My St. Patrick's Day escapades ended with a sidetrip out to
Replacements, Ltd, the giant warehouse of ugly and forgotten china located between me and St. Patrick's Day. You don't even know how hard it is to find PLAIN, WHITE china in that hole for retirees. Seriously, they do have a very wide selection of china patterns, more than I ever thought existed, but the selection also only appeals to the 55-70 age range, who have nothing better to do than to track down pieces of their wedding china broken by rogue grandchildren at holiday gatherings.
After looking over ALL the display items, I finally found 3 sets of demi-tasse and saucers that were JUST WHITE. They're the size of tea cups that Chinese people would use to have afternoon tea, and also perfect for after dinner coffee. I'm quite satisfied with the purchase, as it wouldn't have pleased me had I gotten big British high tea-sized teacups. I also wasn't about to spring for a different tea set for Chinese tea, British high tea, and coffee. When buying a tea set, I say go for what you know you'll use them for. With a neglected crappy teapot that I stole from my mom, a hot water heater (required for all Asian households) and an aluminum tube of jasmine tea from
Red & Green Co. of San Francisco (wayyyy coooool....), we were ready to have a tea party. Actually, the only thing we were missing was
speculos or
madeleines. The best type of food to have with tea is some sort of crispy but sweet plainly flavored cookie, or tea sandwiches. It was too late to eat more sandwiches, so we had to make do with donut holes and scones bought from the grocery store.
Oh, and the exciting thing about these cups is, they're made in Israel! Whose teacups are made in Israel? I'm probably secretly supporting some sort of religious warfare. Go JEWS!
It was the end of a long day of walking around, and since dinner was still 4 hours away (it is not rare to have dinner after 11pm in Barcelona), I needed something to hold me over until then. The only bagel they had left was jalapeno and cheese, and for some reason I wanted to try the curry cream cheese. It was amazing (also amazing that I can still find the picture of it I took in 2003). I still have dreams about it.
I had afternoon tea (which ran until 10pm!) a couple of weekends ago, and wanted to recreate the deliciousness with some spare mini bagels I had left (Thomas's mini bagels in wheat). The pastrami is sliced from the deli (I asked the deli lady to slice it thin and she misheard me so it is extra thick.). To make the curry cream cheese, I assume you just mix curry powder with cream cheese. There was no curry powder to be found at whole foods (I wish America had spice shops), so I mixed tumeric and cumin in with the cream cheese. It was almost as good as the curry cream cheese in Barcelona, except since I only used 2 spices instead of the usual suspects, I felt perhaps there was something lacking. In any case, the pastrami-curry cream cheese-wheat bagel was a winner with my tea companions.
