Tea: A Drink With Bread and Jam

I love going for tea and I don’t do it as often as I like. I went once with girlfriends to Tea at the Helmsley. Another time I went with different girlfriends to Silver Tips Tea in Tarrytown. I’m dying to go to Kathleen’s Tea House in Peekskill, and dying an even worse death to go to Tea and Sympathy in the West Village.

Tea and tea party scenes in British novels have always appealed to me. Many years ago when I remodeled my old childhood dollhouse, I turned the top floor into the nursery of my imaginations, searching high and low for the perfect round table and chairs on which a miniature tea party could be set. Downstairs in the living room, a resin-cast maid pushed an elaborate tea cart for the afternoon guests.

One of the best cups of tea I ever had was in Bermuda. Jeeps and I had just gotten engaged and we…wait a sec, back up, I have to tell you something: he proposed to me in the kitchen. No set-up, no preamble, no ruse. In the kitchen. One minute I was poking around in the cabinets looking for a little something-something, the next minute I’m sobbing on the linoleum floor with a diamond ring on my hand. In the kitchen. It was perfect. Thank you, I just needed to say that.

So we took a little celebratory trip to Bermuda and explored the island end to end, as one does in Bermuda, on a scooter. And one day it rained. Poured. We were at the opposite end of the island from our hotel, soaking wet and starving. We staggered into a small pub and ordered fish and chips and a pot of tea. It hot and strong and sweet and everything I felt high tea should be.

One of the most famous tea parties in literary history is in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the chapter entitled “A Mad Tea-Party.” But guess what? Nothing at the table is described. This is it:

The rest is rapid-fire dialogue consisting of riddles and non-sensical non-sequiturs that eventually drive our young heroine to distraction and away from the party. We don’t even get a bite of bread-and-butter. Feh.

The Mary Poppins books by P. L. Travers, feature another famous tea party: the one on the ceiling. In the movie this takes place at the home of Uncle Albert, played by Ed Wynne. In the book, Mary’s uncle is called Mr. Wigg, and he gives very specific instructions on how tea is to be taken:

Mary Poppins, naturally, has her own idea of the perfect tea party, as described in the chapter, “The Day Out,” where she and Bert hop into the chalk picture for an outing:

So Travers gives us a few more particulars of the food served at tea-time. But check out the loving and lavish detail C. S. Lewis provides when describing the tea party shared by Lucy and the faun Tumnus, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

Notice that toast alone makes up three courses of this tea party. Sardines on toast does nothing for me, however my former boss is English and swears by baked beans on toast. My team gave her some serious razzing about it but she held her ground and insisted it is comfort food of the highest order. However, quality baked beans are the key: they must be Heinz vegetarian, served up on white toast topped with sharp cheddar.

Baked beans have a very different memory for me: in my childhood, my mother worked late hours at her dance studio, and quite often it was my father who made dinner. He was no slouch in the kitchen and had a solid repetoire of main courses. But often he was tired after a long day and the evening commute, and so dinner would be a lite fare of scrambled eggs, with Heinz baked beans served on the side.

For the ultimate in tea party descriptions, and for British food in general, nothing beats the mealtime passages in the novels of Rosamunde Pilcher. Here’s one of my very favorite scenes from my very very favorite book, Coming Home:

photo credit: Irina via Creative Commons

photo credit: Cody and Maureen via Creative Commons

photo credit: Olga Filonenko via Creative Commons

Forest Soup

Image source: https://www.sparklestories.com/

Envision if you will, a backyard bordered by a low stone wall. Above the stone wall slopes a hill of pine trees, pachysandra and rhododendrons. Two paths go up the slope, spaced about 25 feet apart, each set with a few stone steps.

This was my back yard growing up, and the hillside was an excellent place for adventure. It seemed the size of a mountain when I was young. I’m sure if I went back today it would look like a knoll.

The path going up on the left was, by some unspoken agreement, my brother’s path. Except in wintertime during a snowfall because then it became our sled hill. On a really good run you could launch off the stone wall and get some serious air.

The path on the right was mine. It passed by a flat space where the toolshed was built. That was not mine. That area was to be avoided at all costs. I did not acknowledge the Shed as part of my path. Unspeakably creepy things were in there: spiders and slugs and wasps’ nests and sharp implements and the lawn mower. I did not like the lawn mower. I did not like things that made loud noises. When Bert Rechtshaffer came to visit us on his motorcyle, I would flee the premises.

