How To Crash A Tea Party, and Other Stories

How to Crash a Tea Party:
This one's easy.
1. Find a local tea party in the St. John's Tely GoGuide (or other local publication) where the invitation is ambiguous
2. Walk in like there's no reason you shouldn't be there
3. Sit
4. Sip
5. Make polite conversation (this may include small lies to justify your presence)
6. Excuse yourself and leave.
No harm no foul.

Other stories:
In my mind I've already established that I would be a horrible mother and a wonderful grandmother, regardless of the fact that I don't like children. There are, however, many different kinds of grandmothers that I would not be.

1. I would not be the kind of grandmother that babysits. Children run amok. I do not run amok. If my life was more 'amok' and less 'a muck' perhaps I would be that kind of grandmother.

I would be the kind of grandmother that drops off cookies, like the shortbread ones I made for my dad last week. Lots of real dairy, lots of sugar, and lots of bleached flour. Recipe from The Joy of Baking that involves chilling the dough twice. Oh, and some cornstarch to give it that crumbly texture (turns out cake flour is just all-purpose flour with cornstarch added).

2. I would not be the kind of grandmother that comes for holidays. Christmas baking is meant to be done without children around. Mothers bake with their children. Grandmothers bake FOR children. Perhaps if I could stand the thought of a child running amok in the kitchen I would be that kind of grandmother.

I would be the kind of Grandmother that lives near enough to drop off baked goods, and, when on vacation to warm places for extended periods of time, near enough to ship packages of goods.

3. I would never knit. Booties, gloves, socks, blankets. Oh, and flouncy dresses. No sewing flouncy dresses either. Perhaps if these dresses were loved as much by the children as the people who make them and think it's fun to dress up the youngsters like dolls I would be this kind of grandmother.

I would bring over my micro-fibre sweater to keep the little one warm when they're sick, though. No use of them being itchy in wool. I would also bring home-made chicken noodle pho to cure what ails them.

4. I would not be the kind of grandmother that plays bridge. Instead I would lie and say that my ride was coming. "Oh, I think I see him! Now HE'S a good bridge player, but it doesn't seem like he wants to play today. Well, I best be off!" Perhaps if I were not a compulsive liar I would be that kind of grandmother.

5. I would not be the kind of grandmother that volunteers at church. This is all well and good, but St. Mary's Anglican Church Women have more than enough members for a rowdy round of bridge. Perhaps if their numbers were dwindling and the world needed more tinned pineapple lime whipped cream jello pudding cake I would be that kind of grandmother.

I would probably volunteer for...well, maybe a book club (is that volunteering?), and only if they read books like "Galore" and not "The Bishop's Man".

6. Most importantly, I would not be the kind of grandmother who makes whipped cream jello pudding cake. Canned pineapple and mandarin oranges were never meant to wobble. This also means I will never fit in at grandmotherly functions like tea parties, dessert parties, bridge games and bake sales in 1) Newfoundland, 2) Small-town Ontario, and 3) Saskatchewan. Inconveniently, all the places that my family calls home. Ah, cultural heritage.

I would be the kind of grandmother that made milk-free, soy-free, sometimes gluten-free, refined sugar-free desserts. Rarely the same ones twice, with the occasional buttercream cupcake thrown in to balance the cosmic scale. Only real butter when butter is called-for. Local honey and molasses, farm-fresh organic eggs.

I say most importantly because these are the things I learned about myself today while walking off two plates of cakes. Not cake. Cakes.

I call it research for my dad's party on Sunday for which I'm helping with the food. I heard about a 'dessert party' in a church basement. Didn't occur to me that it was happening at 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon and this was odd. $10 going to a good cause. Didn't occur to me that I would probably be the youngest person there by a good 25 years. Didn't really matter. There were even supposed to be diabetic desserts, which was interesting because xylitol is very popular here in Newfoundland, and not popular in Montreal. So would the diabetic desserts be sucralose, aspartame, stevia, xylitol, or unrefined sugars like honey, maple syrups and molasses or just lower amounts of regular sugar? The last four are not really diabetic-friendly, but they're better than lots of refined white crystals. I mostly just wanted to see what kinds of desserts would be brought to a Newfoundland dessert party. What does that even mean??

So I set off in search of a Church basement and dessert.

An hour and a half later, I was in at a tea party full of lovely ladies with big plates of puddings, squares and custards. "We must look like pigs!" said the woman I sat next to, who had a plate piled to the rafters with confections. "Well, I will too, don't worry."

