How to Live Like a Romance Heroine: Drink Tea

On this week's installment of "How to Live Like a Romance Heroine," we have a topic very near and dear to my heart - tea!

I love many types of tea, but my go-to drink while writing is strong, hot black tea with milk and sugar. My obsession started young, when I reread The Secret Garden every week for months. In my Iowa youth, the only tea I had was Lipton in a bag, and I compensated by having a sugar:liquid ratio that should have given me far more cavities than I actually suffered. Now, though, I am much more refined (read 'snobbish') in my tastes - only loose-leaf will do, and only in a proper mug. Tea is delicate enough that I swear I can taste the paper if it is served in a to-go cup. But where can you find these teas, and how can you make them yourself?

My favorite place for tea in San Francisco is Samovar, which has three locations scattered across the city. If you ever visit SF, you must make a trip to the Samovar at Yerba Buena Gardens; it overlooks a terraced garden nestled in the heart of the city, creating a warm little oasis of pleasure in the midst of the skyscrapers of the Financial District and the pressing humanity of Union Square.

This is the inside of Samovar on a recent weekend - doesn't it just make you want to sit and drink tea for hours? Luckily, the staff sincerely do not mind if you linger (which is much to be preferred from the 10-15 minute tea-guzzling social calls of the Regency period!).

But you do not need to pay someone to make the perfect cup of tea for you - unlike espresso, it's easy and cheap to make great tea at home without any special equipment. You only need the following:

• Loose-leaf tea of your choice. There are hundreds of varieties out there, divided into categories such as black, green, white, oolong, rooibos, herbal, etc. My standby is English Breakfast (excellent with milk and sugar). There are hundreds of stores out there that sell loose-leaf tea in tins, as well as online sites like Teavana and Samovar. Better yet, seek out your local tea purveyors so that you can test the products and learn more from them about how to brew the perfect cup. You should look for full, unbroken dried tea leaves; generally, crumbled bits of leaves or the dust that you find in teabags are the most inferior byproducts of the tea production process and should be avoided.
• A tea kettle. Either stovetop or electric - I'm certainly not advocating for living like a real romance heroine, with a kitchen servant keeping a pot of boiling water over the fire all day! You could also boil water just as easily in a saucepan, but I prefer the aesthetics of a real pot.
• A tea ball or a strainer. The advantage of a tea ball is that you can keep the leaves contained within the ball; as they expand, they stick to the insides of whatever you are brewing the tea in, and a tea ball makes it much easier to clean up. You may also see this called an 'herb ball', and it should be available for only a couple of dollars at a kitchen supply store or Target.
• A teapot. By combining the leaves and boiling water in the teapot, you can brew the tea in one vessel, leaving the leaves there when you pour the tea into a cup. Note: when making tea for myself, I've become lazy and just toss a tea ball directly into my mug; this saves me from having to wash up a teapot, since I don't have scullery maids at my beck and call.
• A teacup or mug. Pretty self-explanatory, really - you need something to drink out of, don't you?

It's all quite simple after that: boil the water, spoon the appropriate amount of tea (usually as directed on the package) into a tea ball, pour boiling water over the tea ball and steep as directed, and then enjoy. Steeping for longer than recommended won't kill you, but it will release more tannins the longer it steeps, making for a more bitter brew.

For those of you who want to learn more about the history of teadrinking in Britain, the wonderful writer Joanna Bourne wrote an excellent (albeit long) post on the subject a few weeks ago at Word Wenches, replete with lots of photos and fun historical tidbits - check it out and let me know what you think!

Do you like to drink tea? Or would you rather live like a Regency heroine by drinking champagne, ratafia, or the insipid lemonade at Almack's? All comments are welcome, even if you (like me) secretly nurse an addiction to Diet Coke that cannot be eclipsed by the beverages of yore.

RWA 2010 Day 0: Settling In, Catching Up, and Trying Not to Be a Fool

The 2010 RWA conference doesn't kick into high gear until tomorrow, but I overscheduled myself as usual -- rather than giving my poor California body clock a chance to catch up, I forced myself out of bed at 7:30am (4:30am at home, alas), into a dress AND makeup AND defrizzed hair (miracle of miracles), and downstairs in time to attend the Beau Monde retreat. The Beau Monde is a special-interest online chapter devoted to all things Regency; I joined a couple of months ago, and am consistently impressed by the quality and quantity of historical knowledge demonstrated on the loop.

So, I was quite looking forward to the retreat, and it didn't disappoint. The first panel I attended was about a Regency romance seminar taught at Yale last year, which thrilled me to no end because I'm glad to see romance start to get a teensy tinsy modicum of respect in academia. The second panel likely would have shredded that teensy tinsy modicum of respect -- it was all about courtesans, whores, and the men who loved them (or, at least, paid them a farthing to toss their skirts up against the nearest available alley wall).

After the Beau Monde lunch (with Gaelen Foley, acclaimed Regency writer, as the keynote speaker), I skipped over to the Golden Network retreat. The Golden Network is another special-interest online chapter, but this one is only open to current and former Golden Heart finalists. They had similar content as last year, but it was still eyeopening; in the most brutal display of sadomasochistic behavior I've seen since "Secretary" (or the Folsom Street Fair, perhaps), authors anonymously submitted first pages of their works, and then the moderator read those pages while a panel of editors and agents said 'stop' at the point where they would stop reading. Only one entry made it all the way to the end of the first page without anyone saying stop; several of them lost every single agent/editor in the first paragraph. The bar for publication is so incredibly high that it can be scary and disheartening to hear this; but as I did not submit a page, I just sat back, drank my coffee (while wishing desperately that it was Diet Coke, my one true love) and enjoyed the show.

