I watched the second installment of Cranford last night on PBS and almost flooded the house with my tears.
I love Judy Dench. Honestly, if I saw her on the street in the city where I live, I would drag her to my house for tea and scones just so I could visit with her. Actually and ok, I know it sounds odd but hey, how is that different form any other day for me? -you have seen those posters of of James dean, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and the like sitting at the counter of the corner diner, right? Well, I would have something like that in my living room with Kathy Bates, Helen Mirren, Judy Dench, Maggie Smith, and Nora Ephron all over for tea. Maybe we would all be glammed up, or not, but heck, even if we were in blue jeans and button downs, it would still be a kick in the pants, fun thing to do!
Who is your favorite actress or writer or fictional character you would like to have to tea? What would you discuss?
We had home group last night. Same bat channel, same bat time. One of the guys was commenting on how frustrated he feels when his wife tells him he has done something wrong, especially when he was trying to do it for her. Then it was revealed that he did it how he thought it should be done and not how she wanted it done.
So, men…yes, if you specifically do something for your wife, how you want it done, and not how she would like it to be done, it doesn’t count and no, you will not earn brownie points.
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So, my meeting with the lady from church went very well today. It was nice getting to know her a bit more. I served up my yummy chicken salad on croissants with a side of red seedless grapes, apricot tea and scones with pink mock Devonshire cream and plum jam. She loved all the flavors together and gave many compliments. Thanks!
She also purchased two bags of scone mix. I would have given them to her or only charged her half, but she insisted, quoting from the bible, ‘a worker is worth his wages’ or her wages in my case.
Is it finally happening? Are rays of sun breaking around the dark clouds? Thank you, Lord!
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I have invited a lady from church over today for lunch to discuss the cream tea we are having in May. I am excited, but nervous. I wonder if I will always be nervous right before people come over (new people) or if I will reach a level of comfort to where it will not make me nervous anymore to have new people over?
Also, I called a local gift shop and spoke to the owner about having her sell my scone mixes in her shop. She sounded receptive tot he idea but is going out of town for awhile. I’m to call her again when she gets back to schedule a time for us to get together for a tasting and to discuss things. Please keep me in your prayers about this.
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Certain parts of the nation seem to be unable to break free from winter’s grip and enter into spring. Well, we entered into classic Rocky Mountain spring time weather yesterday with a hail storm…for over 4 hours! Usually, the hail comes, strips every leaf from every tree and makes a nice tossed salad out of any out door flowering anything and then travels on to find something new to destroy. This all usually takes place in a matter of minutes. Not yesterday. It all started normal, a few bits of icy drops quickly turned into many. It got quit loud. Then, rain added to the mix and lightened things up a bit. then there was rain and heavy hail throughout the day. It came straight down, drenching everything. The ground is still covered in ice rain today. They even had to have snow plows come out and plow our area.
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One couple made it to home group but the other was sick with the flu and didn’t make it. Please keep this couple, we’ll call them Couple A, in your prayers as the wife is still under spiritual attack from her trip to Spain.
When I worked at the tea shop a few years ago, I was clueless on many aspects of tea. Time, not only heals but it also allows us opportunities to change things, to learn and grow, explore and discover, but only if we are willing. I thought, at the time, that there was no difference between the shapes of tea pots, coffee pots and hot chocolate pots other than to distinguish between them on a buffet table. While the shapes may very well aid in pouring the correct beverage into your cup, there is a difference. I thought I would give a little tutorial because while visiting other ladies’ blogs during Lah-Tea-Dah’s blog-a-thon, I saw other’s making the same mistake as I, and calling their coffee pots, tea pots.
Tea pots are more short and stout with rounder bodies. This allows the tea leaves to expand as it was and still is common for people to place the tea leaves directly into the tea pot to brew.
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Teapot
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Coffee pot
See the difference?
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Hot chocolate set
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This is a hot chocolate pot. Original chocolate pots were tall and narrow, had handles sticking straight out at the sides, and an opening in the top of the pot where the stirrer went, called a molinillo. You would roll it between the palms of your hands. The style below is still made today but you usually find it in boring white cafe’ type china. What is it with the current trend for plain white china? But, I digress.
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So that is your pot tutorial for Tea Tuesday.
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I had had a hope ‘chest’ for years. I started collecting things for it when I was in my senior year of high school. It was more of a collection of things to use when I loved out on my own, though, than things to be saved for my marriage. Good thing too because I didn’t get married until I was 37! lol When the big announcement was made or even while my husband and I were still dating, my mother made several things which I use, but cherish. Some embroidered pillow cases and ea towels, two of the tea towels I think someone helped themselves to as I can no longer find them. They may have walked off at a pot luck. This breaks my heart, not because of course of a monetary value, but because my mother now has arthritis in her fingers and can not make new ones to replace those which have been taken. I do still have one of the tea towels she made. It has a pretty blue teapot decoration and, yes, it does get used. I figure I may as well use my cute things as they probably would be sold at an estate sale when I die and someone else would use them for me later if I don’t use them now. Here it is.
