Prairie Tea pt 2: The Report

 Hello all,

Well, we did it. the 2nd annual Scripture Tea for the ladies at my congregation has happened!

The first time we did this tea, I was so overwhelmed/exhausted afterwards that I remember driving home afterwards and not being sure how it even went! But this time, I can positively say that it went well. The second time you do something it will always be better than the first, right?

Except that we were still 1/2 hour late getting the food out, even with help, just like '23. Oh well, no body cared, at least not enough to come into the kitchen and demand why we were taking so long :)

Two of my obliging brothers were kind enough to do some behind-the-scenes kitchen work for my mother and I, and we would have been sooo late if we hadn't had help!

The tea happened on Saturday, April 20th, but preparations happened weeks ahead of time. I chose a theme, collected recipes, and stashed one of our freezers with tea party food. What did it look like? Carbs from top to bottom. Eek!

My mom and I collected decor, which you can see here.

That Wednesday, we went to Bible class early and sorted out matching sets of forks and knives from the church's vault of donated silverware. Last time, we made the mistake of doing this the morning of the tea. Never again!

On Friday, we began the task of decorating. This took longer than it should have (always do this THURSDAY, Miss Humphrey. Don't kid yourself.) I also made the chicken salad up in the church kitchen and stowed it in the fridge overnight. I really like that we brought food to the church fridge/freezer throughout the week and didn't leave all the hauling for Saturday. 

The Party Favor Table

About Saturday...

Saturday began a bit late, and it was in the 10 o'clock hour when my mom and I pulled out of the driveway to purchase our fresh flowers for the tables. 

We got a few minutes down the road and realized that I forgot to load a mixer of any sort into our van. This was important because what are scones without whipped cream at a fancy tea party?

So we turned around and lumbered up the hill again. We got the hand mixer and something else we thought of, and then started once more for town, only to make it as far as a sharp turn at the bottom of the neighborhood this time. Our faithful, 18 year old van was making a very peculiar chafing sound when we took that curve. We live 25 miles from the town where the tea was being held, and, not knowing what sort of car trouble we were experiencing, two women like us were not going to risk landing ourselves in a cattle field in the middle of nowhere particular with a dysfunctional vehicle. Especially on the day of an all important tea party that we must get to!

So we turned around and went home, moved everything from the van to our other car, and started out for the LAST TIME, late but still optimistic.

We bought bedding plants at Bi-Mart and my mom trimmed the blooms she wanted for bouquets. Now the plants sit happily on our porch, furnishing us with a beautiful flower garden. If we had bought florist flowers, they would likely be on their way out with no hope of revival. Getting bedding plants served our purpose for the tea and will give us joy during the late spring as well!

From there everything went relatively smoothly. Picking out flowers on that warm morning soothed our yet-to-be-breakfasted minds and made me feel better. We then went to the church building and dived into panic mode, chomping on leftover pizza from the night before for our breakfast-turned brunch while we worked and making tea to keep us going until we could drink tea with everyone else. Are we tea addicts? Oh, not a chance! We can stop anytime.

The rest of the morning was not terribly interesting. We tried to keep the panic factor down to some extent while whipping cream, filling tarts, making sandwiches and slicing things. By the time we were heating things up and early birds were coming, there was no use in keeping the panic down. It was survival mode.

By 3, I think we had the first batch of food out. I say first batch because, while I made enough for 40 servings of at least most of my food selections, I figured that we just needed to get ~20 servings out in the tea party room, because there shouldn't be more than that many guests, and I could whip up the rest of the sandwiches, etc. while they ate their first servings. 

As it turns out, only 15 of the 20+ guests who signed up showed up, which was not a problem. To the contrary, I made, as usual, Way Too Much Food, and didn't have to spend the tea party making more sandwiches in the kitchen, which was nice. My mother did a wonderful job on tea service and the ladies enjoyed talking amongst themselves and eating, and consuming tea. I actually didn't drink tea, opting for lemonade instead. I have a funny tendency to skip the tea when I make one of these parties, which I am the first to admit is strange.

Some of the food that was lucky enough to get its picture taken. On the table to the left, a bit of the dessert is to be observed. 

Perhaps this menu will help your imagination with the food, since I am lacking a lot of photos. For the sweets course, we had small plates of roulade cake with berries and cream, a plate of thumbprint cookies, and cream cheese chocolate tarts with strawberry slices in their tops.

After our tea, we had a rich Scripture sharing time. We went around the room and shared passages we had picked out, and the edification was wonderful. 

We had some wonderful help cleaning up, and before 7 pm we were driving home. It was a blessed, stressful good day! 

We came home and ate leftovers until we were feeling unwell from all the rich, 80% cream-and-butter food. Now we still have some scones, cookies and lemon posset to finish, but all in all these are not such bad trials to face.

