I Will Cherish This Gift Forever! Unboxing a 19th-Century Tea Set

[Music] Hello everyone. I am so happy to see you again. Several viewers have sent gifts to my post office box recently. And if you sent a gift, I want you to know how truly touched and grateful I am because you certainly did not have to send me a gift. The other day, I found this enormous box at the post office and I wondered what on earth it could contain. Well, I opened the box. I saw about an acre of bubble wrap and this manila envelope with my name on it says the history of the tea set. In the late 1800s, this silver tea set belonged originally to my great grandmother. The set was passed on to my grandmother and granny passed it on to my mother Margaret. And then there's a whole beautiful history of some truly fascinating people including my viewers Nicholas and Anita who sent this gift. And they ended it with Kevin with great pleasure. We have watched your show faithfully for years and are always transported into an enchanting dream. It is truly a delight to watch you puttering about in the garden, creating inspiring dishes, maintaining your house or playing the piano as you share your life and exuberant spirit with us. We don't have children and therefore we have cyber adopted you and would be so pleased to gift you this tea set that has been in our family for four generations. I'm I got choked up the first time I read this and I am getting choked up right now. My hands were trembling when I opened this package. So, let me show you what was in the box. And here it is. the stunningly beautiful silver tea set from Nicholas and Anita. I really love it. And Nicholas and Anita, please know you sent this set to the right person because I will love it and cherish it and use it forever. Here's a silver pitcher. the teapot. This is either a waste bowl or a sugar container. I'm not sure which. Coffee pot and spirit kettle. I'm going to move some of these other items aside so you can see how the spirit kettle works. So, this kettle is on a rack and you remove this pin, which allows you to tilt the pot and pour hot water from it. Tea is never made in a spirit kettle. It's only intended to hold hot water. And there is a spirit burner. See if I can lift this out. There is a spirit burner that fits into the rack. And to my surprise, there's even a wick here. And in honor of this beautiful tea set, I think we should prepare afternoon tea. And for this afternoon tea, we are going to make strawberry chicken salad tea sandwiches. and strawberry rhubarb crumble bars. Except I'm not going to use strawberries because I'm already using them in the tea sandwiches. I'm not going to use rhubarb because I don't have any more in my garden and I couldn't find any at the supermarket. So, we will use blueberries instead. And I will post both of these recipes in the description box below. We are going to start with the blueberry crumble bars because they need time to bake and I need flour. Just weighing it out. We can tip this right into the food processor. Granulated sugar. Light or dark brown sugar. Baking powder. ground cinnamon, pinch of salt, and then we can pulse the machine just to mix all of these dry ingredients. Now we can add cold diced butter to the flour mixture and use the food processor to cut the butter into the flour. You could do this by hand, but it's much faster by machine. So, we're looking for a crumbly mixture, which we have. Now I want to whisk together a bit of milk plus an egg and some vanilla extract. Pour this egg mixture right over my flour mixture. and then pulse the machine until I achieve a coarse but moist crumbly texture. I could kiss the person who invented the food processor. It is such a big timesaver. I want to reserve two cups of this crumb mixture because it will be the top of our crumble bars. Now we can pack the crumble mixture that remains in the food processor into a baking dish. This is a 9 by13 baking dish. And I've lined the dish with parchment. And I have let that parchment overhang on the sides so that the bars will be easy to remove. Going to use my knuckles to pack this crumb mixture along the bottom of the pan. I just added a touch of flour so that my knuckles would not stick to the crumb mixture. And there we are. So, we can set our baking dish aside for a moment and make the berry mixture. blueberries, corn starch, it's a thickener, and sugar, lemon zest. I don't know about you, but I adore the combination of blueberries and lemon. Now we can pour the berries right on top of the crust. [Music] And then we can put our remaining crumble topping. This isn't crumbling very well because I think it is too warm in this kitchen. And the butter has started to melt, but this will work out just fine. So, this is kind of like making a blueberry pie, but it's much easier to do. And finally, can add some rolled oats to the top. [Music] And into the oven for about 45 minutes. [Music] While we wait on the blueberry bars, we can get started on the strawberry chicken sandwiches. Now, I have most of my ingredients all prepped, but I still need to dice up a rib of celery. [Music] I also want to finely chop some chives that I just fetched from the garden. The chives are for the lemon dressing. So, I'm going to put them in this little food prep bowl. The celery is for my chicken salad ingredients. I also need to prep the strawberries. These are the strawberries that you and I bought together at the strawberry farm the other day. You can see over here I've already made some strawberry jam with them. [Music] And we interrupt our sandwich filling making to retrieve the blueberry bars from the oven. And this does look spectacular. I need to let this cool on a wire rack to