New poetry blog: Lluvia en la memoria

Dear lemon tarts,

As you see, this blog's been deserted for quite a while now. Many things have been going on in my life and, though I'm still a teaholic from the other side of the looking glass, I've changed in so many ways I'm considering either deleting this blog, or deleting a few old posts that don't suit and giving it a whole new direction. I've been taking a baking course (not that I couldn't bake before, anyway) and I might show you some of that over here.

In the meantime, I've started a new blog. This one's in Spanish.

It's called "Lluvia en la memoria" and it's devoted to my poetry (and I'm about to post there my Ode for Tea, with some biscuits for my fellow cupcakes, in case anyone still comes round here). I really just felt the need to tell you about it here, since there might be readers searching my name on Google and, when you do, this blog appears first, but the new one doesn´t.

See you at "Lluvia en la memoria". Tea and muffins!

I saved the world to-day

One minute you're enjoying the selfish thought of buying a new bag for yourself, the next you're helping someone you don't even know. This is how fate goes.

I was considering a very pretty bag  and, when I looked into it to check the amount, size and position of inner pockets, I found a wallet with many cards. I still wonder how it got there. Why would anyone put their things into a bag they're considering to buy?

Anyway. I forgot about my shopping goals and went to the police station to give them the wallet.

These thing make me feel like I am more of a citizen. I am a pretty big deal of a citizen anyway [giggles].

Muffins!

Darkness and movement

I love taking pictures in the dark. I hate flashes, and I love landscapes, wich means I need to keep real still to tale them correctly.

Just so you can get a sense of how hard it is:
 

The first is taken with a mode meant for dailight pictures. The second is what I get with a long exposure. No sign of movement, right? Well, no tripod, no breathing! (Breathing is unimportant, muffins).

However, I do enjoy playing with movement. Check it out!

I love my Pentax. It's the optics, not the Megapixels!! (I'm using 3 MPs for these).

Power Puff Girls Z

Oh my! I knew naught about this until I came across some action figures yesterday in the toy section of a shop. Aren't they adorable?
Yes, the classic ones will always hold a place in our hearts...

But these new ones... I find them to have so much more personality. They are drawn to much more detail and the shapes of their eyes and faces are not identical, so each of them is special.

AND they may be seen in different outfits, such as sport clothes, japanese kimonos or regular street clothes.

I believe Bubble is doing some sort of "Bubble Power... Make up!!!" (giggles)

There are also some PowerPuff Boys...

Lovely...

Tea and muffins, dears!

Fashionable Sweets

Dear cupcakes, to-day is your lucky day. Why? Well, I am giving out information on an emerging fashion trend so new that even I haven't got an article of such nature yet.

I guess I am betting my whole credibility on this. And, why should you trust me? Well, I am a fashion designer and I have a good idea of how trends work.

However, the real reason is that I happen to have some sort of psychic connection with the rest of the world, and it's a matter of faith that you believe me on this or not. 

It happens very often that, suddenly, I decide I would like to wear a certain thing that nobody wears and I have seen nowhere: just an invention of mine. So I go around searching all over, even where it seems less likely that I will succeed, for that. After a few months, I finally find it and become one of the very first wearers and, within a season or two, it has become fashionable and it's seen all about.

Now, speaking business, you have surely noticed that, for the last 5 years, muffins and cupcakes have been increasing their presence in fashion. Now they're all over, and you know trends go out of fashion as soon as you notice they're fashionable. So something is about to override them. What?

Macaroons and petit-fours got a shot, but didn't really make it. In fact, I believe their failure was that they came in too late. I was expecting a tide right after the film of Marie Antoinette came out, but it took them a few more years to appear.

So my bet is for the next trend to be ice-cream:

 

Should you come across anything with an ice-cream, doubt not: buy it! (As long as it's nice enough, of course)

By now, I've only found a few things at Claire's, hidden among the muffins, but they're mostly earrings, and I don't use earrings.