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Prairie Tea

 Hello readers,

I want to thank you for continuing to visit my blog, even though my posting has become sporadic at times. I really appreciate your visits!

I am putting on Afternoon Tea for the ladies at my congregation near the end of this month. The theme is Prairie, and my mother and I had fun gathering old-fashioned and old-fashioned-looking items from our stashes for some of the décor. 

We both love the pioneer look, and the tarnished and worn style is "in," so we were in luck. Out came the faded and well-used quilts, the poor McGuffey's 5th reader who has been handled by five children in my family and looks none the better for it (but lots more prairie-ish!) and the ruffled dress and eyelet-trimmed petticoat from my closet. 

(Note: We bought this reprint brand new and now it looks like an authentic antique!)

A trunk, obviously being packed for a young schoolteacher who is migrating West, but who still clings to a bit of feminine refinement in spite of her destination being rough and dusty. The trunk and the dress form below will likely fill a corner of the room. 

This is a jumper I sewed awhile back, embellished with a blouse my mother made, fine lace and satiny-trim, and a prized possession from back when I put on my sunbonnet and made my brother "walk to school" with me so I could be like Laura and Mary:

my very own cameo pin.

This is the invitation, and the base for some of our colors and themes. That being said, since patchwork and calico are quite prairie, I have departed from my base colors...a lot...to use any fabric that looks soft and pretty and old fashioned and suits our purposes. 

I plan to overlap the smaller pieces and put them down the middle of the table for a table runner. I was also thinking of loosely braiding some larger yardages together and running them over the table runner. It will add another dimension to the table decorations and capture another side of the prairie look.

 For the party favor location, I'd like to take some wood slats and lay them across a side table, and add a bunting to the front of the table or a quilt angled across the top. The party favors can be arranged on top. Speaking of party favors, we haven't completely hashed out what the little "thank you" bags or boxes will hold (we haven't figured out whether they are bags or boxes either, haha) but I know I want them to hold a white-chocolate-orange-cream scone in them and a tea bag among other things.

 

Speaking of scones and tea...

So far, I have cut the scones out, and they will live happily in the freezer until we are ready to bake them the day of the tea. I also made the strawberry orange thumbprint cookies and am working on the lemon roulade. I am using a lot of recipes/ideas from Tea Time magazines - my favorite inspiration for affairs of tea and dainties.

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

From Prairie Visions: The Life And Times Of Solomon Butcher

Tea Report

 Hello all,

I cannot very well leave my readers without a report of the Autumn Tea. I just know you have been holding onto the edge of your seats, waiting to find how it turned out! ;)

In short, it turned out very well! I worked on decorations up to a week before and cooked for 3 days ahead of time. (Typical, I would say...either I cook for a week ahead of time and spread out the work, or something comes up and I end up cramming all the cooking into the last few days.) I ended up leaving out one recipe that I could not finish in time for the tea, because...

The power went out for 1.5 hours on the day of the tea. God answered prayer and turned it back on in time for most of the food to be done for the tea. I simply didn't have time to finish the Maple Walnut Sticky Buns I had planned for desert, but the crisp and pumpkin pie were just fine for the desert menu. Over all, I would say the tea was a success! 

Interestingly, not much tea was actually consumed. The hot cranberry apple cider that my mother made was simply irresistible, and it was more popular than the tea! I am partly to blame, because I had many cups of the juice and not one cup of the tea.

I've made up for it while I worked on this post by having some iced tea, now that there is no more hot cider. 

If you're curious about the menu, please refer to my last post. A few things changed between my posting and our eating - we added grapes, rosemary cashews, hot apple and cranberry cider and roasted butternut squash soup to the menu, and the maple walnut sticky buns, as you read above, never came to full fruition. Oh, and the potato leek soup turned into a potato shallot soup. It tasted just fine.

Onto the decorations: our theme was grey, buffalo check, and galvanized metal to go with our wooden table and the lodge vibe of our downstairs. We had the placemats already, and I made some things and we used what we had, so our spending on decor was a small amount.

 I bought this cute milk can and the faux foliage inside. My younger siblings gathered some fresh foliage to add to the arrangement.

I had so much fun making buffalo check decor. I loved how these food cards ("interpretive signs") turned out.

I used my mother's papercrafting supplies and the computer/printer to make the paper items.

These make more sense when they have napkins inside of them ;) but yes, they are paper napkin rings. 

Why the blue? You may ask. The china we were using for the tea was accented with a beautiful frosty blue, so I was trying to incorporate that color into the decor. 

Decorations on the shelf at the end of our dining room.

A good time was had by all, and as always the leftovers are nice to have around. 

And, if nothing else, it's always great to have this great excuse:

"Younger Brother, thou must wash the dishes tonight."

"Why canst thou do it, Older Sister, since thou art only reading thy novel on the couch?"

