See How Easily You Can Brew and Serve Loose-Leaf Tea?

Remember the first couple times your in-laws shocked you? Interestingly, one of my memories surrounds instant tea. I delegated to a new family member to “bring the drinks” to an event I planned at my new home. When they arrived, two Cost-co sized cans of instant lemonade and instant iced tea were plunked down on my counter moments before the event started. I swallowed hard and chose graciousness (but never forgot it ).

Mei of Clueless Clay, a new friend from Blog Mastermind, recently commented:

I don’t quite have the equipment or the interest to brew my own tea when I want to invite friends over but somehow drinking instant tea seems a bit unparty-like. Any idea on that?

Well, Mei, you’re on to something my relative was not. I agree. Instant tea doesn’t seem very party-like. Instant tea, lemonade, Tang, etc. just really don’t taste very good. I think coffee drinkers completely understand this. How many coffee drinkers use instant coffee these days? I don’t have specific statistics, but I’m guessing not very many because the other options are so far superior . Tea’s the same way.

The bigger issue is your lack of interest and equipment. Maybe I see it too simplistically, but I think one of the keys to changing your lack of interest is to taste really great tea. Find a friend, tea room, or other vendor who serve great tea and give it a try (sorry, Starbucks doesn’t make their tea well). Tea has taken a while to catch up, but thanks to Alice Waters and California foodies, the convenience of processed foods is no longer outweighing the consumer’s demand for quality. The chemicals and “cheaper” prices are too high a trade-off. See my post The Tea Party Food. It explains Tea Party Girl’s food philosophy in detail and helps shed light on why I would not ever recommend instant tea.

Tea, like coffee, does require some basic equipment. Here is the most pared-down list of essentials for brewing loose-leaf tea. There is actually only one extra tool needed over using tea bags.

1. A way to boil water. I recommend a tea kettle, but a saucepan with a lid works too. Almost everyone has one of these.
2. A tea sock or sac. This takes the place of the teabag.
3. No teapot is needed. Tea can be brewed in the same pan the water is heated in as long as the lid is left on during the brewing. (Otherwise, the water cools down too much and the flavor of the tea will not release.) However, serving tea out of a saucepan at a party might be a little funky. A carafe works, but if it’s been used for coffee and not cleaned out with boiling water and baking soda, your tea will taste like coffee.

And so Mei, if you ever host a tea party event, I know you will please your guests with your attention to detail in serving the best tea available. Be sure to invite your in-laws! I know they’ll be impressed.

2 comments July 11th, 2007

The Tea Party Food

In my articles section, you’ll find “A Tea Party’s Most Important Ingedient“. If you read it, you’ll learn that I believe the beverage you serve is more important than the food you serve. HOWEVER, the food runs a close second, especially if serving tea is your business.

Over vacation, I read the story of Alice Waters and her Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse. (If you’re in the food business, this is a must-read). Her philosophies have revolutionized the way many of us think about the food we eat. She says the food we eat is no better than the quality of its ingredients. If you are buying your tea food at Cost-co and it’s filled with corn syrup, white flour, and chemicals, it will taste like it. More and more people are experiencing and in return demanding a higher quality.

When planning your tea party food, think seasonal, freshness, and quality over quantity. What fresh fruit is in season? Use it every way you can. Same with the vegetables if you are planning salad or soup.

Remember the Ritz? Yes, Americans may balk at smaller portions initially. (Maybe a sign in the window that says, “If you want to feel stuffed for cheap when you leave~here’s directions to the nearest Sizzler” is out of the question). But just as customers need education on tea, learning the value or quality over quantity will take time, but can be done, none-the-less. Be sure to read Alice’s book for inspiration. She knew what she believed about food and never, never compromised.

Now the Fourth of July is not exactly the holiday that makes one think of hosting a tea party. However, at our annual family and friends picnic tomorrow, I will bring many quarts of my Cherry Iced Tea, so it qualifies, doesn’t it? Here’s the rest of the menu I decided on after pouring through some of my favorite books~the ones that organize menus by events, seasons, or holidays.

1. Appetizer~gourmet crackers spread with Chevre (a goat cheese) and topped with roasted peppers and fresh basil.
2. Side~Taking advantage of all the wonderful summer fruit and preparing a salad with raspberries, blackberries, nectarines, strawberries and honeydew melon. I will make a light dressing for it with honey and fresh-squeezed lime juice.
3. Main~Oven-fried chicken because it’s a holiday and a little indulgence that I don’t relish in the rest of the year is a requirement.
4. Desserts~Yes, there’s two. Maybe. Remember, I don’t bake, but I do receive accolades for cookies. So if I decide to do the work, I want to try a recent recipe I found for malted milk ball cookies (vs. the traditional choco-chip). Middle son is with Grandma frosting a fun-fetti cake as a back-up (yes, Alice, I’m sure you don’t even know what a fun-fetti cake is).
5. Beverage~Quarts and quarts of cherry iced-tea.

