Slightly OT: Seeking teatime snacks in Troy, NY

Hi folks

This is a little OT I guess, wondering if there are any food/tea shops in Troy or Albany, NY which carry clotted cream and crumpets.

I'm attending a tea demonstration tomorrow for homeschooled children and their parents, so the kids can learn about a proper Victorian Tea. I've been asked to demonstrate what I know about gong-fu preparation. I think this portion is geared towards the older kids and adults, I can't see having roving bands of little kids all hopped up on gong-fu bai hao :-)

TIA,

-ben

Reply to
devlyn76
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I checked online, and did not immediately see a place in your area for either item. However, there are recipes online for making an approximation of clotted cream, and scones are easier to make than crumpets. However, there is really no such thing as 'Victorian tea', per se. There's high tea (basically dinner with tea- it's what the working classes had in Britain during the Victorian era) and afternoon tea (the fancy upper-class tea with small sandwiches and cakes). You can also have what is known as a cream tea (the same thing, only with clotted cream and jam on scones; it's associated primarily with the Lake District). As I'm sure you know, gong-fu isn't related to the Victorians. you can make a nice cambric tea for the children (weak tea with milk and sugar) and then switch over to lemonade, which was a popular drink during the Victorian era. You can even serve ginger ale or ginger beer.

Tea was as much about classas it was about a beverage during the Victorian era. Just as most Victorians did not have 'Victorian' Christmases (the majority of people were poor, could not afford trees, candies or fancy presents, and certainly didn't dress in velvet or ride around in sleighs) most of them never had 'Victorian Teas'.Sugar was an expensive commodity for a long time during the Victorian era, and baking was a time-consuming proposition. Most women did not have the leisure time to take tea, and most men had even less free time for such things. Fancy teas were associated with the wealthy and the aristocracy. The majority of silverware pieces and place settings now associated with feasts and afternoon tea came into being as a form of conspicuous consumption on the part of the upper middle classes. There are numerous books on the history of tea, especially British tea. There are also excellent materials online regarding life in Europe during the Victorian age, which lasted most of the 19th century. Dickens, who lived during most of the period, rarely shows his characters making a big thing of teatime, because most people didn't. Tea as a form of middle class entertainment only really began late in the 19th century, when trains and ships made it easier for large numbers of people to travel, and department stores became havens for housewives during the day. It was at this point that teashops and hotels offering beverages in an attractive setting became popular for fashionable people as a way to break up the shopping day or to take the edge off travel.

Here's a nice croup of recipes. The page also links to some info on the Victorian Era.

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It's very romanticized than real, though, since most Victorians didn't sit around making tussie-mussies. A more realistic link that would be useful for homeschooling is this one.
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So is this one.
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"devlyn76" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Reply to
Tea

cool, thanks!

my wife ended up attempting, and failing at making clotted cream, then made an approximation which was good enough.

The gathering was mostly English style, though my gong-fu demo was done as a small aside to the whole scones and black tea event. So gong-fu was just to show how other folks prepare tea, the older kids and parents were pretty well interested in it.

-ben

Reply to
devlyn76

Great. I'm glad it went well. I've never tried to make clotted cream- I'm lucky enough the have a couple of markets near me that carry it. I'm in Manhattan. Had you more time, I woud have recommended calling either Myers of Keswick or one of the branches of Garden of Eden- either one would have been able to have sent you what you needed by mail. Crumpets, too. But I think they would have needed notice.

Scones are good and fairly easy things to make. I hope the history stuff was useful too. We tend to forget that when we think of how 'people lived in the past', we're usually thinking of how rich people lived, not ordinary people. For kids, I think it's important to show them that not everyone in a society lives the same way, not then or now.

Reply to
Tea

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