"Because, Younger Brother, I made thee that big ol' tea party 2 1/2 weeks ago. Now get to it."

--Miss Humphrey

Steps I Take in Preparing a Tea

Hello all,

I still intend to get a sewing post out one of these days.

Right now, I'm working on planning our annual Autumn Celebration which happens in the form of a High Tea. Now, before you think "tea party" and imagine little girls at a little table drinking from little cups, let me assure you that a High Tea is something of quite a different nature. My family is made up of mostly men, and the Autumn High Tea is always satisfying (and satiating, thanks to all that butter) to everyone. Rather than an arrangement of dainty tea sandwiches and macarons, it is a buffet of hearty, special fare that is fun to eat.

Last year's Autumn Tea

The first step I usually take when preparing a tea is to make a menu. This year, my menu looks like this:

Main

Everything Biscuits

Potato & Leek Soup

Ham & Apple Tea Sandwiches 

Carrot Salad Sandwiches

Fennel Italian Sausage Pizza

Individual Double Crust Cabbage Pies

Vegetables & Ranch Dip

Grapes

Dessert

Individual Pumpkin Pies

Maple Walnut Sticky Buns

Blackberry Apple Crisp

Beverages:

Apple Cider

Tea

I don't stick to the formality of having courses; I like to do buffets. We load up a serving table and keep the bulk of the food off of the "eating" table, which is usually crowded enough with china.

 A previous autumn celebration.

I'm thankful to say that we have a bigger table now.

Let's talk about what's on the menu!

I got my recipes from a few different locations.

Everything biscuits: I have never tried this recipe from Ken Haedrich's Harvest Baker cookbook before, but it looks amazing. A few other recipes of his have become family favorites.

Potato & Leek Soup is another new one I pulled off of the web. I don't have much to say about it yet, but I think it will go well with the biscuits.

Ham & Apple Tea sandwiches: we found this recipe in a Tea Time magazine a few years ago. I don't stick to the recipe anymore, but the basic idea is ham, apple, sharp cheddar cheese and mayonnaise. You can add greens to it as well. It is an incredibly good tea sandwich;)

Carrot Salad Sandwiches: for this one, I don't have a recipe for you. My grandmother, who used to own a tea room, always made them when I was little, and they are delightful. They're a mixture of carrots, cream cheese, mayonnaise, chives and dill packed between slices of bread.

Fennel Italian Sausage Pizza - another recipe from the Harvest Baker. This is a pizza you must not miss. It is decadent - and even more so if the bulk of Italian sausage makes it to the pizza before the cook eats it!

Individual Double Crust Cabbage Pies: a labor of love that takes cabbage to a whole 'nother level. Another one from the Harvest Baker. 

Veggies and Dip: you could tell me just as much about this dish as I could tell you.

And then we get to dessert. 

I have found a delightful recipe for Pumpkin Pie. The best, I would say, but I know everyone has "the best" :). It's from the Bobbette and Belle Cookbook. (It also has a recipe for a chocolate cake that will send your levels in all the wrong directions but it is the best I have ever encountered. I enjoy it for birthdays sometimes. Their buttercream frosting is fantastic, too. No wonder - they're Canadian bakers.)

Maple Walnut Sticky buns and Blackberry Apple Crisp are both from "Fall Baking" magazines. (2019 and 2023.) I may have made the Maple Walnut Sticky Buns before as cinnamon rolls. The Blackberry Apple Crisp is a new recipe to me.

And Apple Cider is an essential at any autumn celebration - like tea is at a tea party. So there you have it - my menu elaborated on.

So, I've got a menu down. Except...Squash is still trying to edge its way into the tea party menu. I am not sure whether I will open the door and let it in or not. I guess you will find out after the tea party :)

What next? A shopping list, of course! I'm not as good at this as I should be, but it's important to write down amounts of items that you need. Don't just say, "I need butter for my tea party" and buy a pound of butter. Add up all the butter in your recipes and then add some extra in for the biscuits/bread. (Then add 7 1/2 lbs. of butter to your grocery list. It will be far more accurate ;)

Still in the planning stage is my timeline. I skim recipes and see how long it takes to make things and how much you can make ahead (!!!). It's important to see which recipes should be served hot and think about which ones you could make ahead and heat up again. Then, I usually end up writing a timeline for my food production. Our goal should always be to take as much pressure off of the day of the tea as possible. One way to do this is to schedule the tea party for an evening hour. Believe me. It makes a difference to have all day to work on your day-of dishes.

When you write a timeline, write it down to the last task. Whipping cream at 5:15 or heat up the soup at 4:45 or or whatever. And always over-estimate the time it takes to do things!

