My niece and co-author, Kathleen Pedulla, and I recently completed a comprehensive book on Afternoon Tea entitled Sharing Tea: The Road Back to Civilization. This creation of ours currently lives as the website: myteaplanner.com. We ask you to take a look and experience for yourselves our love and enthusiasm for every aspect of Afternoon Tea.
Our purpose in writing this book was to share our passion for the tea ceremony as it is celebrated all over the world. We want to encourage and support those who are already familiar with the tea ritual and to provide continuing education, ideas, menus and recipes. We also hope to inspire readers who may know nothing about Afternoon Tea but would like to learn about this ancient international form of hospitality.
We believe that the internet can be a medium through which creativity and friendship can be celebrated and encouraged, so we have decided to become bloggers. In our little corner of cyber space, we intend to construct a safe, cozy, warm and comfortable place, a bit like a Hobbit’s den or an ivy covered cottage where a roaring fire wards off the cold of a winter afternoon and friends share steaming cups of tea and hot buttered scones in a gentle setting where kindness and trust prevail.
Since cyber space lives everywhere, we will not be limited by earthly geography. We will share Kona coffee shortbread and dark chocolate macadamia nut truffles as the trade winds waft through the coconut palms on a secluded beach on the east shore of Oahu. We will bend our heads in humility as we enter an ancient Japanese tea house in a leafy green garden where the maples are just turning a deep sunset red. There we will sip green tea and speak in quiet voices of our exquisite joy, tinged with sweet melancholy, as summer slips into autumn.
How did Kathleen and I find these lovely places? How did we come to our knowledge of Afternoon Tea? Our lives have lead us here. We are not isolated, deluded old ladies. We have had our share of sadness, disappointment, conflict and loss. But we choose not to spend our days talking obsessively about ourselves and dwelling in darkness. Afternoon Tea, after all, is the opposite of narcissism, and our upbringings and life experiences have taught us that generous sharing is the antidote to all of life’s sorrows.
Kathleen’s education focused on Art, and she excels at photography, drawing, textiles and collage design. But it is the culinary arts that have been her life’s work. She has been a cooking school teacher, a chef, a proprietor of a Bed and Breakfast, a caterer and wedding planner. She creates Wedding and Anniversary Cakes and caters Tea Parties and other celebratory events. As her doting aunt, I believe I have the right to say that Kathleen knows everything there is to know about the wonders that can be created in the kitchen. She is also a fabulous collaborator. Many of her projects are completed in cooperation with her extensive net of like-minded culinary experts. I feel privileged to be one of her co-workers, and I loved writing Sharing Tea: The Road Back to Civilization with Kathleen.
My career focused on education. I taught English, literature, poetry and creative writing at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California, for many years. Upon my retirement, I was drafted by the Diocese of San Jose to teach adult religious education and to coordinate spiritual activities for adults in my local parish. During both of my careers, I traveled extensively and engaged in creative writing and poetry, keeping travel journals and enjoying Afternoon Tea in every culture I visited. I also loved baking, and my yearly Christmas dessert party was my humble claim to fame, if only among my friends and family members. After the deaths of our parents, for whom we were responsible, my husband Wayne and I decided to retire and move to Hawaii. Here we are in rural Oahu where we can watch the sunrise over the ocean every morning from our bed. It is never cold here, and the local food fills Wayne’s heart with happy memories of his childhood in Japan.
It is also here in Hawaii that I wrote Sharing Tea: The Road Back to Civilization with Kathleen through the magic of email. Kathleen, who lives in northern California, is responsible for many of the menus and recipes in our book while I focused on the research, background information and editing. Since we both love to write, we will continue to communicate with our readers through our blogs. Mine will be entitled “Travels and Tea,” and Kathleen’s will be named “???” Both can be accessed through our website: myteaplanner.com.
To conclude my first blog, I would like to share an essay I wrote many years ago at the request of my colleague and friend, J. Sterling Warner, co-author of the college textbook, Visions Across the Americas. Sterling asked me to write a Cause and Effect essay to help students in English writing classes to improve their critical thinking and rhetorical skills when engaging in literary analysis and expository writing. An entire generation of college students have read this essay, but I believe that its message affirming the value of authentic, culture-based foods still resonates today. I hope you will enjoy reading “Eating With Immigrants” and that you will see how it connects with the Philosophy of Tea, our guiding principle when Kathleen and I wrote Sharing Tea: The Road Back to Civilization.
Our purpose in writing this book was to share our passion for the tea ceremony as it is celebrated all over the world. We want to encourage and support those who are already familiar with the tea ritual and to provide continuing education, ideas, menus and recipes. We also hope to inspire readers who may know nothing about Afternoon Tea but would like to learn about this ancient international form of hospitality.
In our little corner of cyber space, we intend to construct a safe, cozy, warm and comfortable place, a bit like a Hobbit’s den or an ivy covered cottage where a roaring fire wards off the cold of a winter afternoon and friends share steaming cups of tea and hot buttered scones in a gentle setting where kindness and trust prevail.
We will share Kona coffee shortbread and dark chocolate macadamia nut truffles as the trade winds waft through the coconut palms on a secluded beach on the east shore of Oahu. We will bend our heads in humility as we enter an ancient Japanese tea house in a leafy green garden where the maples are just turning a deep sunset red. There we will sip green tea and speak in quiet voices of our exquisite joy, tinged with sweet melancholy, as summer slips into autumn.
How did Kathleen and I find these lovely places? How did we come to our knowledge of Afternoon Tea? Our lives have lead us here. We have had our share of sadness, disappointment, conflict and loss. But we choose not to spend our days talking obsessively about ourselves and dwelling in darkness. Afternoon Tea, after all, is the opposite of narcissism, and our upbringings and life experiences have taught us that generous sharing is the antidote to all of life’s sorrows.
