Tea and Thumbprint Cookies
For many years in Anchorage I was part of a solstice tea party tradition. On a weekday afternoon on or near the solstice we gathered in the living room of my friend Katy’s cozy red house. We sat around a coffee table near the wood stove and drank tea, ate cookies, fruitcake, and sometimes birthday cake. For a group of busy mothers this seemed the ultimate holiday season therapy session. We laughed and we talked and we had an excuse to just sit and relax in a candlelit room. In later years the tea party moved to my own living room, and I started making thumbprint cookies to serve with the tea.
Tea Party Invitation, Carol Crump Bryner, 2008
Tea Party Collage
Thumbprint cookies are best, I think, with a dollop of raspberry jam, but any kind of jam or jelly will do – even a chocolate “Kiss.” I like to use the recipe from the “Tasha Tudor Cookbook.” Thumbprint cookies are just the right size to fit onto the saucer of a Christmas teacup.
“Christmas Cup with Thumbprint Cookie,” Carol Crump Bryner, woodcut and collaged drawing
Happy birthday Carol, albeit a bit late. Lovely collage of friendships and fun tradition. I so enjoy reading your Christmas blog.
Thanks Netzy. Hope you have a white Christmas there, and family to enjoy it with.
It was both a little thrill and a little pang to see my formerly dark-haired self in the montage of solstice teas past, along with cherished Anchorage friends. The lovely gatherings at Katy’s house and then your house were a warm way to welcome the returning light and celebrate the long connections among women of good will. Thank you for all those events, for many cups and pots of tea, with thumbprint cookies and other sweet treats, and the confidences and reflections shared while we nibbled and sipped. The tea time tradition is a long one, and it is good to be part of something so enduring in this world of change.
You’re right about the enduring things amidst the changes. I do miss those gatherings, and am always startled to see myself in those photos with long hair and sort of unattractive outfits.