Cup of tea, cup o' soup

Behold the power of Twitter. Seems every chipper local newscaster is in my face every day now asking, "So what is Twitter?" We've been tweeting for a while now (well, we're just getting started with @teasquaredblog), and while I enjoy the quick-and-dirty ease of this particular means of communication, I can't help but chuckle at the various ways people try to cram their full-sized lives into Twitter's bite-sized bits. (Of course, my favorite use of Twitter is The Mime. Now that's online performance art!)

Case in point: the Twitter cookbook, in which a deranged chef attempts to boil down — and heavily abbreviate — recipes to fit into 140-character tweets. Example:

"Chocolate Cupcakes: cream4T buttr/8T sug; +egg. Sift1/8t soda&salt/6T flour/4T cocoa/.25t bkgpdr. Mix all+4T milk; fill6cups. 20m@375F/190C."

Hey, if it gets people cooking who would otherwise just nuke another cup of Ramen, I toast their efforts.

I only became aware of this madness while searching for some recipes today; I stumbled across one on the Twitter cookbook for Darjeeling soup. The tweet:

"Darjeeling Soup: fry leek&onion/T butter. Simmer15m+2c cauliflr/1tater&celery/4c Darj tea/s+p/bay. Rmv bay; puree+6T milk. Srv w nutmeg&pep."

Here's my translation:

1. Chop 1 medium onion and 1 medium leek. Sautee in 1 Tbsp. butter.
2. Add 4 cups Darjeeling tea, plus 2 cups chopped cauliflower, 1 cup chopped potato (I'd say red here), 1/2 cup chopped celery, 1 bay leaf, and salt & pepper to taste. Simmer 15 minutes over medium heat.
3. Remove the bay leaf. Puree the soup in batches in a blender or food processor (letting the steam escape!) with a total of 6 Tbsps. milk.
4. Serve the pureed mixture with nutmeg and pepper.

Sounds delish to me — something to file away for next fall!