Planning a Tea Using What I Have on Hand

I told you yesterday that one daughter wanted a cook-out for a birthday meal. The other daughter chose a tea. In addition to baking hot dog buns and graham crackers, I have been preparing foods that would work for a tea. Here's our menu:

cup of tomato-basil soup

scratch scones

banana bread and cream cheese sandwiches

egg salad and watercress sandwiches on homemade white bread

watermelon rind pickles

fruit salad

chocolate mint patties
tea and punch

I made the tomato-basil soup from canned tomato paste and frozen basil. The scones are an easy, but good, scratch recipe. I baked a loaf each of banana bread and white bread from scratch. Watercress is growing in our garden right now. The watermelon rind pickles are from last summer's canning. The fruit salad was made with a banana, an orange, and an apple. And the chocolate mint patties were made with melted dark chocolate chips with a couple of drops of peppermint oil stirred in to flavor.

With twins sharing  birthday, it's been a balancing act trying to met each of their expectations. Dividing up the meals and allowing each to choose what they wanted seemed like a good way to go for our current circumstances.

Happy birthday to my darling daughters! And for the rest of us -- happy St. Patrick's Day!