Yesterday, one my friends shared a wedding favor from the wedding of a different friend with me. It was a set of four different teas (one bag each) and three different cookies (four of each). She told me that they seemed like such good teas that they would be a shame to waste on just a breakfast drink, so wanted to know if we could have a tea party at my place. It was so much fun!!!

So much fun, in fact, that we had two tea parties the same day. I’ve never had a tea party (like this) not even with my stuffed animals (my friend was a veteran of those). I’ve been to high tea at some kind of restaurant, which was fun. There were scones involved. But not like this at all! Because of various intersecting forces, I have all of the equipment required to throw a tea party. For seven. My friend had aquired these teas & cookies as a wedding favor from a wedding in Japan. Most of the information on the packets, then, was either in French or Japanese.

For the first tea party yesterday, I got out a smallish silver (although, it needs some major polish) teapot and a black iron tea pot. In the first, I fixed The Aromatise a la Pomme (which the packet indicates is French for “Apple Tea”) and in the second, Morning (which the packet indicated was French for “Morning Tea”. My friend had just recently given me a faux-silver tray on which we arranged the cookies: two each of Earl Grey, Wedding, and Apple flavors. I then displayed my six china tea cups for her to choose her favorite, I chose mine, and we sat to drink.

Having never thrown a tea party (and her never for animate beings), we approached it in a tea-taasting sort of manner. So we each had a cupful of one tea, then of the other, then nibbled on the cookies (which were like French-Japanese bicotti), then dipped them in the tea. It was a ton of fun discussing the subtleties in taste of each…

After that, we went thrift store shopping (for costumes for her) and then came back and broke out with all my tea pots, the two Fauchon teas left (Earl Grey and Soir), and a selection of six other teas from my collection. Including two additional EGs, so we could compare. We finished the day rather sloshily, but very happy.

I’d like to do that again.