Category: tea time

(I could swear I posted this but APPARENTLY NOT… this draft was written and has been sitting in the draft folder since August 13. Oh well.)

LIFE UPDATE:

So this weekend, the Nice ladies headed to Lovejoy’s in SF for an afternoon high tea! Lovejoy’s is where I went for Malvina’s bachelorette tea back in April. This time, my cousin Amanda arranged for the ladies of the family to meet up and spend an afternoon catching up – some of us hadn’t seen each other since Christmas so that was nice. Since my grandpa died we haven’t had our monthly birthday dinners so we don’t see each other as often.

We mostly ordered the Queen’s Tea (the biggest, fanciest tea with two sandwiches, a scone, fruit, salad, crumpet, a butter cookie, and petit four plus lemon curd, raspberry preserves and DEVON CREAM my favorite), but my aunt January and mother ordered the high tea and ploughman’s lunch respectively. The high tea is basically a smaller Queen’s Tea (sans crumpet and petit four) and I’m not too sure what exactly was the ploughman’s lunch except it had chutney (ew) and stilton cheese. I know about the stilton cheese because my mom gave me some to try – it’s kind of like bleu cheese. With my Queen’s Tea my two sandwich choices were Asparagus Hummus (super delish) and Cream Cheese & Mandarin Orange.

Anyway, we were a noisy bunch and it was fun to catch up with everyone. It was a nice day in the city – we even opened up the front window of the restaurant to let in the breeze.

Some pics, stolen shamelessly from Janelle’s Facebook:

Anyway, we had a lot of fun and then went over to Abby’s house afterwards, as nobody had seen her house yet. While the aunties were touring I sat in the living room with Amanda and Lauren and we professed our disdain over Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel that has taken the nation by storm.

I personally have not read it because I picked it up at Target and flipped through it and it’s written in first-person-present, a literary tense I find 98% unreadable. I loathe it so much you don’t even know. It has prevented me from reading many popular books, such as The Hunger Games, some of Meg Cabot’s work, etc. I LOATHE FIRST-PERSON-PRESENT IT IS THE WORST.

Also notable: Fifty Shades of Grey started out its life as Twilight fanfic. So, just know that you are reading the (former) erotic adventures of BELLA SWAN and EDWARD CULLEN!

Say it with me now: ew.

Lauren was pretty adamant how terrible it was. Amanda was disappointed they were terrible, as she had just bought all three. Knowing what I know about it (that’s it’s basically beefed up fanfic and first-person-present) I shall not be reading it. I just can’t with fanfic, guys. I know a lot of people write it, read it, and defend it, but I am just not one of them. It’s like stealing and I just can’t get behind it. If it’s your thing, that’s great – but it’s not mine. I’m not going to argue with anyone about it, and I’m not going to judge you if you like it and you write it or whatever, but I don’t want to know about it or read it. And I sure as f*ck am not going to pay money for something that lived a previous life as (bad) BDSM Bella/Edward drivel.

(Yeah I said it) (Yes, I am judging something based on not reading it and making assumptions. Whatevs! :P)

Anyhoodle.

So, then we went home and got stuck on the San Mateo Bridge for an hour just getting over the incline, and by the time we got to the accident site, it was not worthy of that sort of backup! Pulled off to the side, some flares, some damaged cars… When you’re stuck in that bad of traffic I want to see ambulances and flipped cars and maybe a fire or helicopter. Sadly, it was two sad damaged cars and a highway patrol car. NOT WORTH THE DELAY, FOLKS.

But then we finally got home and on Sunday I went to the reservoir with my dad where it was hot and gross but I managed to not get a headache. Yay!

 

CRAFTING

Next up (if I get around to it) I have resurrected the Willow Afghan from UFO purgatory. I’ve made six new squares and finished the first batch of 24 squares – with my color combo, there are 24 individual squares with their own unique color sequence. I’m thinking I need three batches of 24 squares for a total of 72. I laid the 24 squares out on my queen sized bed and it definitely looks like 72 squares will be a good size – it’ll be bigger than my regular sized woven afghans that I like. However, I’m thinking that I might want it to be even bigger (more of a bedspread size?). Sooooo I’m either 1/4 of the way or 1/3 of the way done. [Since I wrote this on 8/13 I’ve finished a few more squares and have 30 squares finished and am working on the next batch of 6. Once I finish these six I will be half done with the squares. I’m still not sure about if I want extra squares, but having laid it out on the bed again, I do think 72 is a good number, however I might add one more row  for a blanket that is 9×9 squares for a total of 81 squares. Boo.]

