osprey_archer | Tea Parties

Somehow, most of my friends have in the last few years become tea aficionados. We have tea whenever we get together, which is splendid in itself, of course, but did not fulfill the secret yearning in my heart to live or at least entertain like a person in a lifestyle blog. Tea is lovely. Tea parties are better. But now that I've got a teapot, what I really are plans for tea parties with themes.

"A nursery rhyme tea!" quoth I. With four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, and Peter Piper's pickled peppers, and curds and whey...

I shared my inspiration with Micky. "You realize that the parts that aren't impossible are unappetizing?" she pointed out. "We could use Cornish game hens and pretend they were blackbirds, maybe..."

Delicious, probably. Authentic nursery rhyme food, no. I decided to think about this a bit more.

"A Christmas tea!" I cried.

This is much more promising! Think of all the sources to be mined: Christmas carols, A Christmas Carol, Christmas poems through the ages! Chestnuts roasting on the open fire (or in the oven, as you will), plum pudding, gingerbread. Sugar plums, dancing in visions or otherwise. A roast goose!

Well, maybe not a goose for a tea. But we'd have quite enough food without it, anyway.

AND THEN,

asakiyume mentioned that today is C. S. Lewis's birthday, and we agreed that tea would be an appropriate celebration, accompanied by Turkish delight, of course.

And I have been inspired! Think of the literary possibilities for tea. An Alice in Wonderland tea, of course, with treacle wells and Mock Turtle soup! That's almost too easy, perhaps.

And a fairytale tea, with a gingerbread house and candied apples, luscious red with snow white flesh.

And a Jane Austen tea, though that might be difficult. There's so little description of food in her books. A Redwall, tea, though: that would be easy! There are pages and pages of splendid things to eat in all the Redwall books. And Harry Potter, and...oh man, I could do American Girl teas! How cool would that be! FELICITY TEA.

Now I just need to convince my friends to unleash their inner child!