Tea in the Library #75 Tiramisu Cookies Christmas Tea

Spode Christmas Tree

On Christmas Day at half past three, Brew yourself a cup of tea. I'll think of you,

You think of me

While sitting 'round the Christmas Tree.

- Anonymous

tiramisu cookie recipe

 

What are you baking up this Christmas?

Tea in the Library #68

 

“There was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe -- the only lady private detective in Botwana -- brewed tea. And three mugs -- one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Tea in the Library #73

“... they always had tea in the kitchen, much the nicest room in the house.”

― Flora Thompson

Tea in the Library # 72

I. At Tea

THE kettle descants in a cosy drone,
And the young wife looks in her husband's face,
And then in her guest's, and shows in her own
Her sense that she fills an envied place;

And the visiting lady is all abloom,
And says there was never so sweet a room.

And the happy young housewife does not know
That the woman beside her was his first choice,
 Till the fates ordained it could not be so....

Betraying nothing in look or voice
The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,

And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.”

― Thomas Hardy, Satires of Circumstances: Lyrics and Reveries with Miscellaneous Pieces



Image credits
http://www.slideshare.net/maditabalnco/tea-time-paintings 
http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/the-tea-32829
http://www.slideshare.net/IdeaStudio/clipboards/my-clips
http://www.canvaz.com/gallery/19651.htm



Have a blessed week!

Susan 

Tea in the Library # 71

'I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting.

"This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound."

"You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better.” '
― Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

  
 
Have a blessed day.

Susan.
 

Tea in the Library #70

"A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, or because everything she does is golden. A writer is a writer because, even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."

Junot Diaz,  Professor of Writing, 

Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction, 2008

I love to write!

And that's what my recent blogging hiatus has been about.

Writing book length fiction.

 My posts will be short and sweet and infrequent because I'm choosing to visit more than post.

 I just hate to miss a thing!

Have a Blessed week!

Susan

 Do you have a story you'll write 'someday'?  

I want to tell you about

 a go-at-your-own-pace workshop I've been doing.

It's called The Plotting Workshop (Makes sense, right?)

I've been happy with the workshop and hope if you have ever thought about writing a novel you'll take a minute and check it out.

You can find out about it here

What Is A Plot

I will be starting a year long course called, A Novel Idea, in April.

 You can learn more about the course and it's leader, YA author Shaunta Grimes, at 

 What Is A Plot and Going Reno .

I'll be visiting these great Parties. Hope to see you there!

Pink Saturday @ How Sweet is the Sound

Share Your Cup at Have a Daily Cup of Mrs. Olson 

 Although I will be visiting

I am taking a break from posting.

See you soon!

 

Tea in the Craft Room #7 Glitter Luminaries

Visit my Christmas blog and check out 

Tea in the Craft Room # 7 Glitter Luminaries

Tea in the Craft Room - Merry Christmas Banner

 Join me at my Christmas blog
for Tea in the Craft Room.

Tea in the Craft Room - Merry Christmas Banner

Happy Thanksgivings!

Wishing you a day of peace and plenty.

Susan

Visit me at my Christmas blog
Susie's Christmas Cottage 

Memoirs of an Eclectic Shorebird:Thanksgiving Joy. Mid 1960s.

Thanksgiving. Mid 1960s. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and March of the Wooden Soldiers has been watched.The high school homecoming game has been played and lost. Dinner has been eaten, toddlers at the children's table, older children around the coffee table. It doesn't take much urging to convince a couple of the older cousins to take us youngsters down to the high school fields so we can examine the smoldering remnants of last night's homecoming bonfire.

Oh the glamour of older cousins with their peace signs and long hair, fringed jackets and flannel shirts, love beads and bell bottom blue jeans. We skip along behind our slim hipped and hip teen cousins like country mice following the Pied Piper.   Occasionally we  stop and collect acorns or a very fine pine cone, which our older cousins dutifully admire. Impossibly kind, these cousins are worthy of our devotion. We worship them just slightly less than Santa Claus and Superman.

