High Tea Birthday

For my birthday we hosted our families at a lovely morning tea. I had envisaged a relaxed and beautiful morning chatting with family over tea and scones. I envisaged the guests arriving to find a table filled with flowers, beautiful bone china tea cups, piping hot pots of tea brewing and dessert towers filled with mouth-watering delicacies.

That wasn't quite what the guests arrived to...

The table was partially set with flowers and tea cups and looked stunning.

However, the towers were empty and the kitchen was a war zone. The baby was screaming, the 2 year old was sheepishly hiding after tipping an entire tea pot of flowers and water all over the freshly laid children's table and having earlier broken a porcelain tea spoon, and the 4 year old was sulking about having to clean up the playroom for our guests. I hadn't brushed my hair, cleaned my teeth or managed to put on any jewelry.

Thankfully the guests flew into action upon arrival. G-G nursed the screaming baby and put her to sleep (the magic touch). Pop finished grilling the vegetables for the sandwiches. Nan and the Aunts stacked the dessert towers with the aforementioned delicacies (most of which they had craftily created themselves) warmed quiches and helped make the sandwiches. Someone put on the kettle and made tea. The cousins distracted the children and ran outside to play. Phew!

The table was set and we finally sat down for the most decadent High Tea! It was exactly what I had envisaged...

I loved picking the different camellia's from my garden for the table decorations and used old tea tins (now residing in the children's play kitchen) as vases. I used these tins as vases when I hosted a High Tea for my sister's baby shower over a year ago and got many compliments, so I recycled the idea. I discovered I have 6 different varieties and colours of camellia in my front garden - white, blush pink, light pink, dark pink, fuchsia, and fuschia with white spots! I am loving my winter garden. We even used the children's play teapot for a vase on the children's table.

My Mother-In-Law has a beautiful eclectic collection of fine china tea cups which looked beautiful on the table,  along with some of my sister and mine Limoges Legle tea cups, and my Grandmothers bone china teapot.

The children's table was set with the Royal Dalton cups and plates which my boys received for their Christenings and 1st Birthdays. The children all enjoyed baby-chino's, quiches, gravadlax, chocolate waffer sticks, macaroons and meringues. Not to forget the gingerbread men the boys made with their Dad the morning of (these may, or may not, have been the reason for much of the chaos when everyone arrived...).

All up it was a beautiful day. We stuffed ourselves silly and loved every moment.

So what was on the menu?

A lot of the above was made by my talented mother, sisters and mother-in-law. My husband made the house-cured gravadlax, and my creation was the sandwich.

Char-Grilled Vegetable Ciabatta with Marinated Goat Cheese and Avocado.

The ingredients:
3 Zucchini, sliced thinly
1 Jap Pumpkin, deseeded and sliced thinly
4 Red Capsicum, deseeded and sliced
3 Avocados
Goat Cheese (we used a marinated peppered balls goat cheese which was marinated in lemon and pepper).
Sourdough Ciabatta Load

The recipe:
Toss vegetables with olive oil, salt and pepper and lay on grill of BBQ. Turn after several minutes and grill for a further 3 minutes.
Slice ciabatta thinly, spread goat cheese on one slice and avocado on another.
Layer vegetables on top of goat cheese and top avocado slice. Slice in half.
Makes 14 half sandwiches.

The result:
Delicious, fresh and creamy.

I wish I had a photo to show how gorgeous these sandwiches looked but alas I do not - they were eaten too quickly! (Saved by my sister who snapped this photo).

Tune back in for my husbands Gravadlax recipe in a couple of days.

Do you enjoy entertaining? Are you ever prepared when people begin arriving?

Tea Tin Basil

After we had completed the Herb Garden Redo back in October I did not throw out the sad and woody basil plant which I had left in the original pot. In fact, those large planter boxes have sat on the balcony and now down in the garden providing many more hours of dirty fun for my boys (I am trying very hard to embrace the mess of my two little boys and the dirty fun they get up to).

Furthermore, after reading this pin on how to prune basil so you grow larger leaves, and hence a larger plant, that sad looking basil plant was starting to look like it may be worth saving. Thank you again Pinterest for some useful information which actually worked.

So I needed a new pot solution for this recovering basil plant, and with my new kitchen completed I was missing having herbs in my kitchen to just pick at when I needed a leaf or two (not that the balcony is such a trek to pick from my new basil plant - all of 15 feet from the kitchen!). I saw a couple of pins using old tea tins for herbs and kitchen plants and as I had a plethora of tea tins following an amazing High Tea Baby Sprinkle I hosted for my sister, I just had to wait for one of the tins to be empty and my desire for a small indoor basil plant would be realised.

It was the Mother's Bouquet tea that was completed first - hardly surprising in this household I suppose. And what a cute little addition to my new kitchen this tea-tin-basil-plant makes!

P.S. I highly recommend reading this basil pruning tutorial. It takes about 30 seconds and it is so worth it! I can't make pesto fast enough to keep up with my plant on the balcony! And it had taken my neglected old woody plant back to producing lots of leaves that are significantly larger than I had been getting for the last year.