However, take notice that sundaes and ice-cream in paper cups look like variations of cupcakes, and popcicles are variations of lollipops. Although these are also part of the ice-cream trend, what you really want to look out for are wafer cones with two or three scoops on them.

Good luck on the hunt!


And, for those who've read the post all the way down, I'll also say I've noticed some plastic spheres with floral motives printed on them. Try to get hold of real porcelain balls, much better if they're hand painted. You may want to dig into your mother's jewel-box or take a look at second hand jewel shops.

Tea to all!

Who needs lunch?

I hardly ever have lunch. I either have breakfast at lunch time, or I have breakfast about 9 am, tea about 2 pm, and more tea at 8 pm -I'd like to have tea at 4 o'clok, but I'm usually in class at that time; however, I carry a thermo at times-. That last tea is usually my dinner, but at times I wait and have dinner with my father about 10 pm, which is, of course, finished with a before-bed cup of some infusion.

You see, cupcakes, as tea may accompany both sweet or salted foods, any meal can be turned into "tea time".

This was my lunchtime tea to-day.

Perfect tea, dears!

Reasons to drink Tea

And I mean, often.

When Robert mentioned that the caffeine in tea is stronger than that in coffee, I started searching for some information about that. I started with the article on tea from Wikipedia, and was amazed by the amount of benefits it has. Here's a copy-paste:

In 2010 researchers found that people who consumed tea had significantly less cognitive decline than non-tea drinkers. The study used data on more than 4,800 men and women aged 65 and older to examine change in cognitive function over time. Study participants were followed for up to 14 years for naturally-occurring cognitive decline. (AAICAD 2010; Lenore Arab, PhD; UCLA^[31])

Several of the potential health benefits proposed for tea are outlined in this excerpt from Mondal (2007, pp. 519–520) as following:

Tea leaves contain more than 700 chemicals, among which the compounds closely related to human health are flavanoides,amino acids, vitamins (C, E and K), caffeine and polysaccharides. Moreover, tea drinking has recently proven to be associated with cell-mediated immune function of the human body. Tea plays an important role in improving beneficial intestinal microflora, as well as providing immunity against intestinal disorders and in protecting cell membranes from oxidative damage. Tea also prevents dental caries due to the presence of fluorine. The role of tea is well established in normalizing blood pressure, lipid depressing activity, prevention of coronary heart diseases and diabetes by reducing the blood-glucose activity. Tea also possesses germicidal and germistatic activities against various gram-positive and gram negative human pathogenic bacteria. Both green and black tea infusions contain a number of antioxidants, mainly catechins that have anti-carcinogenic, anti-mutagenic and anti-tumoric properties.

Other benefits of drinking tea  include its utility in keeping you mentally awake (which means it allows you to sleep if you want to, but it helps you concentrate on work or studies), the relaxation it provides while stopping to drink some and its anti-depressant effects. Anti-depressant? Yes. It makes a great substitute for adrenaline and can also help with serotonin needs (even better if taken with sugar), which means it provides the necessary dose to stabilize bi-polar diseases, both manic-depressive and hiper-active-fatigue.

Have tea, lots of them, dearests. Lemon tarts to all!

Laces for my Valentine

 Three weeks is not a minute too soon to think about what you're going to wear for St. Valentine's Day, and Victoria's Secret has already launched their new special collection.

Just allow me to remind ladies that the delicacies of lingerie are not for anyone else to see, but for their own enjoyment when buying, touching, wearing and looking at theirselves in the mirror. Go ahead and walk around smiling secretly to yourself proud of the seductive weapons enclosed beneath your dresses that no one but yourself knows, and enjoy the thought of how irresistible you would be to anyone who could get a sight of your underwears.

I do encourage everyone to wear something special on every festivity, even when you are not assisting to any party, date, ball, dinner or meeting to celebrate it. So, why not choosing a love angel looking outfit, involving some red or pink, a corset, lace stay-up stockings and a deshabillé look?

Notice that St. Valentine's Day is a celebration of Love. It is dedicated to a priest who celebrated christian weddings when these were forbidden by roman laws. So I think it is everything but a date for loosing your chastity.