It isn’t easy to plan a menu that avoids wheat and dairy as much as possible (confirmed allergies in our family), stays within budget, and helps everyone feel like we’re celebrating. But it is great fun to think about how the food can be the best of our current season. We all can’t be Alice Waters, but using local and seasonal food whenever possible adds so much richness to our menus and delight to the tastebuds.

Are you able to visit local Farmers’ Markets? Does the season-of-the-year affect your menu plans?

1 comment July 3rd, 2007

The Tea Party-Will it Sabotage Your Diet?

While spending time at the lake today, I spoke with a woman who gave up coffee starting last weekend. She shared with me her need to completely get off caffeine. I told her about my four best-selling herb blends and offered her some samples.

Approaching forty years old, I often find myself in conversations about diet and health with other women. While some of us battle our weight more than others, the older I get the more it seems we all battle with feeling good. Caffeine, alcohol, white sugar, and white flour are all big no-nos in our quest for energy and pain-free living. And the traditional tea party at first glance can include many of the “bad foods”.

Some of my articles, including “Tea as Dessert” and “Give Up Coffee for Green Tea, Are You Crazy?” already address some of the concern. Here are a few other thoughts I had after my conversation this afternoon.

The hostess of the tea party can be sensitive when planning her menu to the reality that many of us who love afternoon tea also want to be wise about what we eat. It’s important to plan menus that include smaller portions (a tea tradition) of many kinds of food. Don’t plan a menu of primarily white-flour based sandwiches, scones, and sweets. Explore how you can bring in cheeses, meats, vegetables, and fruits for a varietal menu. It will look beautiful, too.

As a guest of an afternoon tea, it’s important to remember it is not the goal to leave it stuffed. Appreciate the process of nibbling, tasting, and slowing down. Make each bite count. Make sure what you’re eating is something you really like.

As for the tea, practice drinking it without filling your cup with milk and sugar. Tea as a beverage is one of the super-foods and it’s wonderful to imbibe without guilt. The tea party does not need to sabotage our diets and health.

2 comments June 27th, 2007

Children’s Tea Party-the Food

Yesterday’s tea party for Pink Dancer went very well (except for the 95 degrees part). I will post pictures of the tea table very soon. Each of the six children were served a dessert plate filled with:

• two tea sandwiches, one cut like a heart and one cut like a teapot with cookie cutters.
• one celery stick with peanut butter and raisins
• one small ramekin filled with ranch dressing with six petite carrots sticking up like orange birthday candles.

Now, there’s much more, but before I continue, I will confess almost all of the above was NOT eaten. So much for adding the healthy choices.

To continue…

• one Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano cookie (remember, I don’t bake and these were by request from the Birthday Girl
• one Le Petit Ecolier*, another store bought cookie
• one chocolate-dipped strawberry and one white-chocolate dipped strawberry each in little “Happy Birthday” paper candy cups (these I did make myself, I am proud to say.)
• two small bunches of grapes, one green and one red

I love making up plates and thinking of the mix of colors and variety of food. I served them on my grandmother’s every day dishes I inherited from her without fear.
We served hot (Anne Shirley’s Almond Black, naturally decaffeinated) and cold cherry iced tea. Most of the children, despite the weather, chose the hot tea because of the darling sugars they could add with milk. And at the end we brought out the cake.

The table looked lovely and a picture is worth a thousand words. It’s on its way. I was particularly thrilled with the beautiful centerpiece I made from $15 dollars of pink flowers from the grocery store (alstromeria, baby roses, and carnations). The children sat enraptured (and to my disturbance unfamiliar with the story) as I read “Rapunzel”, a version with classic, Renaissance-type paintings for illustrations. Rapunzel was the choice theme for my daughter. We played an opposite-type fishing game with a lllloooonnnngggg braid made from raffia that the children threw out of the tree-house window. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” the nine-year old would cry. The six-year olds threw it down and the nine-year old would attach a dollar-store prize. The children loved it.

Meanwhile, the mothers sat under the shade trees eating the same foods I had given the children laid out buffet-style and LOTS of iced tea. The heat and mess almost did me in, but the reward of shining faces in children’s wonder makes it all worthwhile.

1 comment June 15th, 2007

Tea Party Recipes

Over the life of this blog, my plan is to gather some of the best tea party recipes from many sources here at Tea Party Girl and organize them into menus for your use. I personally, do not enjoy baking, as explained here~but many lovers of tea do bake and are quite good at it. (In fact, it is my personal opinion that you cannot be in the traditional tea room business and NOT love to bake and cook.)

One of the best tea room blogs I have found so far is from a darling place in Connecticut, T-Party Antiques, that I certainly hope to visit someday. Recently, Susan chronicled one of their recipes, T-Party Brownie Cakes, with pictures included. Pop on over for a little inspiration. Imagine sharing a salad-size plate of these brownie cakes with a pot of Caramel for Hobbits (one of Tea Party Girl’s best sellers) with a dear friend surrounded by the summer flower garden on an 80 degree day (that’s with no humidity, southern folk…). Now that’s what I call a perfect afternoon.

2 comments June 11th, 2007