h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tomorrow afternoon is the library's annual spring tea. Last year we got a bit carried away and had a lot of food left over, so this year we're scaling back. This afternoon I'm baking two cakes rather than the four last year. My semi-famous pound cake and a chocolate amaretto with toasted almonds. I'm also going to bake scones and rock cakes tomorrow morning and am in charge of the tea sandwiches. I'm cutting back to two varieties of those. I'm also taking lemon and coconut petite fours, but I cheated and ordered them.

My children's librarian is the other baker. She's fixing up a lot of those cute little tasting plates and bowls. I think she's doing tiny trifles and a variety of canapés. And she's making Russian tea cakes.

This is the first year we won't be having live music. We're trying to stick with a 20s jazz theme as part of 20s month for the centennial. So I'm going to play some Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong in the background. That will at least be authentic.

This is also the first year that I'm not enjoying it. It's a chore to drum up any enthusiasm for some reason. I'll be glad when it's done and dusted.

And how do I get tickets for this beano?

Hey, there's nothing wrong with "a lot of food left over". That's what Sunday morning breakfast is for

Don't need a ticket, Gosho. Just show up at 2 o'clock. It's over 700 miles, so you need to be thinking about leaving Austin before long. I'll keep the porch light on for you.

Right, I'd better start off now I guess Actually it's only 520, as the crow flies, according to Google Now, where's me walking stick...

The road goes ever on and on...

Really? Where did I live that was 826 miles from Little Doodah? I thought it was SA. Maybe it was Beaumont. Nah, that should be a bit closer, not farther. Now I'm confused. Well, that's my normal state these days.

It's a long walk, no matter what the actual distance.

I want a report for .

It should include the words 'Tea was taken,' or: 'A light collation was sersved.'

Little Doodah is too big for that nonsense, but growing up, I used to read my dad's hometown newspaper, the weekly 'Sparta Expositor'.

It included columns from all the neighbourhoods, like Hickory Valley, Lost Creek, Spencer Mountain, places like that.

The correspondents reported on social events, such as:

'Mrs Billie Dodson's grandchildren, Ida May and Dilbert, visited on Saturday. They brought along their parents. Tea was taken.' (Of course, this was iced tea, and went along with a lot of cake and ice cream, we suspect.)

Do you make 'Russian tea', like they do in North Carolina?

The Russian tea cakes are also called Mexican wedding cakes in some places. And in Texas we formed them into crescents and called them sand crescents. I've never had Russian tea. I suspect it is strong and syrupy. Musk ask Solnushka.

Your paper sounds like the one in the little town where my sister lived. They would include menus for family dinners and picnics and tell everyone what games the kids played and what everyone was wearing. It was rather cool, actually.

Yeah, those papers were cool. My dad subscribed, so I'd read about it way up in Pittsburgh.

What scared me, though, were the wedding announcements. 'The bride is a graduate of XXX Junior High School'.

'Russian Tea' in western NC is sort of super-Constant Comment: lots of spices and citrus, for some reason.

Ah, sort of like chai? Would be tasty as an occasional offering. I don't think I'd want it on a regular basis.

I like the sound of your sister's paper It seems like the kind of thing people do with Twitter and blogs nowadays.

When I was a kid, Little Doodah had a daily paper, Now it's a weekly, coming out only on Fridays. And it used to have a lot of folksy stuff in it that went away when the original owner died and the paper was sold. And, when the little folksy stuff disappeared, so did a lot of the subscribers. Which is why it's now a weekly. Small town papers need those kinds of stories. Who cares if the folks who run big city papers think it's corny and inappropriate? It sells papers and fosters a sense of community that I quite frankly miss.

You know, Gosho, I think the more things change, the more they stay the same.

You know, I think you may be right

Take this conversation, for example. Our spring tea and my baking are hardly newsworthy, in the overall scheme of things. But it is nice to have a place to report such events.

If you get any of that chocolate Amaretto cake left over, bring it into the Salon

Had to google the Russian tea cake - never seen those before, never tasted.

In general, I think it's a good idea to scale it down a bit - no reason to get all stressed up about it

I'm sure your tea will be a great success, Hype!

The menu makes me feel hungry now


lil x

I collected badges as a child, and still do, to a degree. In the U.S. they are called buttons.

Anyway, Re: post 13, my favourite badge is 'Things are more like they are now than they ever used to be'!

I love it!

Enjoy your tea party. Just don't go overboard, or you may upset your English friends.

MMF

I used to collect badges too I only have a couple left from my childhood collection now. This is one of them, from my time at Saturday morning flicks http://lh3.ggpht.com/_1o_zmXJWlBM/TUXBCoNVzQI/AAAAAAAACO0/MTEnywukC0o/s1600/ABC%2BMinors.jpg That sort of off-white bit inside the maroon ring is glow-in-the-dark, and even after almost 50 years mine still does

If you shine a 1,000 watt arc lamp on it for 30 minutes and then take it down a coal mine and switch off all the lights

The tea was successful. I don't like to brag, but my children's librarian and I are getting rather good at them. Not that they are actually difficult, just labor intensive.

One of our regulars is a world traveler who is addicted to all things tea related. She has "taken tea" in dozens of locations on several continents. She has always been complimentary, but this year she made my day by telling me that my clotted cream was the closest to real Devonshire clotted cream that she has had anyplace. She demanded the recipe! She was also extremely complimentary about my scones.