Tea In a Tin Cup Read online

  After that, any time we ate an evening meal out that trip, we ordered Goulash Zuppa or regular goulash—whichever was on the menu. It was a safe choice. Who knew what Maultaschen was?

  Goulash

  ½ cup flour

  salt and pepper

  3 lbs beef chuck or rump roast

  vegetable oil

  1 onion, chopped

  1 clove of garlic, chopped

  10.5 oz can beef broth

  water

  28 oz can tomatoes

  1 bay leaf

  ½ tsp caraway seeds

  1 cup sour cream

  * * *

  Season the flour with salt and pepper. Mix well and spoon onto a sheet of waxed paper.

  Coat the beef chuck or rump roast, cut into 1” cubes, in the seasoned flour. Remove the beef and reserve the flour.

  Heat several tablespoons of vegetable oil in a heavy pot. Brown the meat on all sides. Remove meat and sauté’ the onion and garlic.

  Add the meat, beef broth, ½ cup water, can of tomatoes, ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp ground pepper, the bay leaf and the caraway seeds.

  Cover and simmer for 2 hours. Stir occasionally. Remove bay leaf.

  In a small cup, blend 3 tbsp reserved flour with ½ cup water. Add to the meat.

  Stir constantly over low heat until the liquid is thickened.

  Stir in the sour cream.

  Heat the meat mixture thoroughly—don’t boil.

  Serve over hot buttered noodles.

  Chapter 17

  Sing for My Supper

  Germany, Austria and Switzerland was the vacation that grew from my prior British sojourn. Around that time, I spent a year in England, living with friends in Cheshire as I ventured into the world of professional folk singing. This desire progressed from my previous years’ summer vacations with two of my college friends, Anne and Janet. They lived in a flat in Bolton, Lancashire. Their sojourn, in turn, was natural, for Anne’s mum was an English war bride. She had married Anne’s dad and settled with him on his Illinois farm. Evidently feeling the ancestral tug or just fulfilling a wanderlust need, Anne flew to Lancashire, the area where her mother came from. Janet, a mutual friend from college, went with Anne. They shared the flat and got jobs.

  Their place reminded me of the shotgun style of homes prevalent in the older neighborhoods of St. Louis. Downstairs sported one large room that was a combination kitchen/living room, and the bathroom and two bedrooms off a long hallway were upstairs. The ceilings were eleven feet high and the entire interior was dark. Small windows let in little light, and the wallpaper was heavy with its drab colors. Two designs and colors in the same room were the custom, one paper design used for two walls. I thought it gave the rooms an odd sense of being halved. The front room held a bow window that looked onto a small front garden, as Britons call their front yards, but most yards really were more garden than lawn, for shrubs and flowers crowded the area. Which, to my mind, was clever, for it not only gave you beauty to gaze it, but it also cut down on grass mowing. And the flowers were so tightly packed together that no weed could get a toehold.

  The apartment building looked like it had been through the war. I don’t mean it was crumbling or falling apart, as might happen after a bombardment or skirmish. I mean that it wasn’t modern, that it looked like the row of buildings were the same sort I’d seen in 1940s movies. Although sitting side by side in one solid line, sharing a common wall, each building had its own fenced front garden—usually wrought iron gates and fences with a variety of decorative finials on each picket. Each residence also sported a different paint color. I assumed that was to make home easily identifiable to the residents, since the buildings have the same look.

  Anne and Janet’s flat was my introduction to British life. The first thing that surprised me was the realization that we had to feed coins into the kitchen’s gas meter if we wanted to cook or we needed hot water. I’d never experienced a pay-as-you-go thing like that. We took turns feeding the box. Being poor working girls, our meals were cheap and quick to prepare—a lot of baked beans on toast, canned spaghetti, and meat pies from the neighborhood bakery—so we wouldn’t use a lot of gas.

