Time for Tea!

From Wikipedia:

“Tea (in reference to food, rather than the drink) has long been used as an umbrella term for several different meals. Isabella Beeton, whose books on Home economics were widely read in the 19th century, describes afternoon teas of various kinds, and provides menus for the old-fashioned tea, the at-home tea, the family tea and the high tea. Teatime is the time at which the tea meal is usually eaten, which is late afternoon to early evening. Tea as a meal is associated with Britain, Ireland, and some Commonwealth countries.”

You have to hand it to the Brits: they certainly know how to eat. Or...snack...or whatever you'd like to call it.  They call it Tea:

 And what do they eat during Tea Time? Well...duh...usually tea, accompanied with lovely foods like these:

Add in copious amounts of butter, jam, clotted cream, lemon curd, etc. etc. and you have a very YUMMY tea time.

For me, “Tea” means a break sometime in the afternoon, usually around 3pm, as a small snack or bite. Here is where things get tricky: I don’t drink tea! I am talking about caffeinated teas: Earl Gray, Black tea, Green tea, Breakfast tea...etc. etc. Being LDS (Mormon), tea and coffee are off the menu for me! So, in the grand spirit of things, there is always the lovely effort of substitution. So, for my “tea time” my hot drinks consist of Herbal Teas:

or a mixture I concocted myself of equal parts Cafix and Kaffree Roma, with cream and Truvia:

(Which, to someone who has never had coffee, is quite delicious.) My mother-in-law literally heats hot water and drinks it at bedtime. Yes, plain hot water. So, for tea time, any hot drink that works for you, is great. ;-) (I’m also sugar free and low carb, so in later posts I will have some great recipes for low carb/no sugar scones and cookies (biscuits) and finger foods.) Trust me, I love flour and sugar and butter as much as the next person, but a little too much of those things early in life did NOT help me. So, I improvise. But the "spirit of tea time" is still intact. :-)