Kathleen will tell you about herself in her blog, Cakes and Tea. My earlier career focused on education. I taught college English, literature, poetry and creative writing in San Jose, California, for many years. Upon my retirement, I was drafted to teach adult religious education and to coordinate spiritual activities for adults in my local parish. During both of my careers, I traveled extensively and engaged in creative writing and poetry, keeping travel journals and enjoying Afternoon Tea in every culture I visited.
Now I am here in rural Oahu where my husband Wayne and I have decided to retire again. We can watch the sunrise over the ocean every morning from our bed. It is never cold here, and the local food fills Wayne’s heart with happy memories of his childhood in Japan. We continue to travel, and I hope to share in this blog our many adventures with foods of the world, tea and the precious gifts we have received from our interactions with people of other cultures.
It is also here in Hawaii that I wrote Sharing Tea: The Road Back to Civilization with Kathleen through the convenience of email. Kathleen, who lives in northern California, is responsible for many of the menus and recipes in our book while I focused on the research, background information and editing. Since we both love to write, we will continue to communicate with our readers through our blogs. Both can be accessed through our website: myteaplanner.com.
To conclude my first blog, I would like to share an essay, “Eating with Immigrants,†which I wrote many years ago at the request of my colleague and friend, J. Sterling Warner, co-author of the college English textbook, Visions Across the Americas.  An entire generation of college students has read this essay, but I believe that its message affirming the value of authentic, culture-based foods still resonates today. This is the philosophy that inspired me and Kathleen to write Sharing Tea: The Road Back to Civilization.
Eating with Immigrants
My husband and I share a hobby—eating. Clearly this is not an unusual activity, but we like to specialize. Our interest is in eating in immigrant restaurants, more particularly, places where the owners, cooks, serving staff and customers are all first generation Americans. Why do we like immigrant restaurants? First of all, the food is good. Real people who grew up eating the food they are cooking prepare it. This is not fast food or food based on chain restaurant formulas. Immigrant food has real ingredients, like fresh ginger, fresh vegetables that didn’t come out of a plastic freezer bag and nutritious elements like tofu, bean sprouts and yogurt. Secondly, immigrant restaurants are sensible. The prices are reasonable, and there is no silly pretentiousness. Immigrants are busy people who do not have time to put on airs. Snobbishness is for people who have been in this country for at least two generations. And finally, immigrant restaurants are happy places. Immigrants have hope. They have come to America believing that their lives can be better, and they’ve brought their families along with them on the greatest, bravest and riskiest adventure of their lives. Along with a good meal, a person who eats in an immigrant restaurant can receive a refresher course in the positive effects that traditional cultures can have on life in America.
Last Saturday, while we were eating dim sum at a Chinese immigrant restaurant, my husband and I got a pleasant reminder of the importance of family values and intergenerational respect. As we were nibbling on our fresh broccoli and turnip cakes, a glance around the huge room revealed not a single person eating alone. We noticed large family groups seated together at round tables sharing food from the lazy Susan in the center. Elderly grandparents sat next to young children who refilled the old folks’ teacups without being told to do so. Even teenagers seemed unembarrassed by being seen in public with their parents. Attentive family members assisted senior citizens into and out of the restaurant. And children were allowed to be themselves. Babies got to cry and toddlers got to run around under the tables, and no one got angry if the kids spilled their noodles. And there was no “children’s menu†nonsense. Everybody ate the same food.
There was plenty of evidence of the good old-fashioned work ethic at the dim sum restaurant too. The large staff of hostesses, waiters and waitresses, busboys, women pushing the carts filled with food, cooks and cashiers worked together like bees in a hive. Although each had a specific task to perform, I noticed that they automatically helped each other out when the need arose. When the restaurant got busy, the host himself helped bus tables and set them up for the next customers. When she came to our table with our bill, the cashier noticed that we had leftover food and quickly brought us some boxes rather than waiting for our server to get them. Not one employee was goofing off or adopting a “that’s not my job attitude.†What a painful contrast with some of America’s fast food restaurants where the poorly trained help are so busy talking to each other that they can hardly be bothered to wait on a customer.
Whether we’re eating sushi and soybeans at a little Japanese place where no one speaks English, enjoying freshly made larb at our favorite Thai restaurant or snacking on kim chee and bibim bap at a Korean tofu house, we like to dine with immigrants because of the upbeat ambience. There is no room for boredom and cynicism among first generation Americans. The woman who cooks the fabulous meals at our favorite Indian restaurant always comes out of the kitchen and asks us if we are enjoying the food, and she is genuinely pleased that we are. The owner of our local taqueria calls us “amigos,†and actually means it. Immigrants have come from difficult circumstances believing that life is still worth living. They have traveled long distances, suffered culture shock and financial deprivation, and they have observed some of the truths of life along the way. Immigrants know that disrespect and self-centered egotism will not help them succeed. The traditional emphasis on community, combined with excellence in individual effort, treasured historically by both the Native Americans and the founders of the U.S. Constitution, is brought back to us through our immigrants as a reminder of what we once valued before selfishness, arrogance and greed became the norm.
I sigh with sadness when I read the predictable letters to the editor of my local newspaper blaming immigrants for such social ills as lack of affordable housing, the deterioration of our educational system and even terrorism. I wish that the people who write these letters would go down to the neighborhood Vietnamese pho shop for a simple bowl of noodles elegantly garnished with fresh basil and limes and served with courtesy and respect by a man who suffered horribly in his previous life yet loves his new country and hopes for a better life for his children. Somehow, tea tastes better among people who have left bitterness behind, and food is more nourishing eaten in community.