 In our neighborhood gaudy mums and pumpkins brighten the porches.  Curbside, leaves are heaped in piles waiting to be burned. (When I think of Autumn and childhood I see old men in plaid wool coats and winter hats with ear flaps standing guard over a smoldering pile of leaves.) The leaf piles are huge to us children. We leap into the mounds of orange,red, and rust. We wade through knee deep streams of autumn color releasing the scent of leaf mold into the cold air.

 Back at the house we pour in, red cheeked and sweating in our heavy winter coats. We enter our little yellow cottage, the one my father built, on a wave of fresh air tinged with the scent of wood smoke, flooding the room with high pitched chatter, all talking at once.

While we are gone the dishes have been done, and four generations of relatives are crammed around the kitchen table. They squeeze in tight to make room for  neighbors and more relatives who arrive for dessert.

 There are pumpkin and mince pies. These are homemade pies. They are heavy homely pies, the edges pressed down with the tines of the fork the way they have always been made in our family.

  My little brothers are so proud to have helped they describe in excruciating detail  scraping the inside of the pumpkin, carrying of the 'pumpkin guts' out to the compost. They eat two pieces of pie apiece. I have been wishing for fancy bakery pies, ones with perfect crimped crusts that are carried home in  boxes tied with red and white string.

 I think back to the day the pies were baked. Sun streamed through yellow and white gingham kitchen curtains .  A Del Shannon song was playing on white Bakelite radio on the counter. My beautiful mother, in pin curls and penny loafers,  sang along as she dumped the pot of cooked pumpkin into her big yellow mixing bowl. My brothers climbed onto the counter. They were still for the moment and quiet, paying rapt attention to the pie making process.

I look at our homemade pies. In retrospect, the store bought version seem meager and anemic. My dad takes a bite of pumpkin pie and declares it the best ever made. I think so too.

The day is winding down. The little ones are growing cranky. Grand parents and great grandparents are ready to leave. My brothers and the other boys, who have been well behaved all day, are getting rambunctious.

  My mother settles us at the coffee table with red and green construction paper, white paste, Dennison's Christmas seals,and blunt tipped scissors. It is time to make our paper chains. One link for each day from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. Each evening before bed we will tear one link from the chain until there are none left. The chains grow longer and longer.
 
Soon we are not tall enough to hold them off the ground. And then our dad  holds them high over his head and still the last links brush the ground. Christmas is never going to come, we moan. It's so far away!

 And to us the space between Thanksgiving and Christmas is very big. So much will happen between now and then. The Advent wreath must come out at church, and week after week, another candle lit.

There are hundreds of math problems, vocabulary words, and geography lessons between us and Christmas.  There will be a school recital, and a Sunday school pageant. There will be songs to learn, and verses to memorize.  The first Christmas special airing in ten days is barely a flicker of light on the horizon. Christmas is out there, in the vast reaches of time and space but it is too far to comprehend.

 We drag our paper chains into our room . We say our prayers, climb into bed. It has been a wonderful day and we don't want it to end. "Wait," we cry. "I want to tell you something."

There is nothing to say, except goodnight but we hang on to them for as long as we can.  None of us  know how fast the decades will pass and that in fifty years we will still hang on to them as long as we can, "Wait," we will tell them at the door, and on the phone. "I want to tell you something."
"Tell me in the morning," is always the reply, their promise to be with us tomorrow.

Mom and Dad loop the paper chains over the ends of the curtain rods. We drifted toward sleep, hearing their voices, soft in the other room. We fall asleep watching the paper chains  in the moonlight. They hang there in the dim light, the promise of something good.

Wishing you all a blessed and healthy
Thanksgiving.
God Bless those serving our country
and
God Bless America.

Susan 


Join me at my Christmas blog
for holiday related posts
Susie's Christmas Cottage

Link Parties

Pin Junkie Pin Party 

Pink Saturday

Welcome to the Weekend

No Rules Weekend Party @ Sincerely Paula 

 

 Prayers for the people of Paris

per·se·ver·ance

ˌpərsəˈvirəns/

noun

noun: perseverance

steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

James 1:3-4, “And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast (or perseveres) under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.”