  My stay with them was also my introduction to tea drinking. I’d tried it several times throughout my twenty-some years, but never thought it had any taste. Staying with them, I discovered I hadn’t been making it properly. I’d used hot water and I’d immersed the tea bag for several seconds until the water had a brownish color.

  I learned that the water had to be boiling. It had to be poured from the kettle into the teapot or teacup immediately after it had come to a boil, so the temperature wouldn’t cool too much. The tea should be steeped for a specified number of minutes; color of the water didn’t signify when the drink was ‘done.’

  I tried it with milk, without milk, with lemon, without lemon, with sugar, without sugar… I definitely liked milk and sugar. Two cubes, thank you.

  With Anne and Janet’s tutorage, I made a good cup of tea and discovered I loved it. Loved it so much that I branched out to try various varieties: black, green, white. I began discovering different blends and forming my favorites: English Breakfast, English Afternoon, Irish Breakfast, Darjeeling, Prince of Wales… Not only did I look forward to several cups a day, I understood why the British drink a lot of tea. The damp, chilly climate practically demands the warmth of a cuppa (as Britons call their cup of tea) for comfort. There’s something about tea that permeates your body, settles into your bones, and works better than a hot pad and quilt to comfort you. Hot chocolate and hot apple cider just don’t do it. I was a convert. I bought a teapot and a tea cozy, envisioning my tea time at home.

  I also discovered the delightful custom of elevenses. Anne worked at a public library. One day I went with her to her job because I needed to do some research. This was just around the time that personal computers came onto the market. Very few people had them in the late 1970s and even if I had one (which I didn’t—that came when I bought a ‘baby’ Mac computer a bit later), there was no such thing as laptops or tablets or smart phones. If you wanted to do research, you went to the library and consulted a real book.

  I was sitting at a table, a few books around me, when a 2-shelved cart wheeled past me. The trolley was laden with two large teapots, cream and sugar, teacups and saucers, a plate of some type of bun, and several biscuit tins.

  Anne came around the corner and asked me to come with her.

  It was eleven o’clock. I walked into the staff break room, was introduced to her co-workers, and joined them in a cuppa and a biscuit or two. It was a relaxing break for the morning, a pick-me-up, as breakfast was wearing off and lunch was still two hours away.

  Anne told me this happened every work day, in most every office or business. It was called elevenses because the tea break normally happened at eleven o’clock. I thought it not only a sensible and civilized custom but also a tasty one, and it enhanced my love of hot tea.

  Bolton was a sizable town but not on the tourist route. Consequently, on hearing me speak, some people would ask what I was doing in Bolton. The incredulity in their voices told it all. I felt like I’d landed there from my home on Mars.

  I produced the same response at the local folk club. The music clubs were popular in the 1970s. The group usually met weekly in an upstairs room of the local pub. Thursday evening, for instance. There’d be allotted time at the start of the gathering for people in the audience to come to the front of the room and sing, if anyone wished. The majority accompanied themselves on guitar, but some people played fiddles and concertinas. A few sang a cappella.

  Every week there was a featured performer. Usually a Name Musician, either a well known up-and-coming or an established singer or group. These people brought in the crowd and—at least for me, being one of the hopeful future Names—afforded me a chance to learn from someone successful.

  During my six-week stay with my friends, I’d frequent the folk club each week. I became friends with other re
gulars and the two guys who ran the club. I’d do a song or two during the ‘amateur’ time that preceded the feature act. I’d brought my Martin D-12-35 guitar to England because I was trying out the folk club circuit. So, I stood at the front of the room, singing my heart out, the mellow sound of the Martin filling the room.

  I guess I was ‘good enough’ or the two chaps felt sorry for me (or figured I was odd enough—American in Bolton—to bring in some curious listeners), because they offered me a feature spot for an upcoming date. I was thrilled. Here was my chance to do an entire 45-minute program, to see if the British folk music scene would accept me.