There were two long tables full of options. I've never seen so much trifle and custard. Everything was topped with whipped cream, or mixed with whipped cream, or came with a bowl of whipped cream on the side. Some ladies served coffee and tea (with cream), but the desserts were self-serve and everyone was encouraged to go for seconds. Heaps and heaps of dishes. Pecan pie, partridgeberry pie, blueberry buckle, banana cake with butter cream frosting, some kind of oreo roll, cheesecakes, rum pound cakes, cough syrupy date squares. Who knows what was dream whip and what was whipped cream? Or what was butter and what was margarine? The pineapples in the fruit salad came from a can, which was discouraging, but the melons were freshly cut. Diabetic desserts meant everything from fat-free yogurt mixed with honey and lime (what is it with lime??), to dry slices of banana bread and some kind of whipped cream-topped pineapple apple cake (again, pineapple! Again, whipped cream!).

Then the whipped cream jello pudding cakes. Green ones, pink ones, orange ones, yellow ones. I've known about these things forever. My dad makes a pineapple lime one every year for Christmas, though 50% of our household won't eat it, and another 25% doesn't exactly rave about it. It's the only time dream whip is used in our house, and for that reason, packages and packages of the stuff sit at the back of the cupboard until the next Christmas when my dad forgets it's there and goes and buys more. It's tradition, though (both the over-buying and the making), which was proven to me when my father inherited his mother's cookbook, which was a compilation of recipes "published" by all the women at her United Church (surprise! Not Anglican) in rural Ontario. All those recipes included tins of things, tons of fake cream, evaporated milk powder, etc. It was the depression, after all. Things have changed a little since those times, though, and it's a little bit easier to get real milk and fresh pineapples. As my Grandmother adapted to circumstances, so must we.

On my mother's Saskatchewan side, jello pudding was historically not cream-based. It came mixed with a can of fruit in juice or syrup, though, and was served for special occasions and barbecues. My revolutionary mother, however, had the thought to add fresh sliced banana. Or maybe that was her mother's idea? While most of the recipes from my dad's mother's cookbook were represented at my St. Mary's Anglican Church Women tea party in the form of desserts whose names ended with "surprise", my mothers' heritage was somewhat neglected. Sure, the cans of mixed fruit were there, but always accompanied by custards and creams. No simple frosted chocolate cakes. No warm chocolate pudding cake. Apparently Newfoundland church ladies are not chocolate fans? The only chocolate cake-type thing, in fact, was in a huge trifle-like concoction of maraschino cherries and tons of flavour-less whipped cream.

Tea and plates upon plates of dessert foreshadow the playing of bridge in Newfoundland, so I found out. I was not pre-informed of this, either. I had planned to come, eat, leave. Stay anonymous. Kind of stuck out like a sore thumb as it was, so when the nice lady next to me asked if I was staying for bridge, I answered with the explanation given in the "4th kind of grandmother that I would not be" (above). I also figured that the "5th kind of grandmother" rationale applied, what with the abundance of capable bridge ladies in the room. Besides, what if I suddenly mentioned how much I had disliked the beginning of the Bishop's Man? I am fully not prepared for that conversation. Most importantly, I couldn't talk about knitting or babysitters because that would lead to a conversation about children, and telling a grandmother that you don't like children sounds awful. The ones that are sharp as a whip would probably also laugh, because to them I am still a child. A mean one would say "Well, I don't like you either," but grandmothers are never mean. Yet another kind of grandmother I could never be one (a mean one). I would be a mean mother, but the less time I spend with you (see the 1st and 2nd "kinds of grandmother" rationales above), the nicer I am.

Still, the dessert party (dessert party = tea party with whipped cream and bridge) was completely fascinating. I felt horribly sick the whole walk home (I am lactose-intolerant, after all...) but just to see that there was no baklava, no gulab jamun, no deep-fried bananas or plantains, no French pastries, and surprisingly, no carrot cake, no pineapple upside down cake, no cookies even. I've never seen so much custard and cream in my life. Perhaps these are brain foods, and that's why I'll never be good at bridge. Whatever the historical reason that women in Newfoundland eat these things, it's quite apparent that I'll never be a church-volunteering, babysitting, knitting, sewing, holiday-visiting, whipped cream jello pudding cake-making grandmother who lives in St. John's, rural Ontario or Saskatchewan. Trust me, all the world's children are better off this way.