 

Memoirs of an Eclectic Shorebird:Ghost? Story. #2

I will be the first to admit it. My family has too many ghost stories. I think it is because we notice things.

Maybe it is inherent in families of farmers, fishermen, and nature lovers; one is taught to notice things. The ripeness of berries and when to net the strawberry plants. The chatter of birds in the Spring. The way leaves turn over on their branches before a summer rain. The ripple and patterns on the water that means rip current, or fish feeding. The sound of geese flying South for the winter. (The mustiness of old ashes on the hearth on a rainy autumn afternoon.  The scent and crackle of a wood fire burning. The flicker of firelight along the base of a door.)

 I am sure the noticing things was originally a matter of survival for my family and the habit never died out. Judging by the dates on the cemetery stones they were good at it, for my ancestors lived to ripe old ages. Even the Pre-Revolutionary War ancestors, and not just the Scandinavians. 
 All of this nature and nurture distilled into our genetic make up eventually trickled down to me, a clumsy, absentminded child with bangs perpetually in her eyes. A tow-head with seven freckles and piercing blue eyes. A child with an unfortunate habit of noticing things.
This story took place near my hometown, in a small  community on a barrier island between the ocean and the bay. On the west side of the bay is one of the last great wildernesses; the Pine Barrens.When summer ended and the tourist and summer people went home they took with them the long soft glow of summer evenings and the bright gaudy light of boardwalks and amusement parks. 

They took the noise, and the fun, and the warmth. We were left with Hurricane season and the fathomless ocean in front of us, a forest full of bears, the Jersey Devil, and men with guns (hunting season) behind us. Keep your eye on the ocean. Do you want a wave to take you, our mothers would yell. Stay outta the woods. Some elbow with an itchy trigger finger will mistake you for a deer. 
It was enough to make one jumpy.
This story took place during the Fall. Now let me tell you something about Fall in that place at that time. I'm talking about the late mid century. The thing is, one was surrounded by a lot of grand and immense Nature and  it was dark. Dark and creepy. 

And there were old houses, and older cemeteries backed by woods. Animals lived in those woods and come dusk they  looked to creep closer to the house and eat the freshly fallen mulberry leaves, and the corn left out for them by generous housewives, and the pumpkins lined up by the porch. And a person who had been quietly playing Barbie dolls or with her brothers trucks suddenly found herself outside in the quiet gloaming. She could sense the stillness of waiting, could feel eyes watching. A person who noticed things felt the tinge of their anxiety as they gather there in the darkening woods.

 Knowing that it is only the same deer, or opossum you've seen all summer doesn't stop that frisson of fear that tingled a persons' spine. It was dark, and unseen eyes were watching. Time to go inside. 
I had a personal best of 3.5 seconds from back yard to back door in such circumstances.

So here we had a family full of People Who Notice Things living on the fringe of a dark, creepy woodland where the trees moan and sing in the wind at night.  Did I mention that? Pine trees sing! Look it up. They the sing in the cold dark night. 

On a cold dark night with a nor'easter coming in  and the wind singing in the pines and rain lashing the windows it is easy to be frightened by creaking boards and strange shadows. No one is telling ghost stories on a night like that. We tell our ghost stories in the daylight over the tea pot. Or, we tell them at Christmas when we are all together and good will and laughter and the high one gets from a 2,000 calorie dinner keeps the heebie-jeebies away.   
This story took place on one of those ominous afternoons when darkness and storms seem to hover close by.  My grandmother told this story and the part I played in it a few weeks after it happened, surround by family.

Thanksgiving Dinner at my grandmothers! Cousins playing tag. Foot races and obstacle courses outside the big craftsman style house. Piles of vividly colored leaves to jump in and burrow under.  Skeins of geese doting the pewter sky. Uncles in the garden discussing manure and side dressing versus compost. My grandmother's sister, collectively known as the Grands, arriving in their B54 bomber size Buick. Aunts setting the table.  Pie from our apples. Cranberry sauce from cranberries grown on the home farm. Mashed potatoes and turnips the Grands planted, and grew and dug. The titter of ladies in the kitchen. White tablecloths and Blue Willow dishes. 
After, when we children were curled on blankets asleep, or watching TV like my brothers, or curled up with Bobbsey Twin  books like myself and my two older cousins  the adult settled down with coffee and to talk. 