Celebrate Love. All sorts of love, including friendship love or family love. Tell them you love them, and wish them lots of love in their life. And lots of tea also: strawberry white tea, rose petal white tea, chocolate berry green tea, vanilla tea or strawberry & champagne tea are great varieties for this day.

Choose some special lingerie just for your self.

Play naughty, be good, cupcakes.

 

 

Visit www.victoriassecret.com to view the full collection.

How to make perfect Tea

Surely, tea may not only be enjoyed at any time of the day but also for any lenght of time imaginable. Or is there any better pastime than sitting around a tea table for hours?

Hence, you may by now have noticed that "six minutes" is not the time you spend drinking your tea. But, then, what does it refer to? Well, it is the time you brew your tea.

This may sound strange, since you've most certainly read on all tea packages you should "infuse for 3-4 minutes". However, after many years brewing tea and trying every amount of leaves and time of infusion, I can assure the perfect time is 6 minutes.

And the perfect amount? You should already know: one spoon for each cup and one for the pot. Now, to be more precise:

Consider a spoon to be a teaspoon filled 3/4 of it's length and 5-6mm high. This is a standard measure for Darjeeling or English Breakfast. You need, however, to consider the size of the leaves. Those which are very finely cut or rolled in little lie close to eachother, so you will need smaller measures. Those which are rolled as little tubes amount leaving great spaces among eachother, so your spoon will seem fuller. My advice is to always count the number of spoons according to the cups and change the size of this measure. Should you fill the spoon to the same degree but count less when the tea is cut finer, you will have no reference whatsoever.

Consider a cup to be about 1'5 or 2 small teacups, or 1/3 of an american mug. You can usually trust teapot specifications on how many cups they contain.
As you see, cups are not as simple as you may have thought. Our "cup" is bigger than the actual teacup we are drinking from, and less than a serving --wich means, never believe a 4 cup containing teapot will serve four guests! Most tea drinkers will have 1'5  or 2 cup measures, this is to say, 3 or 4 english teacups. Now, I will usually have 3 or 4 cup measures, wich means, should you share a pot for two with me, you may find the tea is all gone by the time you've had but two small cups! That is why I'd rather bring guests home and brew unlimited amounts of tea, instead of going to some tearoom or café.

I hope I haven't made the part of the cups too complicated. Now, to summarize it all: 2 teacups = 1 cup measure (which equals the amount of tea measures you need) = 1/2 serving.

And, how about that extra spoon for the pot? Well, you may have thought by now that it doesn't make much sense to add that one extra spoon should you be brewing two cups as well as eight. The truth is, this little extra is up to you to calculate, but I usually use one complete extra spoon for a 4 cup pot.

I hope you enjoy best tea from now on.

And, why is it this amount and six minutes?

Yes, it has an explanation. The amount of tea will influence taste and aroma, the time will influence body.

If you use too little tea, it will not have enough taste no matter how long you let it to infuse. If you use too much, it will soon become bitter, unless you infuse it for such a short time it will have no body at all and it will seem as you are drinking tea flavoured water rather than tea itself.

Six minutes is the perfect time for tea to have a good balance between taste and body. All the flavour is released, and body is just perfect to feel like tea but not to override the flavour. It is preferrable not to let it infuse much longer. However, tea doesn't change much after 8 minutes, so it won't work if you try to compensate a shortage of tea leaves by increasing the time.

Tea and muffins, dears.

Matcha Green Tea Muffins

To start the blog, I'm giving you a recipe created by my very dear Emilie Autumn for all her muffin fans.

Don't you know Emilie Autumn? Well then, check out her official website www.emilieautumn.com and her official Fan Club www.batteredrose.com
She's an awesome musician, I'm sure you'll love her.

There goes the recipe: Green Tea Muffins!
(And they're vegan, so they're a great choice if you're planning to invite any vegan friends to your next Tea Party)

This recipe was taken from http://www.emilieautumn.com/greenteamuffins.html

   

 

 

I hope you enjoy them.

Tea and muffins, dears.