The Tablecloth

Peach, Kathy and I had high tea today.

Kathy's health has not been great thru the cold winter weather and she has not felt able to come to cousins day at my mother's. You may have noticed that the last cousins day we had was just the three of us, without Kathy.

Peach and I decided she needed some cheering up, so I suggested that we bring high tea to her. We could still play 65 and I'd make a fancy tea for our lunch.

It took some coordination. I had to find a fancy 3-tiered tray (which I bought in Santa Barbara when we were there for Bri's birthday) and then I decided to make finger sandwiches, plus scones with, if not clotted cream, at least cream and jam) and I ordered petit fours from the coffee shop/bakery, Ciocolat, here in town. I asked Peach to bring tea and fruit and I knew that Kathy had tea pots, because she collects them.

I set the alarm for 6 a.m. to get the scones made.

Can a day that begins like this go well...?

I store the flour on top of the refrigerator and in lifting it down, the whole thing bobbled in my hand, the lid came off, and it ended up on the floor like this.

Not to worry. I salvaged enough to make the scones and I had helpers who were eager to get to the clean up.

I wish I could have gotten a picture of Lizzie, her tongue coated with now-pasty flour and her "beard" looking all snowy white.

But in spite of this little mishap, the scones came out all right.

I didn't have the traditional clotted cream, but I did make whipping cream and brought strawberry jam to get as close to a traditional English scone as I could.

I also made the finger sandwiches.

These are cucumber sandwiches, but I also made egg salad and salmon, both in more "finger" shapes than round.

When all was ready, I drove to Ciocolat to pick up the petit fours, then to Peach's house to get her and we presented ourselves to Kathy's house. Peach's husband Bob came to take Fred away so we could have the house to ourselves. (The men did complain a lot about being left out; Walt had rented a car for the day so he could go to see an opera in a movie theater in Sacramento, so he had his own day of fun.)

Before eating, we played a game of 65. Kathy had asked Peach to bring a table cloth for her table and she had brought one that her mother had painted a long time ago. It was lovely. We joked about how the spirit of Marge was going to help Peach win the game.

And she did.

Kathy decided that wasn't fair, so she brought out a table cloth which had belonged to her mother and put it on the table. She won the first two hands of our next game and I complained that I was going to go home and get one of my mother's table cloths (but ultimately I won the next two games, so that was OK).

After our first game, we had our "high tea."

Peach poured tea from one of Kathy's antique tea pots.

After our third game, Kathy was getting tired and it was getting late (and I still had a long drive home), so we called it a day. But we really had such a good day and it was great that this was a good day for Kathy too!