How To Walk In High Heels: The Girl's Guide To Everything (21 page)

From China it travelled to Arabia, and in turn it was introduced to Europe. When the English entered trade with the East Indies in the mid seventeenth century they claimed tea-drinking as their own national pastime.

Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, is reputed to have been the originator of afternoon tea in the early 1800s. She conceived the idea of having ‘tea’ around four or five in the afternoon as a genteel way of having a light snack that would stop the ladies’ stomachs from gurgling, and fill the gap between lunch and dinner. It combined beautifully with the Earl of Sandwich’s idea of putting a filling between two slices of bread, and soon these habits became a good reason for social gatherings, and a quintessential part of British life.

The selection

Light your best candles, plump the cushions on the sofa and arrange your friend comfortably, curled up with tissues, biscuits and tea, and give them your undivided attention.

As the tea brews – listen. As you pour the tea, ask them what you can do to ease their suffering. Finally, as they drink the elixir, offer your comfort and advice.

Which tea you serve should depend on the crisis at hand.

Cures homesickness and missing England when abroad; a comforting workman’s classic.

Good for work crises and money worries. Wake up and take on the world.

Perfect for when you don’t know what to wear/he left you/you have no idea how to make him fall in love with you.

This is for artistic and creative problems, or for when you’re trying to travel in your imagination to worlds far, far away.

Posh name for PG.

For really, really special occasions as this is made from tea leaves that can only be gathered two days a year, in the dew at dusk. It’s a fabulous limited-edition tea. This is for confiding your deepest hopes and fears, and can be the only thing for a desolate and wounded-beyond-repair heart. Serving this makes you feel like you’re at Claridges, which is the only place that actually serves it, so you probably are . . .

Detox, destress and demystify.

For relief from anxiety and insomnia.

The hippy herbal spiritual option. Caffeine-free but can be an acquired sweet taste.

Cleansing, either the palate or mind.

Cuts down on oral hygienist bills as there’s no caffeine, no stain.

For tea with lemon serve with lemon slices, not wedges, and if you are doing it properly you should also provide a lemon fork. Never add tea with lemon to a cup that has had milk in it, as the citric acid will cause the milk to curdle.

The brew

When serving tea, you should pour the tea in first and then add milk to taste. This protocol dates back to the eighteenth century, when aristocrats wished to differentiate between those possessing bone china, and those with ordinary china. Ordinary china is liable to crack when receiving hot water, whereas bone china does not. Ladies liked to check that they were drinking from suitably refined cups. The teacup and saucer, ideally in porcelain, is the ultimate for High Tea, and posh relatives. Mugs are for cosy nights in, comforting and gossip.

Of course it’s always good to have a plate of biscuits on hand to accompany.

Recycling

When you’ve fished the teabags out of the mugs pop them in the fridge. When properly chilled they are the perfect way to calm tired, puffy eyes.

For further reading
and tea-drinking tips and etiquette go to
www.teatimeworldwide.com
,
www.theteatable.com
or
www.tea.co.uk
or try these books:

The London Ritz Book of Afternoon Tea
by H. Simpson (Morrow Cook Books 1986). A real collector’s item.

Etiquette of an English Tea
by Beryl Peters (Copper Beech Publishing, 1995).

Taking Tea for Business and Pleasure
by Dorothea Johnson (James Norwood Pratt, 2000).

The Tea Council’s Guide to the Best Tea in England
(Little Bookroom, 2002).

Or sign up for Tamera Bastiaan’s newsletter, tea club, etiquette and advice at
www.oldfashionedliving.com/teatime.htm
.

How to blow an egg

For those moments when you want to be creative in the kitchen, knowing how to blow an egg is a lot of fun. There is nothing more dreary than someone who uses a kitchen only for cooking; be sure not to be one of those types.

Take a sharp metal skewer – a steel kebab stick will work a charm – or a really big needle.

Jab with a quick but firm wrist action into the bottom end of egg.

Be careful not to smash the egg. If this happens, and it is bound to once or twice, clear up the mess, get a new egg and try again.

If the shell is still intact, pierce the top end.

If the egg is still whole, bar these two holes, it’s a miracle.

Take egg and BLOW, being careful not to crack and break egg, and even more careful not to suck. This would mean you were drinking raw egg, which would result in you getting salmonella.

Keep blowing until, with a gentle shake, you are satisfied the egg is hollow.

Leave egg to recover from the stress, bin the raw egg goo and get out your paintbrush.

How to Have Good Table Manners

‘The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without ever seeing any’
Fred Astaire

How to decorate a table, the seasonal looks

There are many ways to jazz up a table, be it with seasonal or theme-inspired decorations, but, as with high heels and computers, there is no point running before you can walk. First things first: make sure the implements are in the right place. When presented with an entire drawer of cutlery either side of your plate, working from the outside in is usually the route to success. But also employ some logic. If you are served soup you will not be requiring that fork; likewise watch your neighbour and see how they tackle the situation.

