Belated Birthday Brunch, Saturday, July 25

[xela]

I was too busy to have a birthday party in May, so I'm going to celebrate it belatedly a week from Saturday.

What:	Brunch
When:	Sat, July 25, 10:00 til dinnertime
Where:	My place. If you don't know where that is, leave a comment here or or send me email (xela at mit dot edu).

I'll lay on my usual brunch spread: scones with butter and jam; coffee; bacon; sausages. All I ask my guests to bring is themselves, their good cheer, and their lively conversation. If you would like to bring other refreshments, feel free (juice is especially welcome). I do ask, though, that if you want to bring something that will require kitchen space to finish preparing, please check with me first.

Children are welcome, but the house is by no means childproof

I look forward to seeing you!

---Alex

Comments

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

heading has wrong date...

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Fixed. Thanks

[mycroft.livejournal.com]

Have fun. I'll be out of town.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Scones? Yum yum But I thought you called them 'biscuits' on your side of the Pond, and called 'cookies' the things we call biscuits. Now that I know you call a scone a scone I wonder how you pronounce it: rhyming with John or with Joan? Also I thought you had jelly instead of jam. Not being able to get a decent cuppa, with scones warm from the oven, proper jam (lumpy with whole fruit) and clotted (not just whipped) cream is one of the reasons that Watson and I rarely leave Britain. We obviously do take tea bags with us whenever we travel but taking scones is less practical.

It wouldn't occur to me to serve scones in the morning, or with bacon, although I like bacon too. How intriguing. Do you put sultanas, cherries or cheese in your scones? Or just make them plain? When I worked as a cook baking scones for the cafe was one of my favourite tasks and I prided myself on how tall they rose... ah, nostalgia.

Anyway, happy belated birthday and I hope you enjoy your brunch.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Our biscuits are similar to scones, but different. (And I'm not at all sure that you'd recognize my scones as such.) Biscuits are lighter and less sweet (I don't think you'd ever see sugar in a biscuit recipe); if you're curious, this looks like a pretty good recipe.

What we call cookies here is pretty much what you call biscuits; I rhyme scone with Joan; what you call jam we may call jam or jelly: jam if it's got fruit pieces in it; jelly if it's all of a smooth consistency; what you call jelly, we call jello.

As to why I serve them in the morning, with breakfast meats: Because that's how I was introduced to them. A couple I knew in Seattle in the late 1980s used to hold brunches at their place. Nicole was English, though she'd been in the U.S. since about age ten, and a few days before their first brunch, she decided scones (which she hadn't had since she was a little girl) would be a good idea. They found a recipe somewhere. (Which I seem to recall was a bit of an adventure, involving long-distance phone calls to various relatives — food in America has grown vastly more diverse since the '80s.) The scones (the first scones I'd ever had, and I think that was true of most of the guests) were a big hit, and became the centerpiece of all their brunches. So when I decided to start hosting brunches myself a decade later, the first thing I did was find a scone recipe. (For which, in those pre-Google days, I owe thanks to tallou and coraline.)

It would never have occurred to me to put cheese in scones. I don't normally put fruit in my scones — I've tried it, and found that I prefer them plain, served with butter and a variety of jams and marmalades and honey and even peanut-butter.

I'd be curious to know how deviant you think my recipe is.