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Here, not at all tea related, is a picture of some, ‘girls’ sunning themselves in a neighbor’s yard. I think it’s funny that two of them hopped the fence to lay in the grass (one was just out of camera range behind the building which is why you can’t see her).
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The power went out yesterday for about 3 hours in the middle of the day. As the time for starting dinner grew near, I started to panic. I sat down to pray that the lights would come back on in time to cook. The minute I said, ‘amen’, the lights came back on. Woohoo!
Dinner was a success even though most of the people didn’t like what I made, salmon, each for different, personal reasons, not because I’m a bad cook. One friend had eaten salmon and became very ill and as a result, cannot even put one bite in her mouth. I completely understand this as I once became violently ill at a restaurant because of their salad bar. It has been 25 years and I still refuse to step foot into that restaurant. I know it’s a mental reaction to a physical occurrence, but still. The other person has childhood drama related to salmon. As a child he was served up salmon and spaghetti on the same plate (Please, ladies, learn how to cook! This guy is in his late 40’s and is still traumatized by his mother’s cooking!) and he and his siblings had to sit at the table until every bite was gone. I remember those days myself and sitting at the table for what seemed like forever as the situation quickly deteriorated into a battle of wills. I offered to make them both something else, but she declined saying she was still full from lunch and could make due with the side dishes; home made mushroom onion soup, steamed broccoli, wild rice, and he said he would do his best to choke it down. Well, he ended up liking the salmon as it wasn’t the canned stuff he remembered from his childhood. I had made blackened salmon and one piece with a dill seasoning mix sprinkled liberally on top. Everyone who tried it liked it but it is the last time I cook salmon for home group. (They even had seconds!) I love having iced tea with dinner and now that it is warming up, it is served with every home group dinner.
One person was absent from home group. Kudos to her husband for coming without her. I wouldn’t go to a group event like ours without my husband but that’s just the way I am. I’ve always hated walking into a room by myself and when I got married, he became my security blank for stuff like that.
So, since we were down one person, I thought we could wait for her and do the lesson next week so we wouldn’t be a head of her, even though her husband said she said it was ok to go on without her. Instead, we sat around talking about resonance and sound waves and string theory and music. Yeah, we’re all like that at our home group. I’m married to a mad boy software developer who talks tech all the time. He was in his element last night. Thank you, Lord because he doesn’t get to talk tech much with me around since I usually stand there with my eyes glazed over scripting book plots in my head while he is explaining how something works. V, one of the guys in home group, goes every Tuesday to a church in a small town near us and participates in a worship event, whereby he takes several of his instruments and plays them ‘over’ people. He says he can ‘feel’ notes resonating back at him from their bodies. V, said that on Tuesday night, there was a guest speaker who was talking about quantum physics and resonance. Hearing what he talked about was very interesting and kind of put a different perspective on why we should be careful about the things we say, as it says we should in the bible.
All in all, it was a fun evening. Please contact me if you would like some ideas on how you can get a home group of your own started.
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Usually this phrase pertains to the homes of newly weds or a secluded place for an intimate tete-a-tete. Let’s reinvent the phrase to mean something else, shall we? Why not make your home a love nest for friends and family and persons who are ‘not yet friends’ n.y.f.? What would you need to do to turn your house/home into a love nest? Do you need additional chairs and tables? Try a thrift store. Table cloths hide a myriad of blemishes and can bring unity to a room quickly and inexpensively-if you shop at discount stores. Discount stores can also offer an array of inexpensive decorations such as glass containers for holding candles,(they sell the candles too), paper doilies, (which are great for dressing up a plate of appetizers), and seasonal decorations to help set a theme. You can pack such things away and use them the following year. Trust me, people are not making a record of your decorations and how often you use them and if you know of people who are, just don’t invite them over again. Keeping your menu simple can save money too. I have often used pre-seasoned pork tenderloin roasts for my home group meals. A larger roast can serve all six of us for about 2-3 dollars per person. Throw in a couple of .99 cent boxes of scalloped potatoes and a couple of cans of veggies and you’re good to go. You may also establish a menu schedule. My home group friends are such a blessing to me, not only for the wonderful friendships we’re developing, but also because they volunteer to bring dinner now and again. We have often asked them to bring a bag of ice to home group. I have an automatic iced tea maker and it uses quite a bit of ice to brew the tea. It’s not that the ice is expensive so I ask them, but if the week has gotten away from me and I haven’t had a chance to replenish the ice supply, our H.G. friends are happy to assist. Don’t feel like you have to carry the entire evening on your shoulders. I did at first and it became stressful, fast, and I started to not enjoy home group night. That all quickly changed when I started letting go of my preconceived ideas of how things should be.