  Back in the flat, I concocted my program, the list of songs—in order of performance—and the verbal introductions to each one. I mixed up the American traditional and contemporary songs. Half of the repertoire of The Six Pack—my own folk group back home—was British songs, but of course I couldn’t perform those at the club. I’d look pretty stupid, giving these Brits “Scarborough Fair” or “A Mon Like Thee” back to them in an American accent.

  All the week leading to the big evening I rehearsed in Anne and Janet’s flat. If they were sick of my singing or any of the songs, they never said. They went with me to the club the night of my performance, giving me their support.

  The two chaps gave me a small wooden plaque, commemorating my club membership, and a small (a half inch by one and a half inches) notice in the Events section of the local paper. It didn’t say much. Just my name, Nick, the name and address of the folk club, and the date and time I’d be performing. But it was the first star-like treatment in England, and I was honored the guys did it.

  I returned to that club the next two years, also spending my six weeks with Anne and Janet in the same flat. Many good things came from the years I attended that folk club’s meetings. I learned stage presence and timing. I learned how to ‘feel’ an audience, realizing when something wasn’t working, when they were getting bored. I learned and brought home many British traditional songs, and I made a bunch of friends.

  One thing I never would’ve guessed when I began going to the meetings at the pub, though, was that I’d go home with a bunch of pub grub recipes.

  I had a few suppers at the pub. Then I branched out to other pubs. I was surprised—the food was very good! Britain no longer has a reputation of bad restaurant food. It’s improved greatly in the past few decades.

  Scotch Eggs—the hard-boiled egg covered in pork sausage and fried—are probably universal to pub grub. I especially like the recipe below. One of my other favorites is Cider-Baked Potatoes. Easy to make, yet incredibly good.

  * * *

  Scotch Eggs – 6 eggs

  7 eggs, 6 of which are hard-boiled

  flour

  2 cups pork sausage

  4 tsp cold water

  1 cup fresh soft bread crumbs

  oil for deep frying

  * * *

  Peel the hard-boiled eggs and dust with flour. Divide the sausage into six portions and flatten each into a patty. Wrap each sausage portion around an egg, making sure to encase the egg completely in the meat.

  Beat the raw egg with the water. Dip the sausage-wrapped eggs into the egg mixture. Coat each egg in the bread crumbs.

  Fry the eggs two or three at a time in the hot fat for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown and crispy. Don’t crowd the eggs in the pot – the oil must touch all of the egg. Remove eggs with a slotted spoon and drain them on paper towels.

  Cut the egg open to see the beautiful yellow yolk and white egg nestled in the browned sausage.

  OR…you can skip the deep frying and bake these.

  Preheat the oven to 400°F. Place a sheet of parchment paper on a baking sheet and spray the paper generously with cooking spray. Spray each egg also with cooking spray and set them on the parchment paper-covered baking sheet. Set the sheet into the preheated oven. Bake the eggs for 20-25 minutes, until they are golden and the pork is cooked.

  One of the best apple cider/cheese/potato recipes I’ve eaten. Besides the wonderful taste, the household fills with the scents of hot apple cider and baking cheese. Lovely combo!

  * * *

  Cider-Baked Potatoes

  1 lb potatoes

  salt

  ground pepper

  ½ cup Cheddar cheese, grated

  2 tbsp butter

  2/3 cup cider or apple juice

  * * *

  Cut the potatoes in thin slices and layer one third of them in a lightly greased casserole dish. Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle some of the cheese on top. Repeat until the casserole is full. Dot with butter and pour the cider into the casserole. Cover and bake for two hours at 350°F.

  Chapter 18

  The Only Two People in the World

  The first summer I spent with my friends Anne and Janet (in the late 1960s) was definitely eye-opening. Nearly everything I did or saw or heard fascinated me, and I learned a lot about Britain, the culture and the history.