After the Golden Network retreat was over, I hung out for a couple of hours with Grace and Tina, who are both part of the San Francisco chapter. Grace is up for a Golden Heart in Regency this year (which I am presenting at the awards ceremony on Saturday, since I won last year!), and Tina is doing some fascinating stuff with self-publishing on Amazon -- and more importantly, we seem to click well, and Grace and I share a love for Catherine Coulter and some of the other "ew, gross, 80s" romance novels that gave romance a bad name, what with all the abductions, rapes, bodice rippings, forced marriages, etc.

Tina, Grace and I then attended the Literacy Signing, at which published authors sell and sign their books, with the proceeds going to benefit literacy programs. I bought way too many books -- on the first pass, I got books from Eloisa James, Courtney Milan, Elizabeth Hoyt, and Carolyn Jewel from the San Francisco chapter. I may have been utterly awkward with Eloisa James; I'm having lunch with her on Friday, which I won in an auction, but she now probably thinks that I'm a weird stalker fangirl because I a) knew that she had been in Paris, since I follow her on Twitter, and b) bought a paperback of the book she *just* released after saying that I already read it on the plane yesterday (but in my defense, I read it on my Kindle, and it was good enough that I want a paperback as a keeper). So, we'll see if she shows up to lunch, and whether there are any hotel staff standing by in case I turn out to be rabid and crazy.

I parted ways with Grace and Tina, came back to my room with the intention of taking a nap before dinner -- then remembered that I had forgotten a couple of people whom I meant to get signatures from, because the room was huge and I failed to plan ahead. So I dashed downstairs again and got books from Tessa Dare (adore - she actually ran out of books, but signed a nameplate for me), Sabrina Darby (have been meaning to read her book for ages, and she was at the Beau Monde retreat this morning), Sarah MacLean (loved her "Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake"), and Addison Fox (one of my Ruby Slipper sisters, who writes paranormal). I failed to track down the other Ruby Slippered Sister who was signing, but at that point, I was loaded down and late for dinner, so I ran upstairs...

...and then as it turns out, dinner ended up being much, much later than anticipated. We left the hotel on time, got to the restaurant fifteen minutes early for our 8:15pm reservation -- and then weren't seated until almost 9pm. The food was outstanding (we ate at Kouzzina, owned by Cat Cora, whom I adore from 'Iron Chef America'), and I had a Greek lasagna that smelled strongly of cinnamon and tasted divine. I also had two glasses of wine, which made me quite chatty, particularly on an almost empty stomach. But, my table had a v. good time, even if we didn't eat until 10pm.

And now, I really, really must go to bed -- I'm not going to be foolish enough to get up at seven tomorrow morning, but I should get out of bed sometime. More to come tomorrow!

My Favorite Things: Hair Tinsel

Occasionally I intend to post things that I currently love. Top of mind (and head, ha) right now is hair tinsel! One of my friends got it last week, and I just had to copy her; I adore sparkly, shiny accessories, and luckily my day job allows me certain freedoms in terms of my ability to occasionally act like I'm sixteen. Since I have never dyed my hair and do not intend to start until the grey starts its inevitable assault, hair tinsel is an appealing option for adding some flare to my hair without damaging it.

Essentially, the tinsel is hair-width metallic fibers that a stylist ties to individual strands of hair near the roots. Once tied in place, the strands stay there until the hairs fall out. The tinsel can be shampooed, styled, blow-dried, etc., just like normal hair -- but I would swoon with ecstasy if my normal hair could ever turn to tinsel on command.

Ten strands of metallic purple tinsel later, and my long brunette hair suddenly has an edge to it that I adore. It's not over-the-top noticeable, but I love when the metallic strands catch the light. While it's not something I would do all the time, I'm pretty sure I will have to do it again for the RWA conference -- perhaps a color to match my Golden Heart Award Ceremony dress?

To see what hair tinsel looks like, check out this site; I got the tinsel put in at a salon in Silicon Valley. Enjoy, and comment if you decide to get tinsel!

Dehydrated but Productive

One of the problems that I have when writing is that I forget to take breaks. Another problem is that I like to write on my laptop while lying on my couch (as I am right now), and due to the unfortunate placement of all of the tables in my living room, this means that any drink in my vicinity is placed directly behind my head. So, while I have the remnants of an iced tea not two feet away from me, I'm still feeling parched because I don't want to stop typing long enough to sit up, drink the tea, return to my prone position, and adjust my laptop for optimal typing. Then again, I'm *really* thirsty, so perhaps I should reconsider...

Okay, I'm back. I was quite productive today, but almost all of it came between 6:30pm and 10:30pm. I also had a brief spurt for an hour and a half this morning, but between dropping off and picking up my car from the service station, mailing some stuff, eating lunch, reading a couple of chapters out of a creative writing textbook, and buying waaaaay too much stuff at Sephora, I had quite a lazy afternoon. I like to think it was just what I needed, though, and I'm feeling much more relaxed and ready to tackle more writing this weekend.

I wrote 3258 words today, or approximately thirteen pages. This got me through the rest of Malcolm and Amelia's wedding scene, and I'm about halfway through the subsequent breakfast. I intend to finish that scene tomorrow, then go back and revisit the first three chapters leading into the wedding to make sure they flow properly and are fast-paced enough to build reader interest. If I'm going to accomplish all of that tomorrow, sleep is imperative tonight, so I suppose I should go to bed!