Directions for brewing the perfect pot of tea.

Boil a pot of water. Pour it over a spoonful of tea leaves in a beautiful teapot. Then steep for 5 minutes. Pour it carefully into a china teacup. Serve it with baked biscuits and muffins along with freshly made lemon curd. It’s time for high tea.

One of my pleasures in life is having friends over for tea. It’s always a relaxing time sipping tea and doing what girls do best – share their stories. Or as we say here in Hawaii, talk story. My guest for this tea party was my friend Trudy who just returned from her travels to Europe.

Trudy brought back tea from London in a beautiful commemorative tea tin. With a wedding picture of Prince Harry and Megan on the front. It was almost like having high tea with them both. I wish that were true.

High Tea with a purpose

I purposely planned this high tea time for Trudy. I wanted to hear all about her travels this summer and I love a good travel tale.

We ate biscuits smothered with lemon curd and drank our special royal tea. I listened and imagined I was there with her. From London to Prague to Budapest to Rome and not in that order. And did I skip a few countries?  She shared many wonderful stories and lots of photos.  Another pot of tea, more biscuits and more travel stories. Where did the time go? We needed more time. There were many adventures she still hadn’t shared. We would have to get together again to hear the rest of the stories.

After several hours we found out we had more in common than our love for traveling. We both had blogs, but we weren’t blogging.  Trudy just returned from a blogging conference in Prague and it encouraged her to get active with her blog. That got me excited to get serious about my blog. We decided to meet again the following week to work on our blogs. And we continue to meet every week to encourage each other and share our challenges and triumphs with our blogs and our lives. Here’s Trudy’s blog site www.travelboomers.com

Do you have a blogging buddy that can encourage and urge you to keep blogging?

 

My love for baking

I went on a gluten-free diet several years ago. And that changed how I cooked. Especially my baking. I don’t have any gluten issues. It’s just a choice I made after researching the effects of gluten on your digestive system and overall health.  Since then I have collected and made recipes using gluten-free flours and natural unprocessed sweeteners.  It’s been fun experimenting with coconut, almond, rice, buckwheat, and tapioca flour and the list goes on. I hope you will make some of these gluten-free recipes we enjoyed at our high tea party.

Menu*

Black English Tea

Gluten Free Biscuits

Meyer Lemon Curd

Gluten-Free Blueberry Muffins

Gluten-Free Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

Fresh Raspberries and Blueberries

*Click on the links for the recipes. Thank you to the creators of these tasty recipes.