Breakfasts and Teas, Paul Pierce [best reads txt] 📗

A pretty idea is a tulip breakfast. The centerpiece is a large basket filled with tulips of different colors. A pretty course is strawberries served in real tulips lying on fancy plates with the stems tied with narrow ribbon the same shade as the tulip. The ice cream is served in shape of a tulip, and the salad is in a cup of green tissue paper imitating four tulip leaves. This is the plan for finding places. The name cards are decorated with tiny landscapes. On the back of the card is written the title of a song and the guest finds her own name in the title. For example a guest named Mamie will find her place by the words "Mamie, Come Kiss Your Honey Boy," one named Alice will find hers "Oh, Don't You Remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt;" Mollie in "Do You Love Me, Mollie Darling," etc. The menu is:

Fruit Cup (Strawberries, Oranges, White Grapes with Whipped Cream)

Bouillon, Wafers, Radishes

Escalloped Fish, Wafers, Pickles

Veal Loaf, Whipped Potatoes, Green Peas

Hot Rolls, Pickles, Sherbet

Fruit Salad, Wafers

Ice Cream in Shape of Tulips, Strawberries Served in Real Tulips

White Cake, Bonbons

Coffee

May the juice of the grape enliven each soul,
And good humor preside at the head of each bowl.

Nothing could be prettier nor more appropriate for September than a grape breakfast. If possible, have the design of the lunch cloth in grapes, and use a pyramid of purple and white grapes for the center of the table. Lay perfect bunches of grapes tied with lavender ribbon on the cloth for decoration. Serve grapes in some fashion with each course, single, in tiny bunches, or the leaves decorating the plates. Mold gelatine in a grape mold and color with grape juice. Use white grapes for the salad and grape juice to drink. Serve grape jelly with the meat course.

Have the table of honor a round table with a large round basket of white flowers and everything corresponding in white. Use roses, carnations or any white flower you choose. Have oblong tables radiating from the center table with place for four on each side and two at the outer ends. This leaves no guest seated with her back to the honor table. Have the oblong tables decorated in pink. Have name cards with carnations thrust through the corner, at each plate. Make the breakfast a daylight affair, unless the day is a dark one.

Serve chopped fresh sweet cherries sweetened and with a little rum or white wine poured over them; let stand for several hours in the refrigerator and serve in stem glasses. Chicken croquettes molded in form of small chickens, or broiled chicken with water cress; creamed potatoes, sliced cucumbers, hot rolls, spiced peaches served in champagne glasses; whole tomatoes stuffed with cooked cauliflower and nuts set on branch of cherry or strawberry leaves; cheese sandwiches made very thin; ice cream molded in form of strawberries, small cakes frosted, (place half of a large strawberry on top of each piece of cake before serving).

A breakfast al fresco is just the thing to entertain a party of young girls. Have the tables on the porch. At each plate have a cluster of flowers answering a conundrum. Give each girl a card containing the conundrum and ask her to find her place at the table by the flower answering the questions. These questions will not be hard for a hostess to arrange and will of course depend on the flowers she can secure. Here are a few sample ones given at a recent breakfast: Who will attend our next entertainment? Phlox. What happened when Gladys lost her hat in the lake? A yellow rose (a yell arose). What paper gives the most help in decoration? Justicia (just tissue). What will the Far North do for you? Freesia. For what hour were you invited? Four o'clock. What is the handsomest woman in the world? American Beauty. Use pink and green for the color scheme and add a little touch of these two colors to everything served. Tie the skewers of the chops with pink and green ribbons and have the ice cream one layer of pistachio and one of strawberry.

"A cup she designates as mine
With motion of her dainty finger;
The kettle boils—oh! drink divine,
In memory shall thy fragrance linger!"

Although indebted to England for the afternoon tea, it is a very informal affair across the water. It doubtless originated in suburban homes, where during the hunting and holiday seasons, large and merry house-parties are entertained for weeks together. Returning late from driving or field sports the tired guests require some light refreshment before making their toilets for the evening dinner. The English hostess very sensibly meets this claim upon her hospitality by serving tea and biscuit in library or drawing-room.

