Rose and Kathleen’s grandparents and great-grandparents lived in the beautiful Ozark Mountain regions of northern Arkansas, southern Missouri and southeastern Kansas. In this very traditional part of the country, farmers raise poultry, dairy cows and pigs. More contemporary food crops include mushrooms, honey, apples and black walnuts. This lovely area of rolling hills, hardwood forests, rivers, lakes and caves is the birthplace of several famous Americans including Mark Twain, the poet Langston Hughes, musicians Johnny Cash and Scott Joplin, actors Brad Pitt, Billy Bob Thornton and Kathleen Turner, and scientist George Washington Carver, whose research on peanuts transformed American eating habits. President Harry Truman was born in Missouri, and President Bill Clinton was born in Arkansas. Our Ozark Farm Harvest tea reflects the history and culture of the area and our own memories of Gram’s cooking.
If you have never eaten the foods of this region, the tastes at first will seem perhaps a little bland, as salt and pepper are the primary flavorings used in Ozark cooking, with an occasional splash of Worcestershire sauce. Keep in mind that the original inhabitants, the Osage, Cherokee, Shawnee and Kickapoo, lived on local game, fresh water fish, nuts, berries, fruits and native legumes. The ancestors of the Osage, according to archeologists, hunted for venison, turkey, elk and turtles and gathered walnuts, acorns and wild grapes more than a thousand years ago. They also grew corn, squash, including pumpkins, and sunflower seeds and beans. Many of these original foods of the region are represented in our menu. When European settlers arrived, most were from the British isles, especially Wales, Scotland and Ireland, with an occasional German family who knew how to make sausages. These are not cultures that focus on heavily spiced foods, but they appreciate good local produce, as well as pickles and preserves, and they understand farm life and animal husbandry. We still enjoy this undecorated, earthy cuisine that we loved so much as children. Today the Ozarks are far more culturally diverse than they once were, and in fact a huge Vietnamese American religious festival, Marian Days, is held in Carthage, Missouri, every summer, while Branson, Missouri lures country music fans from all over the world.
Gram
Gram grew up in Arkansas
And started cooking for the harvesters
When she was twelve.
Back then, she had to kill and pluck the chickens,
Shuck the corn, mash the potatoes she boiled herself
And pick the blackberries for the cobbler,
Just to get the noon meal on the table.
Now she lives in a little old house
With linoleum floors,
One bathroom with a claw foot tub, and no linen closet.
But she irons her sheets and stores them away
In chests of drawers
Along with dried rose petals,
Lavender sachets tied up in little lace bags,
And pieces of cedar.
On the shelf in the bathroom
She keeps her bars of soap–
Ivory, Lava, pink and yellow ovals
Without wrappers that smell of lemon
And fresh carnations.
Gram never runs out of soap.
She has a steamer trunk too,
Filled with quilts she made herself
From old summer dresses
In red and blue cotton prints
You can’t buy anymore.
And of course she has a cedar chest
With pillow cases embroidered with daisies
And edged in tatting her sister Patsy made
Seventy years ago.
Gram is older than you could ever imagine.
She has paced herself,
And she has treasured the tools
Of her trade.
You may not be in the Ozarks when you host this tea gathering, but you can create in your own home or yard the unhurried, back-to-basics feeling that permeates life in this beautiful region. Remember nature is always in control, and the four seasons form the framework for human interactions. This tea party is designed to take place when signs of autumn first appear—cool mornings, warm afternoons, and the leaves just starting to turn in the deciduous trees. This is also harvest time when corn, pumpkins and apples are plentiful.
To set the mood, you might want to play a little instrumental fiddle or banjo music in the background as your guests arrive, or perhaps an old gospel album by the Carter Family or Johnny Cash, or even some authentic Ozark folk songs. Include fresh flowers in the tearoom, but do not over arrange them. Late summer roses and hydrangeas would be perfect. If you have any vintage tablecloths and napkins, use them, and don’t worry if they are not in pristine condition, as long as they are clean. You can also use old dishes, which do not have to match as long as they look comfortable together. And if you are fortunate enough to have any heirloom quilts, place them decoratively in the room where you will be sharing tea. Please do not add any false “country” elements such as hay bales, corn cobb pipes or bandanas. This is not a hillbilly party. This is a celebration of a simple, elegant and dignified way of life. The stars of this gathering will be your friends, the early autumn weather and the food.
