I just received this e-mail notice from Vision Forum concerning an upcoming 'Father & Daughter Retreat' to be held in March. It's a mere $625/Father + 1 daughter....additional daughters cost $205...families "blessed with more than 3 daughters" are required to get a second room for the discounted price of $116.
The "Highlight of the entire event" is the High Tea in which Fathers and daughters dress in all their finery and are served a "High Tea" which includes the following:
"...complete with assorted fine English teas, scones, tarts, cucumber sandwiches, and pastries. Each attendee is given their very own porcelain teacup to take home as a memento of this special occasion."
Excuse me but....where's the meat..??? All these hundreds of dads are supposed to be all excited over scones and cucumber sandwiches?? And by the looks of the past attendees, they looked to be rather accustomed to a little more substantial fare than cucumber sandwiches.
Although 'tis true that parents...including Fathers especially...aren't spending enough time with their family...daughters included, I'm not sure that speakers and seminars with $1000+ price tags are necessarily the answer.
What really made me chuckle, though, is that their depiction above is the Americanized idea or version of the British High Tea. So let's just compare this to my favorite English author's cookbook, Through the Kitchen Window by Susan Hill...and her description of a British Winter High Tea:
In boots and greatcoats, mufflers and mittens, everyone has gone for a walk, except perhaps for grandmama and great-aunt, who snooze beside the fire, and the cats, stretched sleek on the hearthrug.
They have gone across the fields towards the wood. The air is damp, raw, cold, it catches the breath. Early this morning, and late tonight, comes the frost, hardening the earth.The men are carrying guns, and slung about with rabbits and pigeons. The children are tumbling and gambolling and racing in zig-zags, voices carrying on the still, chill air. Stamping of feet, blowing on fingers, beating of arms.
And now the sun sets, rose-red and blazing below the hill. Bones ache, teeth chatter, skin chaps, noses run. They are heading for home, and in the house ahead, the lamps come on in welcome, and the clock stirs, gathers itself, then chimes.
It is time for tea.
The table, laid for high tea in winter, is a rich delight. There are the plates and bowls and dishes piled high with good things, and the singing kettle and the great teapot - stand at the centre of all.This is not a genteel meal, and never at all formal, there is no dressing-up, for high tea. It as a convivial comfort, satisfying, noisy. It is a knife-and-fork, a meat tea, a proper meal...
Now this is where it really gets good! She starts enumerating the delectable items of an authentic 'High Tea'...
There are cold hams and round tongues and pressed beef, all pink, to be sliced thinly, and with them goes strong, bright mustard and horse-radish that brings tears to the eyes,and glass jars of pickles, dipped into with a silver fork, onions, small, crunchy and vinegar-sour, yellow piccallilli and dark, brown, thick sweet chutney. Red cabbage, tiny, burgundy beets.
There are salads, not the limp lettuce and bland tomatoes out-of-season, but winter salads with a bite to them, of shredded cabbage and hearty chicory, pungent celery and sharp apple dotted about with raisin.
And with the meats, or after them, come the savoury pies. A raised pork pie like an upturned hat, oozing its jelly. A cold bacon and egg pie, solid and substantial with pastry top and bottom. A sausagemeat and onion plate pie, a veal and ham, and scotch eggs in their crumbly coats, and little, flakey sausage rolls that dissolve in the mouth.
And it's not over yet....
After the meats, the sweets: the trifle in its cut glass bowl, layered red and buttery yellow and cream, fancifully set about with blobs and whorls, and here a cherry, there a strip of green angelica.
Loaves. White and brown, for spreading with butter and jam. Tea-loaves, sticky-topped malt, packed with fruit, bara brith and currant loaf, date and walnut and lardy cake and honey and apple, all brown, all moist.
Cakes. Round cakes, plain and heavy, or airy sponges, dusted with sugar, scattered with nuts, inch-deep in fondant icing. A seed cake, a dark, dark Dundee, its surface stuck around and around with toasted almonds. Victoria Sandwich, light as air, Devil's food, wickedly rich. A lemon cake, warm, pricked all over with a skewer and the holes filled with fresh lemon syrup that soaks in and runs over on to the plate.
Plates are piled with biscuits, ginger and flapjack and shortbread and Shrewsbury. Under covers, hot muffins, crumpets, griddle scones, and cinnamon toast, golden with butter.
Finally....she sums up...
High tea in winter is a meal-for-the-day, and for the cold and the dark, a meal for all ages, appetites and fancies. A meal like no other.
Whew! I'm stuffed just reading all this! Perhaps 'High Tea' in Georgia in March is just something totally different....totally opposite. Of course, I wouldn't exactly know. But I think we'll save our $1000 and instead put on straw hats, sun dresses, white shirts...and go for a romp and a picnic near the woods...with rose china, wicker hamper, and maybe even some cucumber sandwiches! (wink!)