It's "tea and crumpets" time! Lori baked some crumpets. She didn't share them with me. We're going to have to have a talk about that. In any case, I thought about what tea might work best with crumpets, and I even sent a quick tweet to one of my English twitter friends. She said "any breakfast tea would be pretty typical." And so...this week I'm reviewing what has become my favorite breakfast tea.
We're back to Plum Deluxe!
Okay, so I've already reviewed this one. But it's absolutely lovely so I couldn't resist pairing it (in my head) with Lori's crumpets.
Plum Deluxe's Breakfast in Bed Black tea is one of the most smooth and rich black teas I've had the pleasure of drinking. I steep my black teas for five minutes and sometimes that can bring out a bit of bitterness. No worries here!
It has blackberry and hazelnut layers, as well as just a little vanilla (that helps smooth it out, I think). Those gorgeous blue cornflowers are just visual joy. I drink it straight but it would be fantastic with a splash of cream. And with Lori's crumpets? Heaven.
I guess I need to stop blogging about this tea. I'm getting redundant, but it really is a fantastic breakfast tea.
Book Review
For my book review this week, I'm going a little historical. It has nothing to do with breakfast or black tea or crumpets. However, it was a really good book! I just finished reading Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard (link in image at left). This is a nonfiction book that tells of the assassination of President James Garfield. I bought it because it had been very well reviewed, and because I know absolutely nothing about Garfield, other than the fact that he'd been assassinated. After reading this book, I found myself actually grieving Garfield's loss. He seemed like a really wonderful man. The book is eminently readable--I finished it in under a week, reading mostly at bedtime, and it was one I looked forward to getting back to each evening. Millard does an excellent job weaving the various threads of the story together; it was clearly extremely well researched and includes many quotations directly from letters and first-person accounts, but it still reads more like a novel (without those moments that make you question how much you can trust the narrative, however, that I've run into occasionally with other nonfiction books). The book succeeds at raising the question: Who actually murdered President James Garfield? And you'll have to read the book to know what I mean by that--it may not be what you think!
Snackies
And now it's time for you to check out those crumpets that Lori is baking up--they sound wonderful!