"tea" news and stories

Have limited time or fridge space but love iced tea? Brew up some iced tea essence.

These lemon-touched herbs can add great flavor and variety to your kitchen.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• Eat those tax troubles away -- there's lots of free or discounted food today!
• Reward your procrastination with a Singapore Sling.
• Learn the way of tea from a Jedi Master.
• An Argentine condiment to rule them all.
• The aforementioned topping would ratchet up this easy steak and asparagus recipe.
• A cooking primer for ramps -- the new bacon.
• Everyone likes a two-timing tart -- with vegetables, that is.

February has an abundance of wine-this and wine-that festivals. As we look toward spring and summer, we also look forward to fruit and vegetable fairs. Cin cin, wine enthusiasts.

Portland Seafood and Wine Festival, Feb. 5-6, Portland, Ore.: Splitting open Dungeness crabs while quaffing wine isn't a combination that comes to mind. But that won't stop us! The first 500 daily attendants will receive a commemorative wine glass. Check out the crab cracking or the oyster schucking and swallowing competitions. A percentage of the ticket price will be donated to the Oregon Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

The Kingdom of Navarra Gastronomic Week, Feb. 6-14, New York and Washington, DC: Spain is a land of cutting-edge chefs. Spain's Navarra province, the Kingdom of Flavors, will occupy two culinary capitals this month, armed with its pork cheeks, rosado wine and myriad treasured comidas.

While visitors to Richard Charlton's Coffeehouse, the first major reconstruction on Colonial Williamsburg's Main Street in nearly half a century, will be treated to 3-ounce servings of coffee, tea or hot chocolate, spokesman Jim Bradley says it's unlikely the restaurant's first patrons would have been satisfied with such dainty samples.

"Outside one of the rooms, which was probably a private dining room, we found just piles and piles and piles of broken wine bottles," says Bradley.

As it turns out, taverns weren't the only places where sociable Colonists could enjoy stiff drinks and politically charged conversations. Contrary to standard American histories, taverns functioned more like highway rest stops, complete with government-controlled prices, lackluster food and a sketchy clientele. Locals typically preferred to do their drinking in coffeehouses, which were all the rage in England when King George III was in charge.