Menu
Beverages:
Hot Lipton Tea
Cold Milk
Apple Cider
Ice Water
Savories:
Deviled Eggs
Pigs in Blankets
Baked Mushrooms with Corn Relish
Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwiches on Roman Meal Bread (With the crusts cut off, of course)
Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches on Wonder Bread
Individual Cups of Navy Bean Soup with Corn Bread
Sweets:
Blackberry Cobbler
Ozark Pudding (Apple and Walnut Baked Dessert)
Pumpkin Bread
Chocolate Fudge
Baked Mushrooms Stuffed with Corn Relish
Mushrooms and corn have been abundant in the Ozarks for centuries. This simple savory snack combines the best of both of these local favorites. The Corn Relish has been a staple with farm wives for decades, as it is a great way to use up all the end-of-summer corn and garden vegetables. This recipe makes quite a large batch of Corn Relish. You might want to give your guests a little jar to take home with them. For those of you with limited time, you can always purchase a jar of good Corn Relish, but making your own is a satisfying adventure.
Deviled Eggs
Chicken and eggs have always been part of the Ozark daily diet, and many farm families still have a chicken coop. For special occasions, simple boiled eggs can be transformed into Deviled Eggs, which have a visual appeal and savory charm all their own. Be sure to sprinkle a little bright orange sweet paprika on top for an especially festive presentation.
You can streamline the somewhat time-consuming process of making Deviled Eggs by boiling and peeling the eggs the day before and assembling them shortly before your tea party begins. We have learned that some people like pickle relish and onions in their Deviled Eggs, whereas the purists like their Deviled Eggs plain. Our recipe provides for both perspectives. Gram never added anything but mayonnaise, mustard, salt and pepper to her Deviled Eggs, and she never measured any of these ingredients. After all, making Deviled Eggs is not an exact science, so feel free to experiment as you wish.
Pigs in Blankets
Pigs in Blankets is the fanciful name for little sausages wrapped in pastry and baked. This tasty finger food has been popular in the Ozarks and other regions of America and Canada for decades, and some people think, mistakenly, that it was invented in 1957 when Pigs in Blankets first appeared in a Betty Crocker cookbook for children. In fact, Pigs in Blankets have been around since the 1800s or even earlier, though over time the term has referred to a variety of pastry-wrapped foods, including oysters wrapped in bacon. Some food historians surmise that sausages wrapped in pastry comprised the basic lunch for farm workers in the British Isles as far back as the 1600s.
Today’s Pigs in Blankets are often hot dogs wrapped in Pillsbury Crescent Rolls or Vienna Sausages wrapped in refrigerated biscuit dough. We will not frown if you choose to make your Pigs in Blankets this way, but our recipe offers a more traditional approach. We believe that early Ozark farm wives used pie dough and pork sausages for their Pigs in Blankets, as their ancestors in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England did before them.
Our recipe is designed so that you can assemble the Pigs in Blankets the day before you plan to serve them and then bake them the day of the party, re-warming them just before serving them. However, if you want to make Pigs in Blankets for a simpler occasion that does not require as much last-minute food preparation, you can make them all at once and serve them immediately, though you do need to give them a few minutes to cool off before popping these hot little treats into your mouth.
Navy Bean Soup
There are many versions of this American classic, but ours keeps it simple, with only a few ingredients. Navy Bean Soup with Corn Bread is truly one of life’s little joys, but it is not fast food. The beans need to be pre-soaked and then simmered for two hours or more. Then, the key to fabulous bean soup is to make it the day before you plan to eat it and let it spend the night in the refrigerator. The soup will thicken and the flavor will intensify. You will be glad you devoted two days to this little project.
Corn Bread
Corn Bread is an easy quick bread that can be whipped up in just a few minutes and popped into the oven for about 20 minutes. There are also some very good packaged Corn Bread mixes, such as Krusteaz and Marie Callender’s, which will produce good Corn Bread. Do not be ashamed to use a packaged Corn Bread mix, but we are happy to provide you with the recipe for the homemade version. If you have a cast iron skillet, you can bake and serve your Corn Bread right from the skillet.
Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwiches on Roman Meal Bread
Peanut Butter and Honey is an ethereal combination and one of America’s gifts to the world. We feature this sandwich in our Ozark Farm Harvest Tea menu.
