How many times have you wondered…so how many ounces in a quart? Here is a website that will do the calculations for you.

Now you have no excuses for that extra sugar you put in the tea!!

Caffein wars that is!
Professor Griffiths of Johns Hopkins may have started a little war of words with his meta-analysis of coffee and caffein. This is of course of interest to us because many of the American tea drinkers come to tea via the route of coffee. We have many customers who tell us that they started drinking tea because they didn’t like the “edge” that coffee gave them.
So, when this article came out, (its actually a meta-analysis of several studies) it didn’t seem like anything big. Its the obvious story - people like their morning java because they are addicted to their coffee. But, as you have it, some people like this common sense story while others don’t. Just google Griffith’s name and you will see what I mean.
You can judge the article for yourself. The link is here.
For the record, a cup of Tea generally contains less than half the caffein of a cup of coffee. If you want it even less, then we suggest you brew the tea for 30 seconds and throw out that water. Caffein being highly soluble in water, is easily removed in this way. Of course, if you have full leaf tea that you are using, then I wouldn’t recommend this because full leaf tea takes a long time to steep, and you may never get all the caffein in the leaf into your cup in the first place.

Split rock resort in the beautiful pocono mountains of Pennsylvania, is organizing a two day indoor beer festival this weekend on Nov 20th and 21st. Tickets are $23 for saturday and $20 for sunday, if purchased in advance. Click here for more details.

Huma Siddiqui sheds new light on Pakistani cusine that is often overshadowded by its much larger neighbor. Stories remain the same, the two cultures being so intertwined with each others history. Still, significant differences exists, just as within Indian cusine one find tremendous differences between Punjabi cusine and Rajasthani cusine - although both are neighboring states. An important contribution to our understanding of a country with rich Mughalai tradition, mixed with the influence of Baluchi, and Coastal regions.
The title is interesting in that it does not speak of food, but of the tradition of women of Pakistan (and of much of India) wearing a “gajra” or string of Jasmine in their hair. As Huma points out, this book is a tribute to her mother who often wore Jasmine in her hair. Its a fitting tribute to mothers all over the subcontinent - for nothing can be greater tribute than recognition of their hard work and toil in the kitchen which is responsible for not only filling our bellies, but also for building our characters and making us productive individuals.

So, now Saurav Ganguly (for those unfamiliar with the name, Saurav is the captain of Cricket team which had the dubious distinction of loosing to Australia on home soil for the first time in 30 years!) has decided that he will become a bawarchi (cook) instead of focussing on Cricket. Saurav has opened a four storey, multi-plex restaurant in Calcutta. The restaurant was inaugurated by Sachin Tendulkar (another player with dismal performance in recent test cricket) and attended by Inzmam Ul Haq (of the 2002 Pakistani debacle fame) and many other loosers.

It still beats me that these players are allowing themselves to be distracted by these silly business ideas when they could be focussing on improving their multi million dollar careers and play better cricket. But no, Indian Cricket can go to hell in a hand basket. What the city of Calcutta really needs is another restaurant.

Miami Herald has a receipe for Lavender Short Bread Cookies which are perfect for afternoon snack or morning tea. Problem is, I don’t eat eggs, and this receipe has eggs in it. Can someone suggest a recepie without eggs??