afternoon tea

Coronation Day

Happy Coronation Day!

This was a day I both hoped would never come (because to get here, first Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had to pass), and one that I have eagerly anticipated. The Coronation of King Charles III was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me (to date, anyway), and I loved reading through the detailed order of service and watching every moment. It was a beautiful ceremony, and all of the history and tradition contained within it both made a connection with the distant past as well as pointed the way to the future. The music was lovely, from “I Was Glad” and “Zadok the Priest” to “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation.” It was clear watching it that it doesn’t matter if you are crowned when you are young, as was Queen Elizabeth II, or after a lifetime of preparation like King Charles III, the truth of the saying “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” was evident, as you could see the weight of it on both of their faces in archive footage and on live TV. The Princess of Wales hit the perfect balance between tiara and headpiece (although I still wish she’d worn a full tiara), and it was lovely to see her in the robes of the Royal Victorian Order. Princess Charlotte in her matching outfit and headpiece was adorable, as was the way she kept a watchful eye and gentle hand on her little brother. The Princess Royal, as always, “stood tall among men,” riding horseback in uniform in the procession in order to serve and protect her brother the King. I loved seeing the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh front and center, in a place worthy of such hard-working, dedicated (but sometimes overlooked) royals. It was such a thrill to see St. Edward’s Crown being worn, even for a short time. Young Prince George was a splendid Page of Honor, and it was moving to see him carry his grandfather the King’s train. There is something special about seeing the crowned heads of Europe (or their representatives) gather to see an important moment for one of their peers (and often an extended family member, as well). The touching moment when Prince William, “liege man of life and limb,” paid homage to his father and king, as representative of the Royal Family, was one I will always remember. Is there anything more splendid than seeing the coordinated “hip hip hooray” of thousands of soldiers? Prince Louis was so well-behaved at the Abbey, and so animated on the balcony. Hearing “God Save the King” brought a tear to my eye. Even though I was worried the low clouds and rain would prohibit the flypast, we were treated to a grand display by the Red Arrows.

The day began for me at 3:45 a.m., but it didn’t end when the Royal Family left the balcony. I planned a tea party to celebrate this auspicious occasion:

The star of the meal was the “Coronation Quiche,” prepared according to the recipe shared by the Royal Family to be enjoyed this weekend, and especially at “Big Lunches.”

I made a few other favorite items, including chocolate chip scones, an orange-poppyseed cake, and three types of finger sandwiches: egg salad, coronation chicken (ok, turkey), and cucumber:

I dug way back into my files to find a crown we made in school for the Diamond Jubilee in 2012 for our centerpiece, and I also tried a new napkin fold called “The Crown.”

The tea of choice was Darjeeling…I don’t know if it’s actually enjoyed by King Charles III, but it’s one of my favorites! It was a lovely lunchtime celebration!

For dinner, I threw it way back to the last coronation, and made coronation chicken (again, actually turkey) served over rice:

And for dessert, what’s more English than a trifle?

I even planned a coronation-themed outfit in Animal Crossing!

This was a very special day, and one I know I’ll always remember!

Tasty Tuesday: The Top Five–Food Photos of 2022

It’s time to take a look back at 2022, starting with my favorite food photos of the year (minus desserts and drinks)!

Let’s start in February, with this beautiful quiche I made for the tea party we had to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne:

A lot of my best food photos this year occurred during our “Disney Dinners,” like these Moana’s Motunui Sliders:

Some of my other best food photos came from my adventures in German cooking, like this Bavarian Obatzda with homemade pretzels:

We had a lot of fun with The Nightmare Before Christmas cookbook…I love how colorful this “Snake and Spider Stew” was!

More German cooking…this time, a whole dinner plate featuring homemade schnitzel:

And a bonus picture, because nachos at the ballpark just photograph so well!

I took a lot of food photos this year, so stay tuned for specialized lists focusing on desserts and drinks, too!

Vivat Regina Elizabetha!

Today is an historic occasion…the 70th anniversary of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Accession. And in honor of this monumental event, we of course had a tea party, which has been in the back of mind for ten years, ever since Turkey asked me during the Diamond Jubilee what the next one would be called and if we would celebrate it!

I made a lot of our old favorites, including an orange poppyseed cake and cucumber sandwiches. I also tried a few new things, including a ham and spinach quiche and white chocolate mousse. The tea of choice was as classic as The Queen herself…Earl Grey.

This rivaled the Christmas “pick out dinner” in its deliciousness!

Vivat Regina Elizabetha…Long Live Queen Elizabeth!!!

An Anniversary Tea

When your wedding anniversary is the day before a major Royal Wedding, the only real option for celebrating is having a tea party!

