The Problem with Tea

Today being another beautiful Los Angeles winter's day, we spent the day at the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena.  First of all, if you haven't been there, it is an amazing botanical garden, art museum, and library, and I strongly recommend it.  Ruth and I have been members for a few years, and try to get out there as often as we can.  Today, we celebrated Ruth's birthday with tea service at the Tea Room.

The Tea Room is lovely.  The tea is good, if you like barely flavored water that smells like it should have more taste than it does.  (No, I am not a big tea fan, but Ruth is, so I go with it.)  The scones are wonderful - unless you happen to get a day they serve raisin ones.  Today was cranberry orange as well as vanilla and while the vanilla were better, both were fantastic.  Fruit, cheese, little chocolate thimbles with mousse inside, other pastries, salads, even caviar; all are good, excellent even.

And then there are the sandwiches.  The sandwiches bother me.  Why?  Take a look.

A sandwich is as big as my thumb!  While cucumber-mint finger sandwiches might be the in thing with some tea (they also had watercress-cream cheese, carrot-ginger, tuna, and smoked salmon versions), it takes a mountain of such things to make lunch.  And the plates are small, so it really means an Everest-sized pile.  But people give a guy funny looks when he passes by with a towering pile of sandwiches too small to see on the camera without a zoom.  "That guy is a pig," they think.  "This is why only women should come to tea."  After several return trips to the buffet so that I only took eight or so single-bite sandwiches at a time, I have to agree.

Tea is no place for a man.  (But please, if you go, bring me back a scone or two!)