If you feel your house is too messy or out of control to have people over, allow me to introduce you to the website that can help you out immensely. I don’t do everything she writes about, but I do follow the tips and ideas that work best for me and it has made a big difference in my home. Enough so to where I felt comfortable enough to start hostessing a weekly home group. Who knows, it just may do the same for you! Here it is:The Fly Lady .
Need some help with recipes? Recipe Zaar.
Have questions? You can always email me. I’m happy to help. Does this help you at all? Please let me know.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~On this week’s assignment form La Tea Dah, we’re to Share tea from the perspective of literature. and to also share how we bless others with tea. My journey to the land of, ‘I love tea’ has followed a long and winding path. Though exposed to the beauty of tea by taking my first formal afternoon tea at The Empress Hotel over twenty years ago, it didn’t find a foot hold in my heart until a few years ago when I worked at a friend’s tea room as a hostess/waitress. A good deal of ’stuff’ went down at the tea room but it was there that I began flirting with, and ultimately fell in love with, tea and all that encompasses it. The smell of a newly opened package of tea. The fizz and spit of the hot water making contact with the tea leaves. The anticipation of the taste of well brewed tea. The fact that the flavor of tea is enhanced by sitting down and enjoying it, where as coffee is associated with madly dashing about and being in a hurry. I enjoy associating tea with gentleness and civility.
When I think of drinking coffee and tea out of doors, for coffee, I picture cowboys on the open range, a sunrise and the sounds of cattle nearby, for tea, a regency or Victorian picnic with all the trimmings including parasols, linens and china, hampers filled to bursting with goodies and couples having fun on the side of lush green hills.
Mention a Jane Austen novel or afternoon tea to a woman, and her eyes light up and a smile crosses her face. She longs for the time to enjoy such luxuries but is unable due to budgetary or time constraints. Perhaps this is why I developed a desire to give a moment of beauty, however brief or simple, to those around me.
Some are receptive while others strive,with great effort, to keep themselves too busy to enjoy the gift of life around them. Sometimes I can bring ladies together, sometimes I cannot. As the saying goes, ‘Sometimes the urgent gets in the way of the important’. Is getting together with other ladies for tea important? I believe it is as important as air or water.
That said, I must share with you some of what is going on, though not for the sake of being maudlin. I have sent my query and the first 50 pages of my novella to an agent. Times being what they are, in the mean time while waiting to hear back from her, I will need to get a job. My prayer is that the book will open other doors leading to opportunities I’m not privy too at this moment. So, the hospitality I am able to extend will naturally be diminished as my time is taken up with the urgent and mundane. How can you help? By praying my book is accepted and published sooner rather than later-this year!! That I would find a job that would not be too demanding on my time or person so that home group night is not affected.
Well, enough of that. Here are a couple of books I wanted to show you. I have some of the ones that La Tea Dah has displayed on her blog and I have enjoyed them immensely. I thought I would show you something a bit different.
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You can link to Quin’s page from this picture. I could not find anything about Laura.
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Although copyrighted in 1993, this book has been a wonderful guide to me on how to be a hostess. It teaches, by example, what not to do. It is appropriate for the novice hostess as well as the experienced. It instructs on how to prepare your home to receive guests, and how to do it within a limited budget if need be. It teaches us how to receive which, if you’re being hospitable towards others, you may be too focused on giving and not be able to easily switch to ‘receiving mode’. My husband and I were treated to lunch Sunday by some friends of ours who also attend home group. I was joking with the husband about how now I would have to cook on Wednesday since they were treating us to lunch. (they had offered to bring dinner for Wednesday and I had accepted and thought that lunch would cancel out dinner not thinking they would be able to do both, I was happily mistaken). To me, it does seem a bit extravagant to be treated to lunch on Sunday by the same couple who are bringing dinner on Wednesday, however, when we deny people the opportunity to do something for us, be deny them of the blessings they would receive for their actions. My husband and I receive many blessings from hosting a group in our home on a regular basis. It is tangible. How could I rob someone of that? How could you? If someone has been trying to bless you lately and you’ve been dodging their efforts, let them serve you, bless you, treat you. You never know, it could be God working through them in ways you won’t know until you get to heaven. Wow, wouldn’t that be amazing? Imagine, you get to heaven and there’s a group of people who greet you and begin the conversation with, ‘remember when we were on earth and you let me to (whatever) for you? Well, let me tell you about the doors that it opened up for me and the things it broke off of me.’ Remember, what you let loose here on earth, you let loose in heaven. What you bind on earth, you bind up in heaven.
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I like this one, just because it’s pretty! lol We can’t always be deep. Even Jesus had His fun. This book just makes me smile. It has great photographs of teapots, food, flowers, the English countryside, period clothing, food served on fine china and on harvest/kitchen tables. When I open it and flip through its pages, I pretend I’m there, sipping tea, watching the afternoon sun travel across the hard wood floors. It also contains recipes and stories which provide a glimpse into the small moments that make life worth living.
Well, I hope you have enjoyed reading about these two books. Cheerio!
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