The theme of our (dinner) tea party was finger sandwiches. I made six kinds…cucumber, seafood salad, gouda with garlic aioli, roltini, turkey with pineapple-pepper jelly, and roast beef with horseradish and arugula.

Our sweet treats included lime Jell-O, “Fancy Cakes,” and chocolate chip scones.

Since the bride is an American, I decided to go with what I think might be the most well-known tea in the U.S.–good old Lipton:

As I did when we celebrated Queen Elizabeth’s and Prince Philip’s anniversary last year, I used my bridal tiara for our centerpiece:

The table looked very pretty, especially with the addition of our new rainbow silverware…tonight’s celebration was the first time we used it!

This was a fun way to kick off a wedding and Royal themed weekend!

Just Desserts–A Tea Party Celebrating the Winter Olympics and the St. Louis Blues

I’ve been wanting to have a St. Louis Blues-themed tea party for a long time. I thought that would coincide nicely with the Winter Olympics, so I planned a Blue Note and winter tea party for last night. I originally had planned on it being bigger and fancier…one of the dinner “afternoon teas” we like so much. But there just wasn’t enough time, so I went with a desserts only tea party, and while it may not have been as grand as we’ve become accustomed to, it was still fun, and I even had the gold and silver table linens to complete the Olympic look!

Green tea seemed like an appropriate choice for the PyeongChang Olympics. Even though we’ve sampled many kinds of tea over the years, the children had never tried green tea before, and they really liked it!

I made three desserts in variations…sugar cookies, Rice Krispies treats, and Jell-O jigglers. I had fun using my snowflake and music note cookie cutters, and adding in blue wherever I could!

We’re sad that the Olympics are almost over, but I still have one special meal left to make, so stay tuned!

Chickadee Thursday

Today was our much-anticipated Winter Olympics/St. Louis Blues themed tea party, and Chickadee was very excited about it!

A Platinum Tea

For several years, I have been planning this Very Special Tea Party…one to celebrate the Platinum Wedding Anniversary of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. We had the tea party on November 10th, because even I’m not crazy enough to try to pull off an event like this Thanksgiving Week, but I wanted to wait until today, their actual anniversary, to share it. I think this may be the prettiest tea party we have ever had!

I wanted to go with a platinum (silver) and white theme for the table. Our china fit the bill perfectly, and I was able to find an inexpensive silver tablecloth (which I’ve wanted for a long time, anyway), to use as a runner on top of our white tablecloth. I added seven candles, (including a pretty grey-colored Yankee Candle) one for each decade of their marriage, as our centerpiece. The addition of my wedding tiara and a double strand of “pearls” completed the look.

The tea of choice was about as classic as it gets: Earl Grey.

We had four kinds of finger sandwiches: roast beef with horseradish and arugula on white bread, coronation chicken on wheat, cucumber and cream cheese on cocktail rye, and heart-shaped lobster salad on wheat:

I added in a few other savory choices: deviled eggs and Red Leicester cheese.

And the sweets. Grape Jell-O, lemon cake slices, chocolate chip scones (in the shape of a double heart!), and the pièce de résistance, a biscuit cake made with McVitie’s Digestives.

Everything was so beautiful!

It was also a delicious meal!

I don’t know if this was our “best” tea party ever (although I do think it was the loveliest), but it may have been the one that was the most meaningful to me. I am so thankful for the beautiful example of Christian marriage and faithfulness The Queen and Prince Philip have modeled and made look so effortless through all of the changes of the last 70 years.

I will leave you with two quotes: One from Prince Philip in a letter he wrote shortly after the wedding, and the second from The Queen on the occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary:

“Lilibet is the only ‘thing’ in the world which is absolutely real to me and my ambition is to weld the two of us into a new combined existence that will not only be able to withstand the shocks directed at us but will also have a positive existence for the good.” Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh

“He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim or we shall ever know.” Queen Elizabeth II

A Tea Party Celebrating Julie Andrews

All summer long, we’ve talked about having a day dedicated to a Julie Andrews’ movies marathon. And while we were talking about the movies we would watch, I realized it was the perfect opportunity to also have a tea party! Today was the big day, and it was a lot of fun!

We started with The Sound of Music. It was so easy to come up with ideas related to the movie (even without serving schnitzel with noodles or crisp apple strudel!). We had tea (of course) with jam and bread. We also had our favorite finger Jell-O… in the shapes of drops of golden sun, and snowflakes that stay on our noses and eyelashes (both Ladybug’s ideas)!

