Constant Comment Tea is its own 'Madeleine'. Plus, a Golden Wealth of Scraps.

Even in our season of Lent, it's hard to advocate virtue in the kitchen. Kitchens run on vice- cravings and longings and greed. Turning a lustful eye to kitchen scraps does them more favors than thrift ever will- maximizing the possibilities for every kind of pleasure is what kitchens were made for.

While rinsing that single fork as yesterday's cake was in the oven, I looked around the kitchen for anything that might enjoy a little heat, either alongside the cake or to soak up the soft heat of the turned off oven after it was done. Sometimes there is a handful of tired almonds to revive, for instance- a dish of hot toasted almonds nearly always leads to the opening of a bottle of wine  This time, I found a half bag of dried coconut:

What fragrance this has lost will be found again as it toasts- 
then it will get tossed over curries,
and have some rich golden macaroons made of it.

hunks of stale bread to make croutons for Caesar salad (to have as we watch an episode of Mary Tyler Moore- a favorite lunchtime ritual), and a bowl of oranges on the counter, flesh ready for juicing, rind leftover to make a tangle of wide strips of zest:

Orange zest when cooked fresh takes on a paradoxically unfresh musty flavor. Dry the zest and the fragrance stays juicy and lively- this is as true for Chinese orange chicken as it is for Constant Comment tea:

favorite of our great favorite- great grandmother Mercedes Davidson,

Shown here in 1966, with me cooing at her.
Her pleasures included this tea, magnificent flowers,
strictly benevolent gossip,
and being deliciously scandalized by bawdiness.

(and therefore my own favorite too), and easily made with twists of dried orange peel and a few whole cloves steeped with loose black tea:

I could never, like Proust, pick a single taste to be my own madeleine, but this tea is one of them.

Reminiscence, perfumy hot tea, a classic Caesar salad with equally classic 70's television, and- soon- chewy golden macaroons. All this from the prudence of vice and the gentle waning heat of the oven. One pleasure seems always to bring another.