room temperature. That will take well a good hour. For the creamy lemon dressing, I need mayonnaise, lemon juice. This is the lemon that we zested earlier for the blueberry bars. A little sugar, the snip chives, a pinch of salt, and grind some black pepper. And then we can just stir all of these ingredients together. We need cubed cooked chicken. This was from a rotisserie chicken that I bought the other day, the strawberries, the celery. Normally, I use the white and green parts of a green onion or a scallion, but I forgot to buy scallions. So, I'm going to add a small handful of dried shallots. So, there are many layers of flavor in these sandwiches. And I should mention that strawberry chicken tea sandwiches are among my favorites of all the tea sandwiches. Perfect for summertime. Then we need to combine the chicken salad ingredients. And then we can fold in the creamy lemon dressing. Of course, I have to have a little taste. My goodness, I love every single ingredient in this chicken salad with the strawberries. The celery is crunchy. It's just It's very refreshing. Now, we cannot assemble our sandwiches too early because we still need the blueberry bars to cool. So, I'm going to cover this bowl, pop it into the refrigerator, and then I think we should go to the local flower shop so we can make a flower arrangement for the tea table. [Music] [Music] [Music] Boy, it feels good to be back indoors. It is crazy hot and humid outside. little flower preservative. [Music] Let me show you the flowers. It's all cool colors. I have delinium snaps. This flower I asked twice what the name of this flower was and I've already forgotten. But isn't that beautiful? and delphinium and companula and giant alium. And I do want to add some ferns and hostas to this arrangement which we have right next to the front porch. So, let's run outside with some clippers. [Music] This is Ruscus. [Music] [Music] [Music] This is the front. This may not be my best work, but I think it looks respectable. Going to set it over here for a moment, and then we can start assembling the sandwiches. After I clean up my workstation, our contractor, John, whom you have met before, is in the basement shoring up some joists because we are having our entrance hall refinished as well as our parlor. So, we needed to have that work addressed. So, if you hear some loud noises, that's what that's all about. Now I am going to lightly butter or rather looks like I'm going to heavily butter this bread. I really need to make my French sandwich bread again. It's called pandi. Has really great body and it is perfect for tea sandwiches. This is just store-bought bread here. And of course, the butter is needed in order to seal the bread so that the sandwich filling doesn't seep through. In other words, we don't want soggy sandwiches. And it may look like I am putting too much butter on this bread. And you are probably right. But on the other hand, can we possibly have too much butter? There we are. And then I have this gorgeous strawberry chicken salad mixture here so we can assemble the sandwiches. Close the sandwiches. We want to press down just lightly. Now we can remove the crust. And I do love this Japanese bread knife. As I mentioned earlier, it is brutally hot outside. So, we will not be enjoying our afternoon tea in the garden. I think we will go into the music room. And these trimmings, of course, will not go to waste. I intend to enjoy them for a midnight snack. Now, I want to cut these sandwiches into rectangles or fingers. [Music] Now, to make these sandwiches look extra festive, I'm going to tie each one with a chive strand, which came from my garden. So, we will have little gift wrapped sandwiches. Double knot for security. [Music] I'm trimming off the excess chive because neatness counts. An untied finger sandwich for the chef. I want to cover these sandwiches with a damp towel while we prepare the blueberry bars. Here are the blueberry bars. I actually pop these into the refrigerator, but the bottom of the pan is still a little warm, but I think they will be okay. Now, here's why we wanted the overhang with the parchment. makes for easier slicing. This beautiful blue cake stand was another gift from a viewer and we thank that viewer in a previous video. I think she said it was from the 1930s or maybe it was the 1920s. [Music] I have to taste one of these crumble bars for you. Oh my goodness. Pure love. The sweet blueberries, the lemon zest, the wonderful crumble mixture, the cinnamon. Exquisite. Our sandwiches are done. Our dessert is done. I need to brew some tea and then I will meet you in the music room. I've just warmed this new to me teapot by pouring I've just warmed this new to me teapot by pouring boiling water into it, letting it sit for a minute and then pouring it off. And now I think the tea I think the best tea for this particular little tea party is Earl Grey. And this is the Earl Grey that I buy at Tiara Farm. It is the most fragrant Earl Grey tea I have ever encountered. I will meet you in the music room. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] delicious tea. I must be the luckiest guy in the world because I get to hang out with you for a living. Thank you so much for spending time with me today as we made this delicious and very easy tea spread. And we bought and arranged flowers and we got to enjoy this truly beautiful 19th century tea set that was a gift from viewers Nicholas and Anita. And Nicholas and Anita, I want to thank you again. I will cherish this set and use it forever. In the next video, I'm planning to make strawberry freezer jam plus crumpets. And I can't wait to see you. Until then, please treat yourself well. Bye for now, friends. [Music]