Our Boston Tea Party Lunch

This week our Classical Conversations history focus is on the Boston Tea Party.  Naturally, it seemed like a good time for us to have a tea party of our own!  Not the throwing tea into the harbor kind, but the delicious kind ;).  My kids absolutely love history and they love to eat so anything that combines the two is a huge hit in our house!

I planned out a menu of tea party-ish foods, brewed some tea for the kids to try, and busted out the fine china for us to eat on.  Here’s what we did for our Boston Tea Party lunch!

Our menu consisted of:

• scones (chocolate chip and ham & cheese)
• fruit
• veggies
• cookies
• cucumber sandwiches
• deviled eggs
• pasta salad

I also brewed some tea.  We’re not hot tea drinkers so I only had some of the tea I occasionally use for THM drinks on hand  (peach, peppermint, berry, and oolong).  The boys both picked peach tea to try (neither liked it) and then I also had them try some oolong (that’s the closest I had to what the tea that was dumped in the Boston Harbor might have tasted like).  They also got to add cream and sugar to their oolong tea and thought that was fun.  Neither one liked that either but I’m proud of them for trying.

Once they’d sampled their tea I switched them to orange juice in their tea cups and they LOVED that.  We rarely drink juice so that was a huge treat (I think they actually enjoyed that more than all the other goodies I made!  Ha!)

I’ve never made scones before but making them for a tea party seemed like a no brainer!  They turned out to be super easy.  I found a couple of sourdough recipes so that I could use my discard and followed those.

I made chocolate chip scones (used this recipe) and ham & cheese scones (I used the base from this recipe and the spices/mix ins from this recipe).

Michael, Hudson, and I liked the chocolate chip scones the best; Parker and Everly scarfed down the ham & cheese ones.

I intended to make whipped cream for the chocolate chip scones (to be spread on top or dipped in) but I didn’t realize I only had a tiny amount of heavy whipping cream in the fridge so that part got nixed.  They were still delicious without the whipped cream though!
Fruit kabobs were an easy and fun addition
And of course gotta offer a few veggies.  The boys thought it was just grand to get to scoop their own ranch out of the little bowl instead of us pouring it out of a bottle for them like we normally do.  It’s funny how a different presentation of the same routine foods can be so fun!
When I was little my mom used to make what she called jewel cookies (also commonly called thumbprint cookies).  I’ve never made them myself but thought they seemed like a perfect tea party food!  I didn’t have her recipe so I just grabbed one from google and they turned out great.  This is the recipe I used and I filled them with strawberry jelly, blackberry jelly, and orange marmalade.  Strawberry was the favorite all around.
I made a couple of cucumber sandwiches – not because I thought the kids would actually eat them but because to me cucumber sandwiches are the quintessential tea party food.  To my surprise Hudson absolutely loved them and ate 3 of the 4 little sandwiches I made!

I didn’t follow a specific recipe, just mixed some cream cheese, mayo, dill, garlic powder, and onion powder to make a spread then put the spread and thinly sliced cucumbers on bread.

I added in deviled eggs at the last minute too because the boys eat those really well and I wanted to give them some other options in case they didn’t like any of these “new foods”.
And finally I made some pasta salad.  I used this recipe (I only made a quarter recipe and that still made a lot!) with parmesan cheese instead of feta.  The kids each tried a bite but weren’t fans.  Michael and I enjoyed it though!
I got out some of our china and cloth napkins, we cleared off the dining room table (that’s usually where we do school – we always eat in the kitchen), and we had a fun, special lunch.

Last year (our first year of homeschooling) I felt like I was just doing the bare minimum because I was overwhelmed with all the newness of homeschooling.  And that’s totally ok!  If you’re a brand new homeschooler give yourself grace and don’t try to do all the things.  Now that we’re kind of in a groove this year I’ve been able to add in some more fun things like this Boston Tea Party lunch and I’m enjoying getting to do all these “extras”!