Next up were the two Eloise movies, where Julie Andrews again stars as a nanny. This one was a bit more challenging, in terms of specific ideas, although they do have afternoon tea in Eloise at the Plaza. Remember that bread I mentioned before? I decided to focus on the raisins that Eloise always orders for her turtle in the movies, and made cinnamon raisin bread.

After that was yet another Julie Andrews appearance as a nanny in Mary Poppins. We had “crumpets” (fine, English muffins), and of course a spoonful of sugar!

And finally, we ended our marathon with the two Princess Diaries movies, where Julie Andrews makes a rare appearance as something other than a nanny…instead, she’s Queen of Genovia! Of course we had to have the Genovian specialty, pears, (which also served as part of the table’s centerpiece), and string cheese!

To round out our tea party, we went back to where we started, with The Sound of Music, and our favorite things. Orange poppyseed cake, chocolate chip cookies, cheese straws, roltini, and cucumber sandwiches were all requested.

The table looked very nice, too!

This was an especially fun tea party to plan, and may have been my most creative one yet! I already have plans for another afternoon tea in a few months…stay tuned!

Happy and Glorious

Today was the 90th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Of course we marked the occasion with a  tea party!

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We went with a dinnertime party again, which included four kinds of finger sandwiches (cucumber, lobster salad, gouda, and Volpi Rotola, a nice local touch), cheese straws, grape Jell-O, a lemon-lime pound cake, grapes, and everyone’s favorite chocolate chip scones. We also enjoyed one of my favorite teas, Darjeeling.

The table was decorated with yellow carnations and purple tea lights:

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Long may she reign!

Summer Fun 2015

Now that everyone is back in school, Labor Day has come and gone, all of our regular activities have started up again, and Ryan’s sabbatical is over, I guess summer has really ended. But what a summer it has been!

We kicked off our summer at the end of May by going to the Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Turkey played in his sixth season of parks and rec baseball…or tried to. We had so much rain in the first half of the summer (including a tropical depression that made it to the St. Louis area), that almost half of his games were cancelled, which was a huge disappointment.

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We visited the St, Louis Zoo to see Kali, the zoo’s new polar bear. We were impressed not only with the bear, but with the new exhibit, Polar Bear Point.

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The four oldest children attended a week-long choir camp at one of our sister congregations in the city of St. Louis. They had a great time learning about music, got to go on a few field trips, and decided that they want to join the Kantorei at Hope. Chickadee had a fun time that week having me all to herself!

Tim Horton’s finally opened a store in St. Louis, and we were there on opening day! (This was also the week that Ryan’s sabbatical began!)

This summer in school, we learned about Illinois state history. We went to Cahokia Mounds on the first of our summer school field trips. We’ve been there several times, but there is always something new to learn!

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July was the busiest month of the summer. We started with our traditional, Markel family Fourth of July celebration, which is always lots of fun.

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Bunny went to Camp Wartburg for a week of theatre camp. We missed her at home, but she had a great time!

The week after she got home, Bunny celebrated her 11th birthday. The celebration included a trip to the spray park and a bunny cake, of course!

A few days after that, we left on our first-ever Markel family summer vacation/road trip. We visited Bowling Green, KY, Atlanta, GA, and our main destination of Charleston, SC. Even though there were a few bumps along the way, it was more fun than I could have imagined, and we covered all the vacation bases–family, food, baseball, history, architecture, and the beach!

Back home, the girls and I went with Grandma to American Girl Night at Busch Stadium.

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We also drove to Kaskaskia, IL, to see the location of the first Illinois state capital and the Liberty Bell of the West.

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August saw a bit more road-tripping. First, a drive to Vandalia, IL, to tour the oldest existing Capitol Building in Illinois.

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We also drove to Springfield, IL, to visit the Lincoln Home, the Old State Capitol, and the current Capitol Building, as well as a few other locations.

Moose went back to school…he’s in the fourth grade this year! Still not ready to say goodbye to summer, though…

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Turkey, Bunny, and Ladybug also went back to school. Since Ryan was still on sabbatical, though, I still wasn’t convinced that summer was done.

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We had a fun time taking Little Luther with us on all of our travels!

Ryan and I even found time to build not one, but two Lego modular buildings!

Moose got to miss a day of school for our field trip to The Magic House, where we learned what life is like in China, and did a lot of other fun things, too.

That same day (and the day after), we also drove down to Carbondale for a college women’s volleyball tournament.

And just last week, we celebrated the historic reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with a tea party!

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We traveled this summer…a lot. We visited not only spray parks, but pools and the beach, as well.

Most of all, though, we spent a ton of time together as a family, creating memories that I hope will last several lifetimes! It was a more amazing summer than I could have imagined, and I’ll never forget it!