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
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
Recipes Included:
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. |
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.
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.