I'm hoping this will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Due to my husband's work, I moved from Manchester, England to America in 2007. In the years since then it's easy to miss things from back home. The Internet has made the world smaller, and I can see and speak to friends and family at the drop of a hat, but even so it's not the same as popping around the corner for some tea and biscuits.

I love tea parties, afternoon tea, cream tea, tea and cake, tea for two, all of it, it's my thing. Over time I've tried having afternoon tea here, but being in the rural south, it's more; guns, hunting, cookouts, & drinking beer in the front garden! So as my china collection has grown, my use and enjoyment of it has ground to a halt. This blog is hopefully the solution to my predicament. It's going to be my excuse to have afternoon tea, bake, try new recipes, after all it won't be just for me, I'll be sharing it.

I think I'm going to start with making the basics from scratch, as even a traditional scone is hard to find around here. In fact there's a lot of things I really have to search for locally, and thankfully Amazon has me covered for the rest. For the longest time I couldn't find things like golden syrup, suet for making christmas treats, clotted cream, and other 'essential' things. I used to fill my suitcase with my haul from Sainsbury's supermarket any time I made the trip home, or would give my mum, a 'can you bring...' list, before she came to visit. "Yay!" For online shopping. 

Even so, traditional english sweets, cakes, loafs, and such, I still have to make from scratch, which is no bad thing, it's just if I'm going to go through all that work finding ingredients, and hours in the kitchen, it would be much nicer to share that with someone, and I'm making that someone this blog :)

Stephanie .