Here I am in Southern California

Black Tartarian Cherries

We first had these cherries from the market last year, and were despondent when we went back for more the next week and they were gone. We vowed to buy all we could get our hands on this year, and can them so we could savor them over time.

Dan saw the farmer last week, and implored him to bring his cherries to market even though his harvest was very small this year. He offered to buy his whole crop, and even to go to Visalia and pick them off his trees.

Well, the farmer came through this past Saturday, and Dan came home with 15 pounds of these beauties.

After a warm afternoon of canning, I have 10 pints of these little lovelies, plus one and a half that we didn't seal. Shucks, we'll have to eat those in the next week or so.

The canned ones account for about 10 pounds. We've got another 3 pounds soaking in brandy a la Alice Waters, and the rest we ate with ice cream!

Tea Party

On Sunday, we threw a tea party for our three nieces and their chosen guests. This was a long-overdue Christmas gift from last year, but I think it was worth the wait for them. Here's the table:

(extra bonus: you get to see our new dining room chairs!)

We went all out: antique linens, fancy china, flowers, and place cards:

I spent about 12-15 hours baking, ironing, and making place cards and goody bags with recipe cards for each kid:

I am maybe, perhaps, a little bit of a first-child-overachiever. Good thing we only had six guests. The kids all dressed up; they looked gorgeous and were perfectly delightful to have as guests. I have some nice shots of them all enjoying themselves, but feel a little odd about posting photos of other people's kids.

Here's the gist of the menu:

- Cucumber/dill/cream cheese sandwiches
- Cotswold cheese and butter sandwiches
- Curried cashew and mango chicken salad sandwiches
- Individual quiches with roasted peppers and chard from the garden
- Crumpets with jam and lemon curd
- Shortbread
- Scones with clotted cream, jam, lemon curd
- Frosted brownie cakes (with monograms)
- Lemon tea loaf
- Meringue mushrooms

All the baked goods were homemade, except the crumpets. Dan was a huge help with the savories - thanks, Dan!

And many cups of Pumphrey's Blend tea from Peet's. No dumbing-down of the menu for our nieces!

Exhausting for me, but totally worth it to see how much fun the kids had and how much they enjoyed the food.