Pimento Cheese Spread
Pimento Cheese Spread is popular in the Ozarks and throughout the American South. Note the spelling: pimento, not pimiento. This is not a spicy Southwestern or Tex-Mex pimiento chili dish with added jalapenos and cream cheese. It is a relatively mild but very tasty combination of shredded sharp cheddar cheese and chopped pimentos from a jar. These two flavors, cheddar and pimentos, form the foundation of this timeless sandwich spread. We have cranked up the taste level just a tad with the addition of small amounts of cayenne pepper and Worcestershire sauce.
Blackberry Cobbler
The Ozarks are famous for pies and cobblers of all kinds, and wild blackberries grow abundantly in the region. If you are fortunate enough to come into possession of a half gallon or so of freshly picked wild blackberries, you can create a masterpiece, which will be talked about by your grateful friends for years into the future. However, store-bought or even frozen blackberries will also make a sweet, juicy and memorable cobbler. Like the Ozark Pudding, Blackberry Cobbler is also wonderful topped with softly whipped cream.
Ozark Pudding with Whipped Cream
Ozark Pudding is old-fashioned comfort food at its most satisfying. It is also a simple concoction that can be whipped up in less than an hour. The hardest thing you have to do to make this luscious cross between a pudding and a cake is peel and cut up an apple. We suggest making it at the last minute, just before your guests arrive, so you can serve it still warm from the oven with whipped cream. If you have a colorful 10” pie plate, use it, but any old pie plate will do.
Please do not be tempted to use the squirt canisters of whipped cream from the grocery store or the little cartons of “whipped dessert topping.” (You know what we’re talking about!) Making your own whipped cream only takes a few minutes, and home-whipped cream is infinitely better than any store-bought versions. The secret to good whipped cream, we believe, is not to over-sweeten it, and to whip it just until it starts to resemble soft pillowy clouds. Real whipped cream is not very stable, however, so you will want to make it shortly before your party begins, or even after your guests have arrived.
Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin bread is a classic autumn treat that reminds us of everything we love about the season—warm sweet spices, the toasty orange color of fallen leaves, and the unique taste of sun ripened produce. While we associate pumpkins, with their gorgeous fluted round shape and vibrant orange color, with the harvest season, ironically pumpkin is one of the few vegetables that is better out of a can than scraped out of the gourd itself. This easy quick bread recipe relies on canned pumpkin and a secret ingredient—small pieces of chopped pitted dates. The dates make the bread wonderfully moist and add to its longevity, so you can bake it a day or two before you serve it.
This recipe will produce three loaves, and as you will only need one for the tea party, you can either wrap and freeze the other two to be served at Thanksgiving or Christmas, or mail them as gifts. They will survive well in the hands of the Postal Service if you wrap them carefully and return them to the disposable aluminum pans in which you baked them. Any leftovers will be fabulous for breakfast, buttered and toasted in the oven. Since this recipe creates such a large amount of batter, use the biggest mixing bowl you have.
Serve the pumpkin bread sliced on a decorative platter with butter. Or, slice the entire loaf down the center the long way, then cut into matching slices down the short side of the loaf and sandwich the matching slices with softened cream cheese.
Walnuts
You may have noticed that all four of the desserts on this menu contain walnuts, especially black walnuts if you can find them. Black walnut trees grow in the Ozarks, and walnuts are a local favorite. However, not everyone likes walnuts, and a lot of people are allergic to them. Check with your guests before you make the decision to serve four desserts that all have walnuts in them. You can substitute almonds or sunflower seeds in one or more of the desserts or simply omit the nuts altogether if you think you are likely to create walnut overload. If you decide to include walnuts in only one of the desserts, it should be the Ozark Pudding. You might include a pretty bowl of apples and whole walnuts, along with a small hammer and a nut pick, in the room where the party will be taking place for guests who just can’t get enough walnuts.