From this small beginning comes the American "Five O'Clock," one of the prettiest of all social functions, and still smiled upon by Dame Fashion as a favorite method of entertaining. Decorative in character, it gives opportunity to display the treasures of porcelain, glass, silver, embroidered napery and all the lovely table-appointments that everywhere delight the heart of woman. More exquisite than ever before are the little tea-tables—a succession of crescent shaped shelves, rising one above the other, two, three or four in number, as the taste inclines. Upon these, resting on cobwebs of linen or lace, are placed the priceless cups, tiny spoons, graceful caddy and all other articles necessary to the service. The silver caddy is now a thing of sentiment as well as use—one recently bestowed as a bridal gift bearing engraved upon it this little verse:

"We sit and sip—the time flies fast,
My cup needs filling,—project clever!
She comes and I grown bold at last
Say 'Darling, make my tea forever!'"

In the future of married life, how sweet this reminder of the past, when all the days were golden in the light of love, youth and hope! Another couplet pretty and suggestive is found in

"A cup and a welcome for everyone,
And a corner for you and me."

Amid flowers and softly shaded lights sits the gracious woman who pours the liquid gold into the fragile cups, dispensing meanwhile, smiles and the bright charming small talk that is so necessary to the success of these occasions. A wise hostess selects for this important position the most brilliant, tactful woman within her circle of friends. The menu, although by no means regulated on the English house-party plan, should consist of trifles—sandwiches, wafers, fancy cakes, ices, and possibly a salad. Foreigners understand the value of the simple feast which makes frequent entertaining possible and a delight rather than a burden. In America the menu, decorations, etc., grow more and more elaborate from the ambition of each successive hostess to out-do her neighbor, until the economy and beauty of simplicity is irretrievably lost in the greater expense, fatigue and crush of a more pretentious function.

At the afternoon tea guests may come and go in street toilet, with or without a carriage in accordance with preference and pocketbook. However elegant the appointments and surroundings of this special function, the progressive hostess must remember that her culture will be judged by the quality of the beverage she serves. It is an age of luxury and refined taste in palate, as in other things, and tea is no longer tea, unless of a high grade and properly brewed. The woman who trusts her domestic affairs to a housekeeper, or in the event of attending to them herself, depends wholly for the excellence of an article upon the price she pays, is a very mistaken one. Without informing herself she may very naturally conclude that Russian or Caravan tea is cultivated, buds and blossoms in the land of the Czar, until later on, when her ignorance meets a downfall in some very embarrassing way.

The high-class, fancy teas of China are prepared by special manipulation and for the use of wealthy families in the Celestial Empire and are therefore never exported to other countries. Russian tea-merchants, recognizing this, send shrewd buyers across the desert into China just at the season to secure the choicest pickings for future consumption by the nobility of their own country. Of late years the "Five O'Clocks" and consequent craze for fine teas in America has tempted them to obtain a small quantity above the requirements of their titled patrons in Russia and this they export to the United States. If genuine, the name Russia or Caravan tea signifies the choicest and most expensive grade procurable the world over. It will be remembered that among the many gifts bestowed when in this country by its recent guest, Li Hung Chang, were beautifully ornamented boxes and packages of this delicately flavored and fragrant tea. The high class grades from India and Ceylon, although not as costly as the Russian, may be used by the hostess of the modern "Five O'Clock" without risk to her reputation as a woman of culture. She will consent, however,

"That tea boiled,
Is tea spoiled,"

and avail herself of the pretty and convenient silver-ball, or the closely covered pot or cups in which these rare teas should never brew over three minutes. For the famous tea service of China and Japan, tiny covered cups are always presented.

The American hostess will regret when too late, the many advantages of the afternoon tea, alas! foolishly sacrificed upon the altar of her vanity to excel in the extravagance of hospitality. Even now experience teaches that "a tea" means anything from its original intention of informal, pleasant social intercourse with light refreshments, to the function which includes hundreds of guests, who are entertained at a banquet presenting the most expensive achievements of florist and caterer. In repudiation of this is the strict code of etiquette requiring that "an invitation be worded to indicate truthfully the exact character of the hospitality it extends. Courtesy to guests