Alas, none of the vegetables in this roast were from our garden. We’ll toss up a post soon about the winterization of the garden — we’ve done a pretty solid job this year of getting the garden ready (unlike the last several years when we’ve flaked on it till the first warm day in the early spring! oops!).Tonight’s dinner was VERY simple: a heap of miscellaneous winter vegetable, roasted in the oven, and some baked polenta. Mmmmm. Excellent with a good glass of wine and a buddy sitting beside you!

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We’re about to have our first freeze of the fall season, so I picked all the rest of the green tomatoes on the vine today. I was totally blanking on any ideas so I turned to one of my favorite books of all time for inspiration. (more…)

Here at Torley Manor we drink a good amount of tea. Even in the middle of summer when temps get into the 90’s, i’m still likely to drink at least a travel mug of hot tea in the morning and likely another later in the evening. I consume tea like many others drink coffee.

But I still get a bit excited about the cooler weather, cuz it means that it becomes time to up the tea consumption. Come home, brew up a hole pot and keep warm. So as fall comes around, we usually stock up on our loose tea supply. For the most part this year we’ve just stocked up on a bunch of the Torley Manor ‘”regulars”, but we also got a couple new things.

Pumpkin Spice Tea from Adagio

I think we had gotten a sample of this stuff last year or maybe even the year before from our friend MaryJo. I enjoyed it, so when doing an order of tea for some friends’ weddings, I decided to pick up a 4oz tin for $6. Its a Sri Lankan black tea with pumpkin and spice flavors. Honestly you really don’t taste any pumpkin, but you get a light touch of pumpkin-pie style spice. Very pleasant with a touch of sugar and a little bit of soy creamer. Available from Adagio.

Red Bloom Display Tea from Adagio

Display teas are pretty amazing. The tea leaves are tied together and then dried in such a way that when you brew the tea, they open like a blossoming flower. Last year Emma had gotten me some Jasmine Bloom display teas for xmas which also open to reveal a string of Jasmine blooms inside the tea leaves when it blossoms.

This batch is a little different in that it is a black tea, and when it opens up there is a small Red flower (or unidentified type) in the center. The first one we did the flower popped out away from the bloom after the tea blossomed. The one I just did stayed put in the middle of the bunch of tea. I’m not sure which way its supposed to go, but pretty fun either way.

The difficulties of trying to photograph steaming hot tea in a teapot.

Almost got a good photo of it…but not quite

Fine…here it is out of its natural habitat

The tea itself isn’t anything too out of the ordinary - a black tea with a hint of a chocolatey flavor. At $10 for 10 blossoms, its a bit pricey, but makes a nice gift. Keep it in mind for the holidays! Also from Adagio.

The Usual Suspects

I figured it would be worthwhile to talk about the Torley Manor “regulars”, those teas that we normally keep in stock at all times. We have a few. We keep them in these cute little jars from Ikea. It should be noted that keeping your tea in glass jars is not proper, as tea reacts negatively to sunlight, but we figure we use it so frequently and quickly that it doesn’t have enough time to be adversely affected.

Jamaican Rum Tea (via the East End Food Coop)
Apparently Emma thought I was super sophisticated early on in our relationship cuz I introduced her to this tea. I forget exactly how I stumbled upon this gem of the EEFC bulk tea section, but its a favorite.

I don’t drink rum, but perhaps I should, cuz this tea is delicious and the claim is that it is flavored with rum flavorings. Not being a drinker, I can not verify this. What I can tell you is that its a very flavorful black tea with a light fruity flavor and a strong pleasing aroma. I take mine with a touch of sugar, but really its not necessary. I’ve never really seen this type of tea for sale many places, but if you are Pittsburgh local you can get it from the EEFC. Adagio also offers a rum tea, but i’ve never tried theirs.

Pinhead Gunpowder (also via the EEFC)
Aside from being a great band from the East Bay featuring Aaron Cometbus, its also a wonderful tea. Its a green tea with a light smoky flavor. If you’ve tried really smokey teas like Lapsang Souchong, this is nothing like that. The flavor is mild, but its got a good kick - Cometbus calls it “high octane”. For some reason I have often referred to this as a “thinkin’ man’s (or woman’s) tea” - perhaps cuz it helps you stay alert while reading - I don’t know, but that’s how I categorize it.

English/Irish Breakfast (also via EEFC)
For many moons we were rockin’ the English Breakfast, recently we switched over the Irish. Honestly the difference isn’t noticeable to me. The co-op stocks Frontier Natural Products Co-op versions of the breakfast teas. They are cooperatively-run and great people - support them!

Although they call these things breakfast teas, I tend to enjoy them in between noon and midnight. English or Irish, they are strong black teas with a noticable kick. Drink it proper like the English with cream (soy of course) and sugar - don’t be shy - load this tea up with liberal amounts and enjoy.

As the folks at the Quiet Storm know, this is my drink of choice when i’m out and about.

Ok - I think i’ve rambled on long enough. Happy tea drinkin’!!

We’ve been around and about, and far away, and doing all sorts of things the last week. You may recall that my dear friends’ wedding was this past weekend — the one for which I had agreed to make ten cakes. The difficulty here was not so much the number of cakes, but the very, very little time I had for preparing them. (more…)

I tried to conjure feelings of fall.. but it didn’t work with the temperature behaving like August.. so I gave up and made ice cream.
this maple spice cake was for someone who requested I make a “maple cake or something like that” in reference to a cake on the cover of one of those “women’s” magazines in the check out aisle at the grocery store. so I went home and worked out a maple cake based on the maple cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, replacing the buttercream therein with a maple-y ganache on top. pretty good, but a little too sweet for me.. intended recipient liked it a lot though:

then I decided to hell with fall flavors, it was time to make some green tea ice cream.. so I tried this recipe from the have cake, will travel blog. pretty damn good. A++. will make again:

I’ve made a lot of cakes in my day. I don’t think I’ve ever made ten cakes for one event though!

In just under three weeks, following a week out of town and on the day we fly home again, that is what I will be doing! Two dear friends of mine are having a wedding at a farm in West Virginia, and I’ve agreed to be in charge of the cake. This translated to cakes, plural, over the course of time. Turns out one individual hates frosting. Also one individual wants cayenne pepper. And two individuals cannot eat gluten. And so the idea is born: Ten small cakes in many flavors.

So far the definitive list includes:

• chocolate & cayenne cake with cinnamon frosting
• gingerbread (or carrot cake, haven’t decided) without frosting but decorated with candied ginger flowers.

Other options which I am currently debating:

• basic white cake with lemon filling and vanilla frosting, wedding style!
• orange cake (or yellow cake with orange filling and frosting)
• chocolate cake with peanut butter mousse filling, and a chocolate ganache

Should I roll out the big guns and do a mojito cake? The mojito cupcakes of this summer were probably the most glamorous things I’ve ever made…

Behold!