The Tea and Sugar train only came once a week on a Thursday. But the special Christmas train only came once a year. Today was Sunday. Four more days without sugar. Four more days until the Christmas train. Please, please be on time. Please don’t be late. Join Kathleen in the outback as she eagerly awaits the Christmas Tea and Sugar train. Will she meet Father Christmas? Will she receive a Christmas gift from him? A delightful, heart-warming story from the National Library of Australia that will intrigue, captivate and introduce readers to a slice of the past. Wonderful sensitive illustrations, including a beautiful double fold-out image showing the shops inside all the carriages.

On a lonely Christmas a nephew remembers his beloved great-aunt and realizes the value of her legacy, a message of advice revealing the true spirit of the season.

Today, Americans are some of the world’s biggest consumers of black teas; in Japan, green tea, especially sencha, is preferred. These national partialities, Robert Hellyer reveals, are deeply entwined. Tracing the transpacific tea trade from the eighteenth century onward, Green with Milk and Sugar shows how interconnections between Japan and the United States have influenced the daily habits of people in both countries. Hellyer explores the forgotten American penchant for Japanese green tea and how it shaped Japanese tastes. In the nineteenth century, Americans favored green teas, which were imported from China until Japan developed an export industry centered on the United States. The influx of Japanese imports democratized green tea: Americans of all classes, particularly Midwesterners, made it their daily beverage—which they drank hot, often with milk and sugar. In the 1920s, socioeconomic trends and racial prejudices pushed Americans toward black teas from Ceylon and India. Facing a glut, Japanese merchants aggressively marketed sencha on their home and imperial markets, transforming it into an icon of Japanese culture. Featuring lively stories of the people involved in the tea trade—including samurai turned tea farmers and Hellyer’s own ancestors—Green with Milk and Sugar offers not only a social and commodity history of tea in the United States and Japan but also new insights into how national customs have profound if often hidden international dimensions.

This comprehensive book takes a fresh look at preserving, offering all the basic information you need, but also featuring inspirational recipes from the store cupboards of the world. It covers everything from jams to cures, and shows you that you don't have to have lots of kit and produce to make delicious preserves - or wait forever before eating them. There are sections filled with expert advice on choosing ingredients and cooking every type of preserve, from marmalades to jellies to relishes to foods preserved in oil. All the classic recipes are included and Diana often gives tips for how to make a version of a classic that suits your palette. For example, she includes a sweet and sticky strawberry jam, a more-fruity and less sweet version, and a Swedish 'nearly' strawberry jam (which is more like a conserve and keeps in the fridge for only a couple of weeks). But this is also a treasure trove of recipes taken from the world's store cupboards. And most of them are luxuries that can be made from cheap ingredients - such as Thai spiced rhubarb relish, Alsace pear and Riesling jam and tea-smoked trout. Many recipes will also offer alternative ingredients - for example, make sloe gin with cranberries or plums.

In Scandinavia the whole period of Christmas, from the first Sunday in Advent to New Year's Day, is marked by festivals and celebrated in traditional but beautifully contemporary style. Hygge, the Danish word for cosiness, is about being inside with candles, great comfort food and lots of cakes and sweets. The first week of December is baking week - enough has to be made to last the whole Christmas period. Jars of decorated cookies, gingerbread houses and clogs filled with little presents rub shoulders with simple wreaths, trees and tables decorated with white candles and fresh greenery - the perfect mix of ancient and modern. Brunches, cocktail and tea parties, lunches and dinners are celebrated with a mixture of traditional goodies and delicious modern recipes. Duck and pork rule on Christmas Eve, fish, ham and seasonal vegetables on Christmas Day. Sweets, biscuits, puddings and other treats abound - all washed down with gluwein and fruity cocktails. In this glorious book, illustrated with Lars Ranek's evocative photographs, Trine Hahnemann provides a cornucopia of 70 Christmas recipes - all featuring ingredients which are common to all northern climes - showing us how we, too, can decorate our homes and make delicious dishes to celebrate Christmas the Scandinavian way.

In this charming new cozy mystery series from national bestselling author Vicki Delany, a New York City expat-turned-Cape Cod tea shop owner must solve the murder of a local real estate developer to help her feisty grandmother out of a jam . . . As the proud proprietor and head pastry chef of Tea by the Sea, a traditional English tearoom on the picturesque bluffs of Cape Cod, Lily Roberts has her hands full, often literally. But nothing keeps her busier than steering her sassy grandmother, Rose, away from trouble. Rose operates the grand old Victorian B & B adjacent to Lily’s tea shop. But an aggressive real estate developer, Jack Ford, is pushing hard to rezone nearby land, with an eye toward building a sprawling golf resort, which would drive Rose and Lily out of business. Tempers are already steaming, but things really get sticky when Ford is found dead at the foot of Rose’s property and the police think she had something to do with his dramatic demise. So Lily starts her own investigation and discovers Ford’s been brewing bad blood all over town. Now, it’s down to Lily to stir up some clues, sift through the suspects, and uncover the real killer before Rose is left holding the tea bag. “A satisfying cozy with a beautifully described setting and a cast of charming, small-town characters. Share this new series with fans of Laura Childs’ Tea Shop mysteries.” —Booklist

Jack In my perfect world it would always be winter and never Christmas. I despise the holiday. I hate carols, shopping, and pretending to be a perfect family. I walked away from my family, or rather they walked away from me. My heart is like ice-- See it creeping up the walls. Oh, wait, no, that's royal icing. I never should have allowed The Great Christmas Bake-Off to film in my tower. And I never, ever, should have agreed to be a judge. Chloe I love Christmas! I love sparkly window decorations, heartwarming holiday movies, and themed coffee. Most of all I love Christmas baking. Even though his company is sponsoring the bake-off show, billionaire Jack Frost claims he hates sweets. But after he tastes my goods I know he'll come begging for more. And wouldn't you know it, that night Jack Frost asked me to come up to his penthouse and give him a special taste of my Christmas cookies. Against my better judgement I went... I baked him my signature gingerbread cookies and of course he ate them up! It should have been a Christmas miracle, but Jack Frost couldn't have come into my life at a worse time. Not only am I broke, but this was my first Christmas after my oma died. Someone is trying to sabotage me in The Great Christmas Bake-Off. I'm being stalked by a mall Santa. Sleeping with one of the judges is a disaster waiting to happen. I needed Jack and his washboard abs about as much as I needed that third sticky bun. But when he says in his deep, sexy voice, "Can you make me some more cookies?" well stick a candy cane in me I'm done. Eating Her Christmas Cookies is a standalone holiday novel. This full length steamy romance novel has no cliffhangers but does have a very happily ever after. The paperback version includes the full short story, Eating Her Baked Goods, which is available for free for newsletter subscribers.