Tea Time with Ingrid!

Now that the semester is winding up and I am running out of restaurants to try and money to spend, I have decided to do one of my final blogs on my Easter Sunday meal at my mom’s house.  In order to escape the rancid smell of dog feces, rotting cabbage and garbage that is the customary stench of my beautiful four-bedroom townhome, I drove to Cary to my parents’ house for a peaceful Easter dinner.

As I walked into the front yard, my morbidly obese cat and my old, fat dog greeted me as apposed to my drunk, deadbeat neighbors who I have grown so accustomed to over the past eight months.  I walked into my parents’ house, which always smells like clean laundry and flowers… as long as something isn’t cooking on the stove.

My parents and I sat down for lunch/dinner, which was at 3 pm.  My parents are German, and dinner is usually pretty early.  My mom was given a beautiful tea set some years ago and never has any reason to use it so, instead of doing the traditional ham dinner, my mom has a high English tea!

The kitchen table was covered with a white tablecloth with pink butterflies on it and the pink china tea set with a tiered centerpiece.  Each tier had a different “course” of the meal.  Super fancy.

The first tier was a plate of my mom’s famous made from scratch scones with raisins.  She had homemade clotted cream and strawberry jelly to slop on top of them.  Since scones are so dry and taste like a sugary desert of sand in your mouth, the fluffy cream and the sweet and sour jelly were muy perfecto on the English pastries.

The next tier was an assortment of finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off.  There was an egg salad sandwich with sprouts on a roll, cream cheese and pineapple on cinnamon raisin bread, chicken salad, cucumber, pimento cheese, and cream cheese with smoked salmon.  Each little sammy was even more delicious than the next.

Finally, my mom ordered a bunch of beautiful cookies from The Teet.  I only tasted the chocolate mousse ladybug, a pistachio tart, and had a penneyfour.  I really liked the penneyfour because it was so little and pretty and tasted exactly how it looked.

There was also some gross tasting, really strong authentic tea from India that was given to my dad as a gift.  I never add sweeteners to my tea or coffee, nor do I ever use creamer but this stuff was so potent that I had to do something to tone down the taste.  I used a sugar stick and a ton of creamer and it tasted less disgusting, but still not great.  

Easter dinner at the Carney residence was amazing.  The service was almost as amazing as the food, minus the occasional badgering of when I would walk the ancient dog who should really be in a wheelchair by now, or about when I am going to come home and clean my “filthy pig sty,” it was iiiiiimpecable.  Thanks, mom and dad for such an amazing Easter and for the basket of candy (not that I need it after this super foodie semester...). 

Special shout out to my brother:  You missed out, Butthead!  I know you're jealous.  Hope you enjoyed your bacon burgers with Shiara in Charlotte… Sucker.