Chocolate Fudge
Fudge is a childhood delight that can still be enjoyed by adults in small pieces. There are dozens of varieties of fudge, including dark chocolate, white chocolate, brown sugar and coffee, with any number of add-ins, from cranberries for Christmas to pecans for a Southern treat. Older fudge recipes require boiling and meticulous testing with a candy thermometer. Ours does require a little boiling, but this simplified fudge recipe relies on evaporated milk, marshmallow cream and semi-sweet chocolate chips to produce a stream lined and very yummy fudge. You can add black walnuts for an authentic Ozark taste if you wish. Fudge is usually served in 1 or 2 inch squares, which we think is too large to be enjoyed with the other foods on this menu. We recommend cutting the fudge into very small pieces and displaying them on a paper doily on a small glass pedestal or on a tiered petites fours server. You might want to provide little party favor bags or boxes so your guests can take a few pieces of fudge home with them to share with family.
An Ozark Harvest Tea: Logistics (Complete Planning Guide is included with Menu/Recipes)
As we have pointed out, all of the foods on our Ozark Harvest Tea menu are simple and very basic. This tea party celebrates the elegance of ordinary, unfussy food, prepared by hand. Though nothing on this menu is difficult to make, it will take some time to get everything ready before your guests arrive. This menu can be created by a single person on a two-day schedule. This will allow the kind of attention our grandmothers paid to the small details that make an ordinary meal extraordinary.
We are providing you with a rudimentary timeline to help you manage your time so that this tea gathering can be as enjoyable for you as it will be for your guests. Remember that the gift of your time is part of the joy of this occasion. Our timeline is designed for a host or hostess who has a nine-to-five job and is prepared to devote most of the weekend to this special tea gathering, which will take place from 4-6 PM on Sunday afternoon. Before the weekend begins, we assume that you have already invited your guests, obtained the music you plan to play and purchased some gift bags, boxes, glass jars, or even paper or plastic bowls so the guests can take some of the food home with them.
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THE TEA BOOK
The Road Back to Civilization
A Brief History of Tea
Philosophy of Tea
Harmony
Humility
Respect
Creativity
Guidelines for the Host/Hostess
Gathering and Greeting
Sharing Stories
Sharing Food
Sending the Guests Home
Respect your Hostess/Host
Bring a Gift if You Wish
Practice Humility
Monitor Your Conversation
Arrive With a Grateful Attitude
Help if Help is Needed
Do Not Criticize
Leave Gracefully
Send a Thank you Note
A Checklist for Planning a Tea Party
Teas of the World and How to Make Tea
A Sampling of Teas
Herbal Teas and Tisanes
How to Make Tea
Making Iced Tea
Tea Concentrate
Brewing Tea for a Crowd
Tea Kettle
Tea Pot
Tea Cozy
Teacups
Plates
Silverware
Teacart
Tea Strainer
Tea Infuser
Three-Tiered Server
Cream Pitcher and Sugar Bowl
Cake Pedestal
Trifle Bowl
Jam Pots
Serving Dishes, Platters, and Trays
Silver Tea Set or Silver Tray
Linens
Kitchen Equipment for Food Preparation
Sandwiches and Savories
Savory Spreads and Dips
Scones and Tea Breads
Afternoon Tea and the Four Seasons
A Spring Tea
An Outdoor Summer Tea
A Winter Afternoon Tea
An Autumn Afternoon Tea
January:A Japanese New Year’s Tea
February:Valentine’s Day Tea
March:A St. Patrick’s Day Irish Tea
April:An Easter Tea
May:Mother’s day Tea
June:A Wedding Reception Tea
July:A Picnic Tea
AUGUST:A FAMILY REUNION TEA
A North American Family Reunion Tea
An Eastern Mediterranean Family Reunion Tea
A Kosher Family Reunion Tea
A Scandinavian Family Reunion Tea
September:An Ozark Farm Harvest Tea
October:A Tea to Honor Our Ancestors(Dia de los Muertos)
November:A Post Thanksgiving Tea
December: A Christmas Tea
In Defense of Fruitcake:Fruitcakes and Candied Fruit
A Chinese Dim Sum Tea
A Portuguese Tea
A Classic British Afternoon Tea
An Indian Chai Party
A California Tea
A Hawaiian Tea
An Italian Tea
An American Southern Tea
A Russian Tea
A French Afternoon Tea
A Kosher Teawith Traditional Jewish Foods
Afternoon Tea for Special Occasions
An Afternoon Tea for Children
A Tea for Our Elders
A Honey Bee Tea in the Garden
An Urban Tea on the Go
Tea for One
Afternoon Tea For a Large Group
A Vegan Tea
A Rose Tea