Russian (Friendship) Tea Update

It is the day after a beautiful Easter. It snowed!

Adrian decided to play with our “Rotten” tea recipe so we did not need to use Tang and also to use less sugar. This is what he came up with.

Molasses Cookies

A favorite, special cookie our neighbor, Marilyn shares with us over the holidays. The recipe is slightly vague, but if you have made cookies before, adjusting the amount of flour to your preference is easy. I kept the recipe mostly as written, because that is part of its charm.

Tikka Paste (For Chicken)

These spices form the background to a wonderful tikka paste. Make a double batch of spices if desired and use the dry mix for a dry rub for grilled chicken. Or, make the paste and follow the recipe for chicken tikka masala, which a few have claimed to be better than a restaurants.

Be sure to use chili powder made of only red chilis. You do not want to use the chilli seasoning for a pot of chili.

Samosas

This was a favorite treat at all church potlucks! While this is very close to what I remember from Swaziland, I would love to be able to compare it and see how close we really are.

If you do not like spice, cut the spices in half for your first batch. These are not hot, but they are spicy.

Cranberry Sauce

I grew up on canned cranberry sauce. I was never fond of it even though I enjoy the tart taste of cranberries. Then one day, I discovered homemade cranberry sauce!

After much experimenting with different recipes, Andrea and I settled on this one as an easy favorite. Feel free to make it a few days early and store tightly covered until needed. We almost always double the recipe and rarely have leftovers.

Wishing Cookies

Aunt Bonnie made us these cookies for the first time nine years ago. She told us that “if you break them into three pieces without talking, your wish comes true”. It has never been proven, since my kids can’t stop talking long enough to break a cookie into three pieces 🙂

Lebkuchen Spice

This spice is wonderful in place of pumpkin pie spice or in Lebkuchen cookies.