that he’ll enjoy and not turn up his nose at. I haven’t yet made him the Pea & Pesto Soup, but I plan to. . .soon as I can find the blender. (I managed to bring five containers of my beloved pesto with me, and will have more land to grow more basil, tomatoes and anything else I want.) The other issue is that he’s quick to purchase things that are loaded with wheat and other rubbish, which I mentioned already that I won’t consume. I also warned him about the “no beans in chili or you can get shot” thing, but he doesn’t believe me.
So. . .that’s where I’ve been, where I am and where I think I’m going. I hope that I’ll at least be able to visit Texas occasionally if I don’t move back to it, and write about more new recipes and things as I get settled in and unpacked.
Going Forward
I am now the The Dislocated Texan. I’m working on it, and making the best of it. Fortunately, BF has my back, and reminds me frequently that he’s there for me. I hope to be doing things like baking fresh bread for him soon, and since I found the Hatch Apple Pie Filling, making that fabulous cake that Neighbor E and I had in HEB recently. I’ll do that when he has a day off.
Thanks for sticking with me, and I hope to be bringing more new things to you soon.
Happy Dining!