  They took me sightseeing. Castles and manor homes and stately houses. Places like Hall i’ th’ Wood (a 16th century manor house in Bolton), Lyme Park (a stately home and grounds dating from before 1388), Rufford Old Hall (a timber-framed house and great hall from the early 1500s), and Pendle Hill (a barren hill isolated from the Pennine mountains. It’s famous for the witch trials of the 1600s). I felt strangely connected to the land and the past. It was as if I’d returned home.

  One outing that Janet and I took was to Rivington Pike. Part of the west Pennine Moors, it overlooks the village of Rivington and is a grand spot to see various moors and mountain peaks. Farther up, on the hilltop, the wind whistles and bends the short grass, perfuming the air with the scents of damp earth.

  When I was there in the early 1970s nothing much was around the area. Blanket bog and heath plants checkered the land and intermingled with the grass. Janet and I visited the hill because it was wind swept and lonely and hadn’t been exploited.

  She thought I’d like to see the stone building crowning the hill. It was built as a hunting lodge in the early 1730s. It looked more like a tower, I thought, as it was sixteen feet square and twenty feet high. It sported a door and three windows, but access to the lodge’s interior is a thing of the past. Janet told me it has just one room and a fireplace, but the chimney is no more. I would’ve liked to have gone inside the lodge. The lodge was historic and reeked of atmosphere.

  The other reason Janet thought I’d like the Pike was due to its history of Scottish raids throughout the countryside. The hill was the location of one of the fire beacons, created in the late 1130s as part of a warning system. The fires were lit to signal Scottish raids or the approach of the Spanish Armada.

  The Pike is also home to a ghostly horseman. A man in the 1700s evidently had an encounter with the chap and was lucky to escape from the demon.

  I had yet to learn about the hunting lodge and the beacons and the ghost. Those things were saved until we’d conquered the hill. It took us a couple hours to walk around and trudge to the nearly one thousand two hundred-foot high top. But it certainly was worth the view. We sat on the grass, heady with the climb and the wildness of the place, and gazed across the moorland. The Welsh hills appeared as a grayed purple smear to the west, nearly obscured by streaks of stratus clouds inching in from the Irish Sea. To the north loomed the hills of the Lake District. Equally unreachable. I was told one could see the Isle of Man, to the northwest, on very clear days, but it was too cloudy the day we were there. It didn’t matter that much to me. The earth was warm, welcoming to our strained muscles, and we sank down onto the grass.

  No bird song floated over to us; all we heard was the wind, insistent in its business of pushing the clouds and grass eastward. It was as though Janet and I were the only two people in the entire world.

  Until we heard the bell of an ice cream truck.

  The sound was distinct. We didn’t mistake it for anything but the announcement of Civilization somewhere below us.

  I
t was so ludicrous. Us, up on top of the hill, no towns or cars or people visible, and yet an ice cream truck had popped up in this wilderness. We rolled onto our sides, shaking with laughter.

  After that event, I have to include a recipe for something made of ice cream. I think this also pays tribute to Janet’s and my hike up the hill, since the slice of this pie is high.

  * * *

  Hilltop High Ice Cream Pie – 9” pie

  24 chocolate crème-filled sandwich cookies

  ¼ cup butter, melted

  8-oz cream cheese, softened

  1 pint vanilla ice cream

  ½ cup sugar

  3 chocolate/caramel/peanut candy bars

  ½ cup whipping cream, whipped (or aerosol can of whipped cream topping)

  ¼ cup caramel topping

  * * *

  Put sandwich cookies in a food processor, put on cover, and pulverize. Add the butter, cover, and whir until butter is incorporated smoothly.

  Spoon cookie mixture along bottom and side of an ungreased pie plate. Set it in the freezer for 20 minutes.

  Cut the candy bars into ¼”--½” sized pieces.

  In a large bowl, combine the ice cream, cream cheese and sugar. Mix well, making certain no clumps of ice cream or cream cheese are incorporated. Add the cut-up candy bar pieces and mix well. Spoon the mixture over the pie crust. Cover with plastic wrap and return to freezer for at least six hours, preferably overnight.