Of parties and picnics

A couple weeks ago, my Food Network Magazine had a wonderful insert: 50 recipes for different tea sandwiches! http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes-and-cooking/50-tea-sandwiches/index.html How fun! I wanted to try/eat them all, and so I needed an excuse for a tea party. Enter this month's AMAZING issue of Martha Stewart Living. Inside was a beautiful craft for a Mother's Day card. (See here: http://www.marthastewart.com/how-to/pop-up-card-for-mothers-day?comments_page=1)

So I thought, why not have a small tea party with some of my high school friends and make Mother's Day cards?  Also, Abe and I have been discussing family traditions, and we thought it would be fun to do a yearly tea party with Lydia. As the party approached, Abe was almost as excited as I was for Lydia's first tea party.

Side note: we had her first tea party on the day of the royal wedding. It was a coincidence, but a very happy one at that. =)

Since this was my first time hosting a tea party, I learned many things.

1) Tea sandwiches take a while to make! I was totally duped by the pamphlet. Each recipe is approximately 2.5 sentences long and leaves the reader with the impression that assembling tea sandwiches is a snap. I beg to differ. By the time the tea party started, I was sweating it up in the kitchen with nary a sandwich in sight. I was caught between boiling eggs, blanching asparagus, mashing up lemon parsley butter, cutting grape tomatoes, and throwing watercress everywhere. The scene was a disaster, and if Abe hadn't come to the rescue, we would never have eaten. As it was, we ended up starting almost an hour late--at which point we realized we had totally forgotten the tea part of our tea party. So at our tea party, everyone just drank water until we had some water heated up for tea. Note for future parties: start working on the sandwiches more than half an hour before the party starts!

2) Narrow down the sandwich selection. I wanted to try all of the sandwiches, and so my final list consisted of the following: Cucumber, Watercress, Tomato Cheddar, Curried Egg Salad, Smoked Salmon and Cucumber, Asparagus and Egg, Ricotta and Marmalade, Cream Cheese and Strawberries, and Nutella with Raspberry Jam. In the end, I had to cut down that list a lot or we never would have eaten. Seriously, it was just too crazy trying to make all of those in half an hour. Next year we'll streamline.

3) Not to be sacrilegious, but Martha Stewart tends to skip steps in some of her recipes and crafts. I'm sure this is just because she is so busy and talented--she just figures everyone can read between the lines and figure out how to make a pop up origami bouquet of flowers on their own, but some of us can't. For future parties, I am going to give the crafts a test drive first. Or at least pick a simpler craft.

4) The leftovers are perfect for a picnic! The next day, (conveniently May Day), Abe and I took Lydia for a picnic by the lake. The weather turned cold and windy just in time for our arrival, so as we were entering the lakefront, crowds of people were leaving. That meant we got our favorite picnic table right by the Wilmette beach, conveniently vacated in time for our arrival. Abe dressed Lydia up like a little hippie for our picnic, and she seemed to enjoy herself (or at least slept so soundly through the whole picnic that we had no reason to believe she wasn't enjoying herself).

5) I need to take more pictures. Abe took some of the tea party, but I am too lazy to get up and post them on the blog right now. Lydia is asleep next to me, and I just know as soon as I make a move, she will wake up. So I will post more pictures later. Until then, Lydia's first tea party and May Day picnic will be commemorated by this picture-less post.