Don't forget to plan what china and decorations you are using. This year I was able to incorporate a dark shade of powder blue into my autumn centerpiece because my mother and I had figured out we were using her set of powder-blue accented china BEFORE we went shopping for decorations. Our house has a lodge-vibe in the downstairs which we factored into our tablescape decorations.  Things will coordinate this way! :)

Well, this is what I have for you all today. I hope you enjoyed reading a few of my thoughts on teas. Teas can range from a simple, one-and-one cup of tea and a cookie to a monumental affair for 100+ people. There is so much opportunity for creativity and variety in these wonderful times. I like getting to make recipes I don't usually have the opportunity to, and though it always gets stressful at the end, right before everyone eats, (every. single. time.) I enjoy the occasion.

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

A Spring Scripture Tea...

 Hello all,

Well, I had a busy weekend! How would you like a tea party report?

I had planned to do a tea for ladies at our congregation back in January.  Tea foods, fellowship, and the sharing of Scripture was the plan. 2:00 pm on April 22nd seemed so far off in the future...Ha! It snuck up on me, and two weeks ahead of time I started doing some serious planning. My mother jumped on board and we drew out ideas for tables...schemed about which people would enjoy sitting with who...and started shopping! In the week leading up to Saturday we did some cooking and crafting for the tea, and took a load of china/glassware with us to midweek Bible study. On Friday night my amiable eldest brother took me into town to set up tables and drop off the second load of stuff.

Saturday morning, my mother and I packed up the car (much easier said than done!!) and went to the Church building. Would you just look at how many supplies we thought we needed??

Note to self: Next time, take your grandmother's advice and have the tea party at home!

Things weren't going too bad. The tables were getting set, the food tucked away in the fridge. The morning was wearing away when we pulled out three tubs of silverware to sort through and find matching sets of forks, spoons and knives. 

BIG MISTAKE.

You know what? People don't even care about silverware that much! We should have forgotten about the silverware and started icing cakes and making salad.

That silverware (I won't blame us) caused our tea party to be 1/2 an hour late! And it could have been much worse. 

But the participants in the tea party were a lovely group of patient and enthusiastic women...I didn't hear anyone mention the late time! I did a fair share of the mentioning for them :)

At noon a friend from Tennessee who's on a trip to Oregon showed up, and we put her RIGHT to work. She was supposed to be kind of a guest of honor, and instead she spent hours and hours in the kitchen with us, doing whatever we needed! 

Speaking of buffets and tea, here was our printed schedule and menu:

One of our tables

(I apologize for the poor quality of the photo)

...The buffet being set up...

We shared our Scriptures after tea - the best part of the whole thing! and began on the arduous task of cleaning up (some of the guests were gracious enough to help!) We and our, ahem, *kitchen* guest of honor, were there until six o'clock putting everything back together. My amiable brother showed up again and took a load of supplies home, and we all retreated to the house on the hill to relax with our guest and her husband. 

We had 11 ladies come to Afternoon Tea. They all loved it and took a favor home. We included the plants on the tables as part of their favor. 

We are still eating on the tea party food, and enjoying it, too! We made WAY TOO MUCH, which makes meals very easy now! 

Oh, and do you want to know how to get in your exercise? Have a tea party away from home! My mother logged in 2 MILES of walking while loading/unloading the car and working at the tea!!

Hopefully, this gives you some inspiration to maybe have a tea party of your own! Just...whatever you do, ASK FOR HELP and budget in LOTS of extra time for preparation! 

Hope you enjoyed this post!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Crafty Projects and Party Favor Ideas

 Hello all,

I usually post clothing-related items on this blog, but I am in the midst of a very busy Monday and I thought I'd just show you some other crafty things I've been doing.

I'm preparing to host a tea party at Church this Saturday, and I am working on some of the non-food items currently...like décor and party favors!

My mother and I went to Joanns and picked out some pastel broadcloth for table runners. I am working on sewing those up.

My mother got these cute gift bag kits from Stampin' Up! recently...they're perfect to hold party favors!

I have yet to string ribbon through the holes in the top, but that is the plan.

We decorated clothespins using stickers from Dollar Tree,

and adhered strong magnets to the backs of the clothespins. Perfect fridge magnet clips!

The gift bags will be filled with two chocolates, a clothespin, and some notecards. 

(the backs)

*********************************************

I found some finger-kitting yarn on clearance at Joanns. I had to snatch it up...it's in one of my favorite colors!!

My oh-so-soft scarf.

Our neighbor taught us how to make hexagons with fabric (English paper piecing). I'd like to make a quilt with these!

They are made by gathering a fabric hexagon around a smaller paper hexagon. The stiff, glossy paper from junk mail advertisements works well for this. Then you hand-sew over your gathers to secure them. You take the papers out once you're ready to use your hexagons in a project. Starching them first before you take the papers out is a good idea.

(the back)

Aren't those colors beautiful!?

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey