A Special Tea Party

Today we had some friends to our home for a tea party, though the tea was iced. We wanted to thank our friends Bart and Phyllis for being one of my sets of friends who made soup for me when I couldn’t eat.

The menu was planned by my daughter. I made the iced teas. The first tea was decaffeinated organic green tea with rose (the Tazo rest I adore). Two bags of Tazo Rest to three bags of Bigelow organic decaffeinated green. The second pitcher was Archer Farms Earl Grey with berry and chocolate. Good stuff.

I didn’t take many photos, because in the thrill of entertaining I forgot.

My daughter wanted peanut butter crackers and so she selected Market Pantry sandwich crackers, the Ritz style, and a box of Keebler Club multigrain crackers. We saw spinach artichoke dip in Target and got inspired to make our hot spinach dip.

We bought some Market Pantry bagged frozen cut spinach (and it had a lot of big stems with no greens, a bit of a turn off).

We ended up making a platter of sandwich crackers, club crackers and rye crackers with sides of peanut butter, almond butter and cashew butter on the side. We had a big bowl of whole strawberries. A dish of unsalted almonds and cashews.

Then we made spinach dip in the crock pot and scones. Phyllis made heart shaped cupcakes with chocolate icing and my daughter made some cake in her Easy Bake Oven.

TODAY’S SPINACH HERB DIP:

In the crockpot
drizzle some cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
add garden fresh herbs. In my case, today, I used about
        2 teaspoons oregano
        5 large stalks of chives, chopped
        2 teaspoons parsley
        3 large leaves French sorrel, shredded
        3 leaves basil, shredded
        1 teaspoon dill
add 1/4 cup minced garlic

Cook about twenty minutes.
Cook spinach until thawed in microwave. Does not have to be hot. Reserve 3/4 cup of the liquid. Add spinach and liquid to crockpot. Cook at least one hour on high. Preferably 1.5 hours (more is fine, though you may have to reduce heat.)

Thirty minutes before serving, add cheese. Today I used about 4-5 ounces mozzarella, 4 ounces sharp cheddar, and 2 ounces pepper jack. It tasted sweet, so I added a tablespoon of garlic powder.

SCONES

We made two kinds of scones, adapted from the Betty Crocker 25th Anniversary Cookbook. One was honey walnut. One was blueberry.

From memory:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix together 4 tablespoons butter and 3.5 cups unbleached white flour, 4 tablespoons sugar, 3 tablespoons honey, 5 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon (?) salt. Use a pastry blender to make it the consistency of crumbs. Then add one beaten egg and four tablespoons applesauce. Add milk by the tablespoon until the dough becomes soft and dough like. I used one tablespoon vanilla silk, then 4 tablespoons heavy whipping cream, then about 3 tablespoons unsweetened soy milk and one tablespoon water.

I divided the dough in two, and added blueberries to one half and lots of honey and walnuts to the other. Turn dough out on floured surface and press to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into diamonds. Bake 10-12 minutes. My honey walnuts started to burn on the bottom after 10.