SUNNYSIDE

How to give a Tea Party

A tea Party is a special experience. You are creating a scene, an
elegant way of life. The guests should feel relaxed and very pampered
when they leave. You should use your best linen, damask, or lace
tablecloth and always have fresh flowers as a centerpiece. Purchase
enough extra blooms and greenery to decorate your serving plates.
Silver teaspoons and china cups make the occasion more special as do
candles and crystal and silver serving dishes. If you have enough
crystal serving plates for all your guests, wonderful! If you do not,
there are beautiful paper plates with matching napkins that will do
just fine. To set the mood, play a CD of chamber music or soft tea
tunes! Several CDs are available just for this! Purchase lovely place
cards and write the names of each item being served. Set the place
card beside each item so your guests know what is being offered. You
won't have to answer the same question for each guest!

I like to give each guest a gift as they leave - a velvet bag with a
teabag and gold teaspoon inside, a small loaf of fruit bread wrapped
in plastic wrap and tied with a ribbon to which a tea bag is attached,
a menu card printed on special half page invitation cards with a
ribbon tied at the top and a tea bag attached, or a recipe booklet
which includes all recipes served at the tea. Or you could make favors
with a Victorian flare for each guest as a memento of the tea.
Placecards are always a nice touch if you have tables for a sit down
tea.

I have suggested in invitations for teas that the women wear hat and
gloves if they own them. About half of the women will arrive in
elegant suits, hats and gloves, some of the hats being pulled out from
the back of the closet. They seem to love to dress up for the event,
even at 3 p.m. on a lazy Saturday afternoon. But here you must be
flexible, because with today's lifestyle, many women no longer own
hats. Also, with some groups, you may find that there will be women
who don't even own a dress. Your job is to make the suggestions then
go with the flow and make every guest feel welcome and special.

I like to give my guests a brief history of tea before they eat. I
also point out the various teapots, tea cozies, and other items that
have special meaning to me. I use my great-grandmother's teapot on the
tea table along with the first teapot I owned. I tell where I bought
certain items. The women always seem to enjoy hearing the history of
tea and the history of my various pieces.

For afternoon tea, cookies (biscuits in Britain), scones, tea
sandwiches, fancy chocolates, petit fours, crumpets, muffins, and
fancy breads and desserts, such as trifle, are served. The sandwiches
can be vegetable like thinly sliced tomato or cucumber on buttered
bread or chicken, ham, egg or tuna salad on bread with the crusts
removed and cut into triangles or pretty shapes with a cookie cutter -
hearts for Valentine's Day, stars for Christmas, etc. Traditional tea
spreads for the scones or crumpets are Devonshire cream, orange
marmalade, strawberry jam, honey, cinnamon and sugar, apple butter,
strawberry butter, raspberry preserves, apricot preserves, apple
chutney, or lemon curd.

When you have tea at the Ritz or other fine hotels, your tea fare is
brought to you on a three-tiered silver server. The lower level holds
the tea sandwiches; the middle level holds the scones; and the top
level is for the fancy dessert items. You begin eating from the bottom
and go to the top, so when I set up a tea table buffet, I put the tea
sandwiches and other savories first on the table, followed by the
scones and fruit breads, then end with the elegant desserts.

I have found that using a large commercial coffee maker (not a used
one that tastes of coffee) to heat the water then filling the teapots
from that makes it easier to keep the pots full for the guests to try
the various teas. I try to offer at least four teas with at least two
pots of each tea. You can use teabags in the pots, but if you want to
be traditional, you will use loose tea and make sure you have enough
lovely tea strainers for the guests to use as they fill their cups. I
like to offer at least one light fruity tea for the younger guests or
for those who aren't sure they really like tea!

Giving a tea is a lot of work, but if you plan and are organized,
everything will come together at the right moment. Make sure you keep
a checklist so you don't forget anything on the day of the tea. You
will feel much more relaxed if you can go down your list and know you
won't have any last minute unpleasant surprises. Following is a
checklist I used for a tea that served 40 people. Use it as a guide
but do your own thing with recipes that are comfortable for you. You
will feel a great sense of pleasure and accomplishment when you see
others enjoying themselves so much. You can do it!

Organizing for a Tea

Tea music and CD player -
Bread with teabags attached -
Recipe booklet -
Floral arrangement and extra flowers to decorate serving dishes -
Crystal plates and cups -
Spoons and forks -
Napkins -
Placecards with names of things served -
Paper plates and plastic wrap (to allow guest to take items home to
spouses or those who couldn't attend) -
Teapots, creamers, sugars -
Tea cozies -
Tea strainers -
Lace Tablecloths -
Coffee urns -
Food Items

Tea -
Milk for creamers -
Pumpkin bread -
Applesauce bread -
Sausage balls -
Gingerbread muffins -
Salami -
Coconut bread -
Moulded chocolates -
Rum truffles -
Shortbread -
Fantasy Fruitcake Squares -
Peanut butter fudge -
Cheese ball/crackers -
Devonshire cream -
Strawberry jam -
Lemon curd -
Date-Black Walnut Bars -
Lemon cream and ladyfingers -
Simply Spirited Spread/cinnamon bread -
Pavlova -
Esther's Orange Marmalade Cake -
Chicken salad -
Ambrosia trifle -
Cucumber sandwiches/garlic and onion cream cheese spread -
Chocolate mousse -
Texas caviar and tortilla chips -
Ripe olive-onion tarts -
Scones -
Waldorf salad -