English Rabbit

The recipe (click on the image to view larger).

Last week Charlotte and I started reading "Jeremy: The Tale of an Honest Bunny" by Jan Karon. It is a chapter book about a stuffed bunny trying to get to America. In one chapter he encounters Mr. Pruneholt who invites him to tea. It talks about the different things they are eating and one of the dishes Mr. Pruneholt serves is English Rabbit. This of course concerned Jeremy until Mr. Prunholt tells him there is no rabbit in English Rabbit. When we turned the page there was a recipe for English Rabbit. After reading the recipe Charlotte and I decided we would like to have tea sometime and make English Rabbit. Today was the day.

Charlotte helping get tea ready

My version of a double boiler since I don't own a real one. It is a metal pan sitting on top of a pot. After the English Rabbit was done I put it in a ceramic bowl inside the metal bowl with the lid on top to keep it warm until Rehm got home from school.

Charlotte decided that Rehm could be invited to tea and made him an invitation, which she hand delivered to him at the end of the street as he was coming home from school. It took us about an hour to get tea ready. We got out the special tea set that used to be Cici's. We put cookies and bread on platters. We washed and capped strawberries. We made English Rabbit and tea. We set the table. Then we went to meet Rehm.

The table set for tea with Cici's Tea set. Notice that we had a bunny guest at the end of the table. Her name is Lisa Bunny. She is Charlotte's very special bunny friend. We made sure she knew that there as no rabbit in English Rabbit.

We all settled around the table and I poured tea with cream and sugar for everyone. We passed around the various dishes for everyone to get some. Then we visited and enjoyed tea. Charlotte thought it was all yummy. Rehm's taster didn't like the tea or the English Rabbit. At one point he said, "Mom, I think I'm just not a tea kind of boy!" We talked about where the tea set came from and that it was very special to me and that one day I would give it to one of my children so they could have tea with their family. We talked about the time I spent in South Africa and the wonderful lady that came to my office twice a day and brought tea. We read the tea party scene from the Jeremy book. We talked about Charlotte's field trip and Rehm's day at school.

Rehm trying English Rabbit

This is why I love being a mom. It is days and events like this. I don't do these things often but today I felt like a good mom. Not granted I have a sink full of dishes that have to be hand washed and a ton of work to do after the kids go to bed but it was so worth it to make a special memory for my two big kids.

Rehm's memory of this will be something along the lines of "Remember those times you forced me to do 'fancy' things with you and Charlotte like have tea parties" complete with eye rolling. Charlotte's will be more something along the lines of "remember when we read that book and it had a recipe in it and we got to try it and we made the table look nice and we used the special tea set and had our very own tea party!" complete with excitement and a suggestion to do it again.

Charlotte enjoying tea

Hopefully they will remember days like today where we do something a little different, make new memories and share our history as well.