Tea’s big in our house. It started with my daughter, who was given a tea set with gold gilt and fairies on it that kind of begged for the whole party presentation. It didn’t take us long to start arranging place settings, complete with doilies, winding up the Beethoven music box, and brewing the kind of Celestial Seasonings tea which doesn’t have any tea in it. When my son finally got old enough to join us he moped around for about six months because I couldn’t find him a “boy set.” Luckily, my mother scored an IKEA rig in solid blue, yellow, and green (also pink, but that’s only for guests) before he was traumatized for life. Next to helping me take guns apart and put them back together, tea parties are now his favorite past-time. We’re suckers for anything that includes play-acting, presentation, and sugar.
Which means that I feel almost obligated to step it up a notch and follow the Muriel Spark tea directions posted by Maud Newton.
Someday a real Robert Burns Night and the world’s greatest gumbo, but for now I’ll just shoot for “an exquisite pot of tea.”
