A selection
It's coming up to that time of year again and the (sometimes) painful task of buying gifts is here! I have noticed over the years that the people who are the least frazzled by gift buying seem to follow a few simple rules:
1. buy early;
2. buy thoughtful; and
3. buy small.
I think buying for men is particularly difficult for some people, but here at Shanghai Lil and The Scarlet Fez, I have a few solutions for you:
Top Row
The Emperor's Chai delicious cardamom
Mister X... green and earthy vetiver
Lemon Meringue lemony may chang
Middle Row
Smokey Joe sophisticated smokey cade
Evening Star aromatic star anise and basil
A Siberian Wood a dry wood
Bottom Row
Spearmint Julep fresh spearmint
St Clement's zesty sweet orange and may chang
The Fez No. 1 the gin and tonic of soap, lemongrass, may chang, juniperberry and
wormwood
Each soap is available from the Shanghai Lil and the Scarlet Fez shop for $7.50, plus postage. Each soap is hand crafted from all natural ingredients, vegan and without palm oil. Packaged and labelled in a range of beautiful boxes, these soaps make a thoughtful (relaxed gift-buying person's number 2 rule) and small (relaxed gift-buying person's number 3 rule) gift for men. Buy now and I can help you with relaxed gift-buying person's number 1 rule too!
My further advice is, if you have to buy a gift for a fellow like curly-locks below, I'd suggest Smokey Joe. He looks the type.
Photo from Shanghai Lil and The Scarlet Fez collection.
A Spicy Treat for Daydreamers
I think I have purchased every available brand of chai tea on the market. Our tea cupboard is packed with boxes of chai tea - and you can tell which ones we like; the empty ones. So I decided to make my own. I initially had visions of me at my day job spending hours in the kitchen slowly preparing spices and heating them up on my own portable cooking element, but they're on to me already. So, home preparation is the go.
I purchased some heat sealable teabags. Most of these I will use to infuse oils with herbs for the soaps I make, but here is another use. Of course, a mesh tea-ball will do, I just chose the bag because some of the spices will be powdered and I didn't want too much sediment in the final brew (you can always let it settle and just avoid serving the last bit, if you are strong-willed).
My partner and I went to Gaganis Bros on the weekend (if you don't know what this is, it's a magnificent, no, glorious, food wholesaler in Hindmarsh, Adelaide) and we bought up big on spices.
So, I don't really have a recipe, I just judged from my own preference for spices how much I would like in a brew for two (say that in a Toorak accent), so I can suggest this:
1 half teaspoon of ginger powder (fresh is better, no doubt, but I chose this because I thought about making up bags to use at other times, so dry ingredients would obviously be better)
4 cloves
2 whole star anise pods
1 half teaspoon of cardamon seeds
1 half teaspoon of cracked black pepper
5 whole pimento (all spice)
3 quarters of a teaspoon of cinnamon powder (I could only find sticks in kilogram bags, so powder had to do)
4 teaspoons of black tea (the stronger the better)
Put the spices in a mortar and give them a few grinds with a pestle. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, pounding the spices in a plastic bag with something hard might work!
Tip the contents and the black tea into the teabag. At this point, I also added a piece of orange peel. Iron the open side of the bag to seal it shut. And there you have your chai teabag.
In a small saucepan, I heated a mug's worth of water and a mug's worth of soy milk. To this, I added the teabag, two teaspoons of homemade vanilla essence (thanks to a lovely Christmas gift) and a couple of tablespoons of vegan cream. The vegan cream comes from a simple recipe my friend Karena (Magic Jelly) has graciously shared on her site and consists of cashews, soy milk and canola oil. It is super easy to make and is very versatile, as the recipes on Karena's site explain. The addition of vegan cream takes the chai to another level, but it really is optional.
Illustrated above, the spices, the cream, the vanilla essence and the tea bag.
I was fortunate enough to be presented today with a dozen vegan coffee cakes, again, courtesy of Karena. She has the recipe on her site and this is a modified version from a recipe for East Coast Coffee Cake found in Vegan Brunch. Delicious.
Making the chai teabag took about 10 minutes including clean-up, so it's an easy and worthwhile treat for lazy Sundays.
The Emperor's Chai
So, it's the first day of winter and looking out of my window at the dark grey skies and glistening puddles I never doubted it for a second. I've already brushed off the tweed and corduroy, brought the cashmere scarves to the front of the wardrobe and stocked up on Yorkshire Tea. Winter, I'm ready. Well, that's not quite true as I found out in yesterday's rain when my small umbrella with the broken arms just wasn't cutting it. The poor thing looked like a screwed up ball of paper on a stick.
Coming home in the rain, armed with muffins, tomatoes and cheese, I was welcomed by the scent of the new soap I had made during the week. The Emperor's Chai is a warm and delicious concoction, full of the gingery spicy smell of cardamon. It looks good too, with a creamy caramel swirl. I packed this beauty with cocoa butter, macadamia oil and pine nut oil, so it will have a silky smooth and luxurious lather.
Of course, I don't need to add that this soap is totally natural. It will be in Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez's store soon.
Aromatic Cardamom
We all have our own scent memories and associations. What is evocative for one draws a blank for another. I have just started using a batch of cardamom scented soap I made last month. The distinctive, aromatic smell of this spice takes me not so much to a romantic and distant eastern market but to an equally distant childhood exploration of the colourful spice containers in the ever-magical pantry of my family home.
This soap also contains macadamia oil and macadamia butter. It's smoother than silk and so far is shaping up to be a long-lasting bar. This is fast becoming a favourite.