So the two paths went up the hill, and then they connected at the top in a small secret place surrounded by pine trees. This was prime real estate. This was a fort. My friend Julia and I would spend hours up there with our imaginations, anything we could find to play with, and one old cooking pot in which we’d make Forest Soup from stream water, pine needles, rhododendron leaves and dirt. We still talk about it to this day. If anything we cook turns out supremely bad, we laugh and say, “well, it wasn’t as bad as that Forest Soup.”

Forest Soup, Yard Stew, old-fashioned Mud Pies—these are delightful creations that kids make when exposed to nature. Sometimes I think it is a dying art and kids today don’t have that connection to the outdoors that Julia and I did in my backyard fort in the pine trees. Then one day, I’ll see Pandagirl and Redman outside with my old saucepan or some filched Tupperware, filling it up with water and then running around the yard to find things for the pot. It’s like Stone Soup come to life but on a purely imaginary level. Sometimes I’ll come across the birdbath, choked to the rim with grass, leaves, flower petals, chives, lavender, wood chips, gravel, and a plastic spoon or two.

When my vegetable garden is in season, things get kicked up another level. I grow a huge and varied garden and my philosophy with the kids is total hands-on.

“Mom, can we pick something out of the garden?” they will ask.

And I will say, “You can pick anything you want out of the garden.” And so into their stews go (depending on the season) peapods, cherry tomatoes, parsley, tiny matchstick green beans, zucchini flowers, nasturtiums and little baby carrots. Sometimes, some of the bounty gets rinsed off at the garden hose and they eat it. I encourage any and all snacking from the garden. Have at it. At the end of the day, it all gets tossed on the compost pile and the Circle of Life continues.

If you are acquainted with a child who loves outdoor cooking, I highly recommend, in fact I insist you get a copy of Mud Pies and Other Recipes (A Cookbook for Dolls) by Marjorie Winslow. It's seriously one of the most charming books ever written, and will get any child excited about finding the larder within the backyard, the woods, and the seashore. And it’s a nice little read for grown-ups too, a book to make you remember simpler times.

Here are a few examples:

Boiled Buttons

This is a hot soup that is simple but simply delicious. Place a handful of buttons in a saucepan half filled with water. Add a pinch of white sand and dust, 2 fruit tree leaves and a blade of grass for each button. Simmer on a hot rock for a few minutes to bring out the flavor. Ladle into bowls.

Marigold Madness

Shred several marigolds into a pan and fill with water. Set in the sun to simmer. When the liquid has turned to gold, strain into bowls and put in the shade to cool. Serve chilled.

Mud Puddle Soup

Find a mud puddle after a rainstorm and seat your dolls around it. Serve.

Literary Eats: Gone With The Wind

From Chapter XXV, Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, Macmillan & Co, New York, 1936:

Beyond Tara was the war and the world.  But on the plantation the war and the world did not exist except as memories which must be fought back when they rushed to mind in moments of exhaustion.  The world outside receded before the demands of empty and half-empty stomachs and life resolved itself into two related thoughts, food and how to get it.

Food!  Food!  Why did the stomach have a longer memory than the mind?  Scarlett could banish heartbreak but not hunger and each morning as she lay half asleep, before memory brought back to her mind war and hunger, she curled drowsily expecting the sweet smells of bacon frying and rolls baking.  And each morning she sniffed so hard to really smell the food she woke herself up.

There were apples, yams, peanuts and milk on the table at Tara but never enough of even this primitive fare.  At the sight of them, three times a day, her memory would rush back to the old days, the meals of the old days, the candle-lit table and the food perfuming the air.

How careless they had been of food then, what prodigal waste!  Rolls, corn muffins, biscuit and waffles, dripping butter, all at one meal.  Ham at one end of the table and fried chicken at the other, collards swimming richly in pot liquor iridescent with grease, snap beans in mountains on brightly flowered porcelain, fried squash, stewed okra, carrots in cream sauce thick enough to cut.  And three desserts, so everyone might have his choice, chocolate layer cake, vanilla blanc mange and pound cake topped with sweet whipped cream.  The memory of those savory meals had the power to bring tears to her eyes as death and war had failed to do, had the power to turn her ever-gnawing stomach from rumbling emptiness to nausea.  For the appetite Mammy had always deplored, the healthy appetite of a nineteen-year-old-girl, now was increased fourfold by the hard and unremitting labor she had never known before.