The tart de resistance

Soup du jour is cream of cauliflower with cashews and a soupcon, bring your own cedilla, of broccoli.

Then to use up the rest of the pastry, from yesterday's pasties,  jam tarts. I saved some strawberries to eat as is, made the rest into a little jar of jam.

Note next to the prayer plant a glimpse of the resident aloe, which served me well today. Jam, you know, hot oven, inevitable scorched thumb. Okay now though.

As usual everything happening at once, you see the cashews waiting to be blended into the soup while the tarts are ready for the oven. 400f about 25 minutes.

And they emerged, looking artisanal and tasting wonderful. Beats me why anyone would go to all the trouble of mixing and kneading and resting and cutting and shaping pastry for tarts then go bunging in commercial jam. You can make a small amount of excellent jam in no time. And it's so good.

My artisanal baked goods are like the misfits of the veg world. Taste great, wouldn't win a beauty pageant. Which is okay because where would the crown go anyway?

Crowns and jam tarts are forever linked in memory to me from my days as an actor, playing the lead in Jam for Tea. I think about second grade. 

I was the Queen of Hearts, the one who baked the tarts all on a summer's day,with paper crown. 

I baked the pretend tarts, set them on the pretend windowsill to cool at the open window, turned away, probably to wield a pretend bench scraper, the Knave comes along, swipes them through the open window. 

Probably played by Harry Snook, a kid always put next to me, who drew airplanes all day long when he wasn't being blamed for bumping my elbow.

My big dramatic moment: I turn. I throw up my hands, careful not to knock off the lopsided paper crown. I shriek "THEY'VE GONE!!"

I forget the denouement, probably involved a chase scene, though not in airplanes.

After this triumph I returned to knitting my hat to wear to school, and turned down offers to tour the provinces. 

My green and salad days..

Jam for Tea with the Dollivers

After a wonderful, though strenuous day yesterday about which if you missed it, more here

I had other errands later, involving meetings with artists, pickup of work, and, this all on a day in the high 80s with very little access to ac, I was caught in the street by a neighbor wanting to give me a little item for art use, and have a chat. We don't see each other a lot, both busy, so I stayed out chatting, then realized I had better get indoors.

I suddenly had all the symptoms, I realized later, of heatstroke.  The lot, including doing a Hillary, staggering and gasping while trying to get into the house. I did make it to the sofa, lay down, cooled off, drank water and generally realized I was going to live if I stayed cool and got hydrated.

But the day was still wonderful, for all that.  And today, even hotter, I decided I had to bow to my trouble with heat, as in can't handle it, and aside from an early morning shopping run, stayed home and cool.

And of course that led to baking.  I made a batch of scones, with raisins and walnuts, and a small batch of Amish style tomato and lemon preserve.  

I forgot to make sure the tomatoes coming out of the freezer were plum toms, and used the juicier ones instead. So the preserve tasted wonderful, but is more runny than it spozed to be. 

Here it is at the unboildownable stage
 
The combo of lemon and farm tomato is unbeatable. Great for breakfast, too, tangy.  Just a small batch, easy to make. Couple of pints.

I split and jammed a scone, and left it for my neighbor across the street, not the chatting one, to sample.  She texted  about three minutes after arriving home from her city commute, that it was very good, and gone already! The joke between us is that I usually give her enough of a sample of whatever's going, to share with her husband, but that she samples the whole lot before he gets to taste it..but she's very good about sharing the banana bread, his favorite, when that's on offer

And of course, two of the Dollivers showed up dressed in whites, NameMe and Blondie Firstborn, claiming full participation in all the baking and boiling and jam testing and sterilizing of jars and serving, see the testing saucer on the right, you know this trick? put a couple of saucers in the freezer and when you think jam is jelled enough, test a spoonful on one there and if it wrinkles with pushing, jam's done, quick, shut off the heat. If not, try again in a minute with the other frozen saucer.

The Ds also tried their hand, not with much success,  at chatting to yet another friend who stopped in, in the middle of this operation.  She is not of the blog persuasion, and was baffled when I set up the photoshoot, explaining that these were two Dollivers from my blog.  

She looked at me a little suspiciously, eyeing the sharp objects in the kitchen, just in case I ran amok, but I guess decided that, though loopy in my old age, probably from the heat, I was harmless really. 

Then, finally, after she left to see to dinner for her troops,  I got me tea, as Wodehouse characters would put it. And very good it was.  Pot of English Breakfast, TWO split and jammed scones still warm from the oven.

And a word about my dramatic career, whence came the title Jam for Tea.  In  Grade One I starred in a class drama based on the Queen of Hearts nursery rhyme, playing the Queen!  

I thought I was pretty darn dramatic considering the limitation of a role of about ten lines, and was annoyed to see my teacher snorting at the back of the room on my big swing around, arms flung up in the air, to see, shock, horror, the Jam Tarts Were Gone.  But my fans loved it. I think that was when I peaked in my acting life.