 One of the Grands, Jannie, nudged my grandmother,"Oona, did you tell anyone about the happenings at the Paulison house? Did you tell them?"
My grandmother looked uneasy, "It wasn't worth going into. It was nothing."
"Nothing," crowed Jannie. "I liked to have fainted on the spot.Tell 'em the story Oona!"
My grandmother shrugged one shoulder. From the corner of my eye I saw my grandmother glance my way. I turned a page, feigning total immersion in my book.
"Well," she said. "You know the Paulison House. The big white house, blue shutters that I do." My grandmother and her sisters and been in service at the house in the 1920s and had cleaned for the family off and on since then.

"Windswept Cottage, they call it. Same family forever," Jannie added. "Oona and I worked there as teenagers. Straight laced. Thought Oona and I were wild, headed for Hell in a hand basket," She snorted. 
"They must have been straight laced if they thought  plain living Baptist farm girls were wild." An uncle said.
"We had beaux,"  Jannie explained. "Go on. Tell the story."
If you knew the house, my grandmother explained, you knew that it sat between  protective sand dunes, there were beautiful flower gardens on the north and south sides, a large sand and gravel parking area on the west, as well as a wind break of trees and bushes by the road. The east side windows offered egress to a wide veranda and unobstructed ocean views.  Anyone who stepped out of the house would be observable until they rounded a corner. The drive was long, the view un-obscured.  "And you know anyone walking up or down the dunes leaves footprints. It takes at least a few minutes for the wind to wipe them away."

"But there were no foot prints." Jannie explained. "And the doors  to the veranda were locked. There should have been sand inside, or foot prints out. There should have been something."
My parents, aunts and uncles looked perplexed.
"If he were real. There should have been something." Jannie insisted. She rapped the dining room table with her finger.
"If who was real?" My dad asked.
"The man in the library," Jannie sputtered. "Aren't you listening? The ghost!"

 It was that first real cold day in October. Mrs. Paulison had called my grandmother. Can you open the house? We're coming down from the City for the weekend. She asked.
My grandmother agreed and since I was home from school and I went with her and Jannie. I played on the beach for awhile but the weather grew threatening so I came inside by the kitchen door as Jannie was pouring hot water into a Brown Betty tea pot.  My grandmother walked into the kitchen carrying a box of soft cloths and a tin of silver cleaner.
"Just in time," she said. "After tea we can polish the silver, and you, Miss Susie,  can pick some flowers for us to arrange. The only thing left then is the library. I wanted to give it a vacuum but the old gentleman is in there."

A frown creased Jannie's brow,"What old gentleman? I thought the house was empty. I didn't see anyone. I dusted in there first thing. "
My grandmother shrugged.  "I did the upstairs first, then went to do the library. I opened the door, saw the old gentleman sitting in the chair by the fire. I excused myself, and backed out of the room."
"What did he say, "Jannie asked. 
"Nothing."
 Jannie frowned. "I didn't see any sign of someone living here when I was upstairs. None of the bedrooms are in use. There were no dishes in the sink or in the drain. No car in the drive."
My grandmother twisted her hands, "Let's take a look around. Miss Susie, you stay close."

Together we walked through the house, checking door and window locks, looking in closets, and out windows. The library was as chilly as the rest of the house. The lights were off. There were no ashes in the hearth. The room smelled cold, unused, empty. Jannie examined the carpet, and rattled the french doors to the veranda. Outside the wind was picking up and clouds were piling up. Out by the road the tall pine snags were beginning to vibrate, producing a sound like high pitched moaning. With a last uneasy look around Jannie said, "Let's go do that silver."
 The silver polished in record time, we picked an armful of late blooming roses, some dusty miller, and some greens which my grandmother arranged in china vases.  I carried the smallest vase, which we sat on the table in the entry way, the largest went on the mantle in the main parlor. Jannie carried the last vase, which would be placed in the library.

