earl grey tea loaf

A few weekends ago I went on a bit of a Virginia Woolf kick. I have never read any of her novels, though I intend to. But I'm currently engrossed in reading her letters, which are collected in six volumes. I picked up one of those as well as a book of correspondence between Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, with whom she had a love affair which simmered into a friendship.

The letters are enchanting, from both women. I can't stop reading and re-reading passages more beautiful than anything anyone could ever say. And I can't help but feel a yearning to be privileged and English in some other time. As if it would make me a better writer or more desperately in love. Take this passage from a letter from Virginia to Vita.

I try to invent you for myself, but find I really have only 2 twigs and 3 straws to do it with. I can get the sensation of seeing you—hair, lips, colour, height, even, now and then, the eyes and hands, but I find you going off, to walk in the garden, to play tennis, to dig, to sit smoking and talking, and then I cant invent a thing you say—This proves, what I could write reams about—how little we know anyone, only movements and gestures, nothing connected, continuous, profound.

It's Perfect.

At the end of that rainy, English weekend I made an Earl Grey tea loaf, which seemed fitting. I am terrible with conversions, and completely botched the correct measurements for the tea loaf. Somehow it turned out well enough, but I won't bother with sharing my flawed directions here. I found the recipe on Vanillyn.