Tea and griddling

The annual teacher appreciation lunch was a delightful event with a "High Tea" theme, good quiche, and tea trivia questions to distract us. Our students were eating in the other half of the lunchroom, being tended by parents instead of staff. We each received a lovely bouquet in a tea cup and gifts including a homemade "almond biscotti" soap that smells divine.

After brainstorming together, I spent last evening creating a thank you card for the appreciation lunch. We had agreed on a mad hatter's tea party concept, after considering some tea kettle nursery rhymes. Trouble is, the famous John Tenniel tea party illustration is an angry picture, the Wonderland story is fairly creepy, and Lewis Carroll may or may not have been a pedophile.

Load on some other images, quick!  Get the "I'm late, I'm late" pocket watch, and an embroidered tea towel. Since I usually feel I'm jumping up and down on the ball with a cup on my hat and a fish in a pot, add the Cat.Class it up with some Cassatt fine art.  Pull out the sofa to get to the storage under the stairs.  Why? That's where the Trivial Pursuit game is gathering dust.

What did you call Trivial Pursuit game wedges?  Pies? Pizza? Quiche?

In the years between "Annie Hall" and "When Harry Met Sally" we played a lot of Trivial Pursuit and ate many quiche wedges. We also ordered seafood crepes, spinach salad, or French onion soup, and drank in fern bars. We took zucchini bread and carrot cake to potlucks, and put alfalfa and mung bean sprouts in sandwiches.

Stainless steel tea ball

One of the appreciation tea trivia questions concerned "tea eggs".  I was thinking of "tea balls", but now I've got to make tea eggs!  But first I must find star anise. Why?

Because the star of this post is trivia coincidence. My son formerly known as the Woolly Mammoth and his fiance sent me The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham for blogging purposes--and maybe some good breakfasts. The Breakfast Book has a recipe for Chinese tea eggs using eggs, black tea, star anise, water, and salt. Other recipes use soy sauce and it all looks as fun as tie-eye, but edible. And I learned griddle could be a verb--We griddle, we griddled, we are griddling. I'm pretty vague on transitive verbs and present participles, so I'll leave you to ponder that over a soothing cup of tea.

It's time for a timeline:

Mary Cassatt paints"The Tea"--1880s

Pierre Bonnard paints "The Breakfast  Room"--1930-1931  

The Cat In the Hat is published--1957      
    
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour included Leigh French as the title character in "Share a Little Tea with Goldie"--19678-1969

Actress Marion Ross played character Marion Cunningham on "Happy Days", but did not write a cookbook--1974-1984  

"Annie Hall"--1977  

Trivial Pursuit game's heyday--1981-1984

The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham first published--1987        

 "When Harry Met Sally"--1989          



The fish should appreciate it didn't get griddled.

griddle (n.) 

shallow frying pan, early 13c., apparently from Anglo-French gridil, Old North French gredil, altered from Old French graille, from Latin craticula (see grill).

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder