Balticon Book Launch Party!
Once again, Don Sakers and I will be teaming up for Tea From Four Worlds, a book launch party at Balticon - this Saturday, May 24, from noon to 2. We will be serving teas appropriate to our books as well as light snacks, and giving away gift bundles that will contain a book, a different appropriate tea, and various other goodies. And of course we’ll have copies of the books for sale.
I can’t say that it was easy choosing the right teas, but it was fun! Well, actually, Nico’s tea was easy: black, bitter, capable of being steeped forever and gulped down at all hours of the day or night. That calls for solid, workmanlike British black tea, nonspecific blends, no fuss, no nonsense, good with milk and sugar or without, and able to stand up to a slug of rum or whiskey in a pinch. Since that’s something Lisa liked in a tea, I had a ready list to choose from, and if the proverbial “tea strong enough to trot a mouse on” is your cuppa, I can provide it.
It was harder to choose the tea to go with Silver Bullet. America in the 1930s wasn’t really a tea-drinking culture - tea was associated with little old ladies and restaurants where you could order a salad of cottage cheese in a halved canned peach, or with Southerners who drank it iced and sweet. I did think about iced tea, but then remembered some of the older brands, out of fashion now, but still nice, unassuming blends that I grew up with and remember from afternoons sitting in the kitchen, in the slack between cleaning up lunch and starting supper. Alma would make tea then, and in the summer Mitch would drink the same tea over ice, pitcher after pitcher. Stasi and Lewis are both coffee drinkers, though, for all that they like a very different style…
Maybe next year we’ll do coffee, or some of Stasi’s pastries, or pies from Wicked’s, but this year, it’s tea. Tea From Four Worlds. If you're going to be at Balticon, stop by!
I can’t say that it was easy choosing the right teas, but it was fun! Well, actually, Nico’s tea was easy: black, bitter, capable of being steeped forever and gulped down at all hours of the day or night. That calls for solid, workmanlike British black tea, nonspecific blends, no fuss, no nonsense, good with milk and sugar or without, and able to stand up to a slug of rum or whiskey in a pinch. Since that’s something Lisa liked in a tea, I had a ready list to choose from, and if the proverbial “tea strong enough to trot a mouse on” is your cuppa, I can provide it.
It was harder to choose the tea to go with Silver Bullet. America in the 1930s wasn’t really a tea-drinking culture - tea was associated with little old ladies and restaurants where you could order a salad of cottage cheese in a halved canned peach, or with Southerners who drank it iced and sweet. I did think about iced tea, but then remembered some of the older brands, out of fashion now, but still nice, unassuming blends that I grew up with and remember from afternoons sitting in the kitchen, in the slack between cleaning up lunch and starting supper. Alma would make tea then, and in the summer Mitch would drink the same tea over ice, pitcher after pitcher. Stasi and Lewis are both coffee drinkers, though, for all that they like a very different style…
Maybe next year we’ll do coffee, or some of Stasi’s pastries, or pies from Wicked’s, but this year, it’s tea. Tea From Four Worlds. If you're going to be at Balticon, stop by!