That's What Friends are For!

That's What Friends are For!

My sister, who made this teapot-shaped scrapbook, calls them the Tea Coven. This is a group of friends who have been gathering for tea since 1993 or so. When I wrote my book, "Come to Tea!" they're the ones I practiced on. We would dress up in Victorian garb and have picnic teas at Victorian historical sites. They've been very indulgent over the years! And while we've been through a lot of life since then, for most of us our original point of contact was Doctor Who. Julie and I went to college together and Kathleen and Steff met in secretarial school, but the group coalesced around a love of the longest-running "children's" program on the BBC.

Doctor Who celebrated 50 years on TV in 2013 and I hosted a viewing party at the time, but I knew I had to host a proper Whovian tea to welcome this particular Traveling Teapot!

For the tea table, I started with the lovely exploding TARDIS fabric that arrived with the Teapot, and used my Blue Willow cups and saucers along with plain white plates. That lemon curd in the foreground has just a hint of ginger in it and was homemade by a friend. And that's clotted cream next to the homemade blackberry jam. We also used the Dalek creamer and TARDIS sugar that now travel with the Teapot.

The Traveling Teapot was filled several times with Cream Earl Grey. For my decaf drinkers, I offered Bromley decaf black tea. We enjoyed a variety of tea sandwiches including chicken salad and cucumber, Cream Scones (fresh from the oven) and that cake in the background is Emily Dickinson's Coconut cake (a recipe that's been featured on Tori Avery's website). Ms. Dickinson and I share a birthday so I was drawn to the recipe. It was quite good with tea since it's a bot on the dry side, but it was lovely with a bit of lemon curd!

So here we all are, hats and scarves and all. Who would have imagined that something so random as attending a Doctor Who meeting would have been the seed that grew our friendships?



Cheryl@TeaTimeTutorial