Totally Tea Time

It started innocently enough, a call from my editor Andrea, “The Blakemere company is doing an Afternoon tea for the holiday, would you like to go?” Andrea knows my weakness is English Afternoon Tea so the question was not really needed. Although I was not personally acquainted with the Blakemere company, if Andrea was inviting I was going. I justified this holiday eating extravagance as a work event since our staff photographer Brianna was coming too. It is most important for the success of Durham Magazine that the three of us get together at least a couple of times a year and our best thinking happens over tea.

The Blakemere is the business of Devon U.K. native Amanda Fisher who in 2011 started producing real Devonshire clotted cream in Chapel Hill along with lovey jams, curds, scones and yummy English pastries and cakes. Amanda produces her goods out of La Residence restaurant so that is where I met up with my friends, ‘er… I mean work colleagues for our Tea, oh I mean meeting.

Anyone who has read this blog more than ten times knows that Tea is my favorite meal, but also that it is so fattening I have to limit myself to it just a couple of teas a year. Unfortunately most Teas seem to come around Christmas, when all other goody tasting, naughty eating, diet busting gorging goes on.

I planned my whole day around this celebration. I got up a little later since I did not have to drive anyone to school. I spent the morning prepping the next Christmas party I am throwing tomorrow. I ate an egg in the late morning as the only other food I was going to allow myself outside of the Tea. In my mind I felt like I could justify all that I would eat if I considered it almost all my meals, save an egg, rolled into one.

Just after noon I started to feel a little hungry so I decided to get dressed up in my tea party clothes, go get my nails done, which means I could not even touch food and stop by the needlepoint store so I could stitch a little away from food. That part of the plan worked well. Finally 3:00 came and I met my friends at a cozy table by the fire at La Residence.

My editor Andrea had met Amanda before, perhaps for a story that was in Chapel Hill Magazine or at a previous Tea she had brought her grandmother to, whichever it meant that we had the most gracious of service from the owner of the Blakemere.

Amanda served us a plate of lovely tea sandwiches with out first pots of tea. Bri is having an issue with eating pork these days, not because she is pregnant, but due to something she got from a tick bite, so Amanda gladly substituted the ham with Cumberland sauce puff for another sandwich. There is nothing more British or satisfying than an egg cress finger or a coronation chicken when you have not eaten much all day. I don’t remember if there was any conversation during that first plate since I was savoring the savories.

Once my blood sugar levels had returned to normal I was able to slow down the pace and enjoy the company of my two young friends. We caught up on all the goings on of work and our lives just as the best part of Afternoon tea arrived, the scones three kinds of homemade jam a lemon curd and the star of the show, the homemade clotted cream. Nothing disappointed, in fact the scones were outstanding, having just been baked the hour before.

If I were a smart woman I would have stopped eating right there and then, but smart is not my thing. So we continued with the dessert portion of the tea, the cakes, tarts and sticky toffee pudding. In my mind the scones are a dessert, but the English insist it is just a precursor to the sweets. Everything sugary and sweet was fantastic, but the sticky toffee pudding was the real bomb.

After photos and hugs the best work meeting of my year was over and I had to get back to reality… Time to walk off the day’s “meal.” The only problem is there are not enough hours in this or the next three days to undo the damage that has been done, but isn’t that what January is for?