We had the funnest weekend here in DC.
Friday morning I went on a solo date to my favorite tea house in DC, Ching Ching Cha, named after the owner who established DCs first traditional chinese tea house. It is a beautiful third space with the most relaxing atmosphere and one of the more special places in DC. I went to pick up some birthday gifts but also came home with some beautiful treats for myself.
This is a handwoven basket that is at least 60 years old that Ching Ching brought back with her for her tea house in the 1990’s. The original location of the tea house was in Georgetown, but due to rent gouging, she had to move to a smaller location in Dupont Circle.
At the previous location, this basket, along with the others of similar shape/style, were used to house inventory in the back room. At this newer location, however, she doesn’t have as much room so is selling some of the beautiful pieces of wood furniture, baskets, and antique thai silk fabrics that used to grace the Georgetown location.
My awesome friend, Annie, who is an NP here in DC loves drinking herbal teas and her family, primarily her mother, is a herbal medicine pracitioner so for MONTHS Annie and I have been trying to get together to go to our tea house. Since both of us work, and Annie is currently in the first year of her new Medical Spa business, we haven’t made the time.
So for her birthday, I gifted her a beautiful tea set with two types of tea. The first, called floating lantern, is a white tea ball much like this one —>
The tea ball photographed is called peach blossom, a white tea blend with chrysanthemum and a few other florals (Do peaches have blooms???).
The second is an anti-inflammatory sweet tea made with apple and hibiscus as its primary ingredients.
On Friday night, we went to a coworker of McCabes, an awesome person named Gabriella’s, Capital Hunger Games themed birthday party and made some new friends and got to spend time with other awesome folks that we know. A lot of people came from Montana and even Oklahoma for this party which was a fun treat. We were invited to join in on a future commune planned for Colorado, so in a few years we’ll update you on how that turns out.
On Saturday, Annie’s 34th birthday party was hosted at her new condo where we shared a FIRE Cambodian meal that her family makes for special occasions and we got to spend time with some cool DC artists types. She has a cousin who does art restoration for the National Portrait Gallery which sounds like the coolest job in the world to me. Another one of her cousins, Tony, showed us his 2023 wrapped “Dating” presentation. Where he went through the best, worst, and the why behind his dating life in 2023.
Come Sunday, McCabe’s valentines day presents arrived: New cabinets! We spent ALL DAY constructing these new cabinets to house our loads and loads and loads of books, tea & coffee supplies, cooking supplies, etc. WE LOVE THEM, our little apartment finally feels like a real house!!
As promised, we did attempt our first loaves of sourdough this weekend. They turned out…. okish. We didn’t have much “oven spring” (rise in the oven during the baking process) which made our inital loaf quite dense, but it did have a good “custardy” texture. Despite a poor rise, the flavor was THERE! Each loaf had an incredible sourdough taste and with some butter and jam from the Annapolis Amish Market, very good.
We did attempt a few other loaves, which didn’t turn out exactly how we hoped, notably a blueberry lemon zest loaf that simultaneously burnt and was undercooked (we followed the instructions exactly, tbh I have no idea where we went wrong).
While our initial loaves may have been less than expected, we kept the skill of perseverance in mind and attempted a few others.
By our 4th loaf, and following Alexandra Cook’s exact instructions, we had some real success!
She had solid oven spring, her crust was golden, the crumb was far more open than previous attempts, and above all, she tasted amazing.
Our starter, Elsabet, who is now separated into x3 containers in order to fuel our bread making craze, successfully created a beautiful, well risen, tasty loaf of bread!!
We are SO excited to see how much better we can get at this in time!