My grandmother switched on a lamp, talking nervously as Jannie  carried the heavy vase into the room. I stepped inside and looked around with interest. It was a masculine room, full of bookshelves, paneling and heavy furniture. Oil paintings, mostly portraits, hung on the walls, and some mirrors hung at odd intervals.  I noticed that from certain vantage points images were reflected, or appeared to float in the air. I studied the effect while My grandmother and Grandaunt Jannie adjusted the vase on the round table in the center of the room.
"That's funny," I laughed. I pointed at the wall. "There are one too many shadows. There are three of us, and there are four shadows."

There was silence around the table as the grown ups digested the story. Several pairs of eyes looked at me. I looked up from my book and smiled. 
I had tried to explain about the shadow and the mirrors on the way home but Grandmother and Jannie had said we were not speak of that day. Ever. I thought maybe I should try again, but noted Grandmother's expression was pained and frankly, with only four weeks until Christmas I wasn't going to press my luck. *

Happy Hallowe'en!

 Susan

*Story based on a mostly real event that happened almost but not entirely unlike this.

Join me at these great parties

Pink Saturday @ How Sweet the Sound

WhatsitWednesday@ Ivy & Elephants
 

Have you seen what our friend Laura has been up to?
Check out her cool creations and see where she is published now.
Sunday View




Miss last years ghost story? Find it here.
  Ghost? Story.

Tea in the Library # 67 The Ritz

tea at the Ritz

Piccadilly circus

london

“Tea at the Ritz is the last delicious morsel of Edwardian London. The light is kind, the cakes are frivolous and the tempo is calm, confident and leisurely.”
― Helen Simpson, The London Ritz Book of Afternoon Tea

The British have an umbilical cord which has never been cut and through which tea flows constantly. It is curious to watch them in times of sudden horror, tragedy or disaster. The pulse stops apparently, and nothing can be done, and no move made, until "a nice cup of tea" is quickly made. There is no question that it brings solace and does steady the mind. What a pity all countries are not so tea-conscious. World-peace conferences would run more smoothly if "a nice cup of tea", or indeed, a samovar were available at the proper time.- Marlene Dietrich

DRESS CODE

"Reflecting the elegant nature of the hotel’s architecture The Ritz London has a dress code in different areas of the hotel as follows: Gentlemen are required to wear a jacket and tie for afternoon tea in The Palm Court and for lunch and dinner in The Ritz Restaurant and Terrace. In all other areas of the hotel (The Ritz Restaurant breakfast service, The Rivoli Bar, The Long Gallery) and The Ritz Club, smart casual attire is suitable. Please note that trainers or sportswear are not permitted in any of the hotel or Club’s restaurants or bars."

Forget-me-not cups, or elegant blue?
Which shall we choose as souvenirs?

 


For me, I should choose the elegant blue. It reminds me of  the lovely blue boxes from Tiffany's.

 The Ritz London

I am 'puttin on the Ritz' with a doily under two humble oatmeal cookies.

Although I am not at the Ritz, I  am enjoying a lovely cuppa in my forget-me-not tea cup.

Crown Dorset
Fine Bone China
Staffordshire
England

 It is nice to dream, but I am more at home having tea in the back garden, or over a book in the library, than in the rarefied sanctum of  the Palm Court.

Thank you for joining me for tea in the library.

Susan

 You can also find me at 

Susie's Christmas Cottage


Please join me at the following parties

Share Your Cup Thursday@ Have a Daily Cup of Mrs Olson

 Where my Feature of the Week is an outrageously awesome post by Anne's Attic -
 The Black Hat Society
 
 You will love the costuming and the decor at this  fabulous invitation-only tea ! I am bookmarking this as one of the Best of the Best. Thank you Anne for the great photo spread.

Last Pink Tea for October @ Rose Chintz Cottage

Friends Sharing Tea @ Bernideens Tea Time Blog

Tuesday Cuppa Tea @ Teacups and Antiques