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Teatime with Emma Buttersnap
By Lindsey Tate, Linda Bronson Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 1998 Lindsey Tate
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62779-909-6
CHAPTER 1
Preparations
What I especially like about a tea party is that preparing for it is as much fun as throwing it. First you must decide who you are going to invite. You could ask just one person, maybe a few friends, or your entire class (but get permission first).
I ask Aunt Pru again about our birthday guest.
"It's a surprise party for a very special person," she says. She is better at keeping a secret than I am.
I do know that my mom and daddy and our friend Mr. Leaf are invited to the celebration. That makes five of us — not including our guest.
Suddenly I have a thought. I know who the birthday guest might be. "We're going to have tea with the queen!" I shout, as I run off to practice my curtsy.
Invitations
A written invitation is the best way to let your guests know about the tea party. Aunt Pru sends out cards with pictures of Jasmine and Lapsang Souchong on them, but I like to create my own teapot invitations. You can make them, too.
To make teapot invitations you will need:
* Construction paper
* Magic Markers or crayons
* Teapot stencil
* Scissors
You could draw flowers on your invitations for a spring tea or teddy bears for a teddy bear's picnic tea. Whatever you choose, just remember to include all the important information: the date, day, and time of the tea party, and your address and telephone number. Don't forget to let people know if the tea party is for a special occasion or if it has a theme.
"Why do tea parties usually start at four o'clock?" I ask Aunt Pru as she comes into the kitchen.
"It's a tradition," she says. "The story goes that an English lady, the Duchess of Bedford, experienced 'a sinking feeling' in the late afternoon between lunch and dinner, rather like the hungry feeling you get when you come home from school. So she started to invite a few friends over for tea and toast. Then cakes and sandwiches were added. That is why tea parties now happen between lunch and dinner."
"But we've had tea parties at breakfast," I say.
"That's true, but that's because we like them so much. It's okay to bend the rules a little now and again, Emma."
Over the centuries, tea has saved millions of lives because it forced people to boil their drinking water, and this helped to kill germs and prevent terrible diseases like cholera.
Once you've decided upon the guest list and sent out the invitations, then you will need to think up the menu. Usually teas consist of small sandwiches, scones (special types of biscuits), and little cakes. Sometimes Aunt Pru and I stick to familiar tea party food, and sometimes we don't. We've come up with lots of variations to our tea menus because it's so much fun.
Today we are making cucumber sandwiches, peanut butter and banana sandwiches (my favorite), scones with jam and cream, and a chocolate birthday cake. And of course there will be a large pot of tea.
Once we have done all our shopping for our food ingredients, Aunt Pru and I go off to buy the tea. We are lucky because there is a shop nearby that sells just tea. The owner of the shop is our friend Mr. Leaf.
Inside it smells warm and spicy. The tiny shop is filled with every type of tea you can imagine. There are three thousand different kinds of tea, and it seems as if Mr. Leaf has them all. Tea bags and tea leaves, herb teas, fruit teas, and flower teas. Teas from all over the world — China, India, Japan, Sri Lanka — with names like Russian Caravan, Chingwoo, Lapsang Souchong (like Aunt Pru's cat), and Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe. Mr. Leaf uses special words when he describes teas to customers — smoky, delicate, bitter, red liquor, fine aroma — and they just roll off his tongue. "All the way from India," he'll say sometimes to a customer, or "From the other side of the world" as he points to a country on his globe.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Teatime with Emma Buttersnap by Lindsey Tate, Linda Bronson. Copyright © 1998 Lindsey Tate. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
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