 

(May already? Sheesh)

So the last several months have been very very busy and it looks like it will finally let up mid-June! Then, I’ve booked a trip to San Antonio for my birthday to see my Texas peeps.  Julie and I are both headed to the great SA in July… and I must say, aside from seeing my friends, I am REALLY looking forward to all the delicious Mexican food I plan on stuffing down my gullet. Oh Jacala! Not gonna lie, my birthday dinner is going to consist of a #4B, which I am pretty sure is the only thing I have ordered at Jacala the last several times I’ve been there over the years. Also, that is the restaurant where this happened.

A couple of weeks ago I went with Malvina and her friend Katie to high tea for Malv’s bachelorette weekend. We are not exactly the type of people who think strippers are a fun time so our wild and crazy weekend was definitely fun, but not really wild and crazy (thank goodness! hah). So we decided to have a bridesmaids bachelorette outing to Lovejoy’s in San Francisco.

I’d been to high tea once before. In 1995, my dad won a trip to Hawaii, and while we were there, my mom wanted to go for high tea that was offered at one of the fancy beach hotels. I think it was in Honolulu rather than Waikiki but anyway, it was on the outdoor veranda that opened up to the beach and was all very fancy pantsy. That was the first time I’d ever had Darjeeling, which still holds a central place in my coffee-loving heart. I drank Darjeeling for years after that (until I had my first Starbucks drink in 1999… and that was that, haha).

Lovejoy’s is in the Noe Valley neighborhood (I think?) and pretty easy to get to off the freeway. if there is one thing that I really dislike, it’s driving in San Francisco. I drive a stick shift (now and forever! love it) and since it’s pretty hilly in SF, that can be nervewracking. But really, I just dislike driving there in general, the stick shift is just kind of an excuse. BUT as I recall, there is only one hill between the freeway and Lovejoy’s, so sometime I might be able to make it work. Yikes.

Anyway, the tea shop is full of tea frippery and very British. Lots of tea sets set out and lace and mismatched tea pots, it’s all borderline twee, but FUN. We dressed up and that was fun – other people had jeans and stuff on, but that just didn’t seem right.

I ordered a black tea with lavender, Malvina ordered a chestnut tea, and Katie ordered a lemon meringue tea. Our tower of goodies consisted of fresh fruit, delicious scones (I think cranberry?), and tea sandwiches. We chose a bunch of delicious sandwiches: classic cucumber, pear & stilton, green apple & cream cheese, mandarin orange & cream cheese, egg & onion, roast beef & horseradish, and turkey & mustard. So delicious! My choices were the mandarin orange & cream cheese and egg & onion. So tasty! I really liked the mandarin orange in particular – who knew that would make a good sandwich??! Fancy British people, that’s who.

Malvina’s tea choice was actually the best one. I really liked mine, but there was a depth to hers that was unexpected! Actually all three teas were good.

There were also crumpets, which I was surprised to find out are pretty similar to English Muffins. Since I love English Muffins, crumpets were a nice surprise.

OH and the revelation of the whole afternoon was CLOTTED CREAM. You guys, where has clotted cream been all my life? I do not know but wowza, amazing.

We made a pact to have tea on hopefully a quarterly basis. There are several tea houses around the Bay Area that sound like they would be simply delightful to try! Next time, we are wearing hats. Fancy old lady hats.

Tomorrow is Malvina’s bridal shower which I have worked hard on planning so hopefully that goes smoothly. Once that is over, I just need to get my bridesmaid dress altered a little bit (straps, hem MAYBE, I kind of like the tea length, it’s this dress in black with a pink sash). I also need to finish the bridesmaid jewelry, no lie I’m kind of procrastinating on that.

My office is currently going through some crazy times right now, so I have been super busy with work and I’ve developed some sort of allergy to everything related to lettuce and cabbage – at least, it gives me one hell of a stomachache – the last one lasted two days and I’m not super stoked about this. My newfound reaction to these types of food also includes my beloved Brussell Sprouts. SAD FACE. 🙁

I really could use a day to just sleep in until 11 but I think that will have to wait until a week from now.

And finally:

May the 4th be with you.

_________

p.s. CLOTTED CREAM