The table should look exciting and inviting. It’s a great way to distract attention from the food, which, let’s face it, may not be your forte.

Look for old china: the patterns don’t have to match, but should complement each other; for example you could have lots of different flower patterns. Have a common theme but never have chipped china.

Do not underestimate the joy and colour-coordinating pluses of a tablecloth. Remnant fabrics are good for this. Napkins are a must. Be they paper or posh it is far better to supply them than let people a) wipe their fingers on your tablecloth and furniture, or b) ask for something as non chic as kitchen roll.

In spring go for a fresh innocent feel. Choose yellows, blues and lilacs, and flowers such as daffodils and snowdrops, and scatter buds over the table.

Ideally the table will be outdoors in the summer. But if the weather is too unreliable or too hot create the atmosphere inside. Why not cover your table in plastic sheeting, being careful to tape it down to the table, cover the table with sand, and build sandcastles for your buffet to nestle in between? Okay, the sand getting in the food thing is disgusting, but you have to have ideas that go outside the box. If the prospect of clearing this up makes you go cold how about draping big palm leaves across the table, or huge expanses of white muslin, styling à la Lawrence of Arabia?

In the autumn colours should get richer. Try red dried rose petals strewn across the tablecloth. Or dried reddy leaves, conkers and pinecones.

In the winter you have dark nights and Christmas as two great themes to play on. Use evergreens, such as holly and ivy and perhaps a few sprigs of mistletoe.

You can do colour-themed ‘baby shower’ dinners, in pinks or blues, or go kitsch and do a ‘kiddies’ party with hats, jelly and the whole works. Just make sure the table suits the dress code, the cuisine and the personality of the guests you are expecting.

No dinner-party table is complete without some scented candles, fresh flowers or plants of some sort, and the right background music. Empty wine bottles can make excellent tavern-style candle holders, and Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
and Mozart’s ‘Eine Kleine Nacht Musik’ are two perfect choices for background music.

It is bad luck to put heels on the table.

For formal table go to
www.mannersinternational.com
. Click on the formal table settings for an easy-to-use print-out version. For more extra etiquette read
The Rituals of Dinner
by Margaret Visser (published by Viking Penguin, 1992).

How to use a knife, fork and spoon

First thing to remember is that these are to be used solely to manoeuvre food from plate to mouth. They are not weapons.

The ‘flatware’ should be held delicately, and balanced horizontally on the prescribed fingers. Usually the ‘continental’ form is forks in the left hand, and knives in the right.

Always cut small dainty pieces; too much in your mouth at one time is barbaric and makes talking very hard. Peas are impossible. Either spear with your fork, scoop with a spoon or squish into another edible object. Never try to flick them with a knife as they may not land where you intended.

Okay, so assuming all is going well and the meal is mid-way, don’t let your guard down – you still have a few rules to observe.

Once the flatware has been used you may not place it on the table. If you wish to pause, to make some witty repartee or so on, lay it on your plate.

For a brief moment there is no rule as to location, but for longer pauses, where perhaps you need to captivate people with arm gestures too, you are meant to place the fork on the left and the knife on the right and let them cross in the centre. If you are a greedy guts and are getting seconds you should place them delicately together to one side of the plate. And finally, when you are all finished and done and simply couldn’t eat another mouthful, place knife and fork together, in parallel vertical position in the centre of the plate; but surely your mother taught you that already?

A brief history

In sophisticated, modern society it is polite, and expected, to eat using utensils. It comes about from centuries of experimentation.

The first knife dates back to Saxon England in the fifth century, and bronze knives have been dug up to prove it.

In the Middle Ages most food was eaten with hands, and served on slices of four-day-old bread – so there was no washing up to be done. Only the wealthy used utensils, because they didn’t do the washing up.

Jump to the eleventh century and the Venetian Doge Domenico Selvo marries a Greek princess who, along with her dowry, brings the practice of using forks.

In 1364–80 forks are listed in the inventory of Charles V’s palace. But they are ‘only to be used when eating foods that might stain the fingers’.

Another year – 1533 – another marriage, and another fork. Catherine de’ Medici, of Italy, brings the fork to Henry II of France.

By 1630 Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is the proud owner of what is said to be the first and only fork in colonial America, the fork fad not having caught on here yet, despite their knives being imported from Europe.

In 1669 Louis XIV bans pointed knives at the table to reduce dinnertime violence.

By the early eighteenth century the four-tined fork has become the rule in Germany. In England, however, we are still struggling with only two tines, and knives are practically spoon-shaped, flat and rounded at the tip. But by the mid eighteenth century, thankfully, forks have evolved to the curved four tines we know today.