Revisting the Scene Tea with Tumnus

Several weeks ago, Hannah and I had some fun revisiting the scene from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Lucy has tea with Tumnus in Narnia. Hannah has this awesome blog series, “Bookish Recipes,” where she picks a book, writes a review on it, and makes an original recipe based on some food or meals from that book. For example, she’s recently done some posts on a couple Harry Potter books, The Scorpio Races, and Fellowship of the Ring. Be sure to check her blog out while you’re at it, she’s an awesome writer with some pretty good tips. You don’t want to miss a post.

This time, she decided to create recipes inspired by Tumnus’s tea time from Narnia. And, knowing how my blog is somehow somewhat related (don’t ask me why she thought that), she also decided to invite me over to participate.

And so I went. I also brought two English tea bags. “One for me, and one for a friend.”

We had a grand time. Here’s the link to Hannah’s post with the book review and recipes for all the different foods we made. Be sure to check it out!

We made a sugar topped cake, had sardines on toast, buttered toast, and boiled eggs. The cake was actually an orange madeira cake, which I believe is an English treat you have with tea. I almost dropped it a couple times (oven mits make EVerything slippery), but I made it to the table with the cake in one piece. We used spelt flour instead of regular flour, which I’ve never even heard of before. Leave it to Hannah to introduce you to some new, odd substitute which actually doesn’t taste that odd. In fact, the cake tasted amazing, if not perfect. I brought some leftovers home and my siblings said it was “so good they thought it was storebought.” (Secret is, homemade usually tastes much better than storebought.)

It was also my first time eating a semi-boiled egg on a little stand thingie (what are those things even called?) and now I know why the strange dish is necessary. Apparently you’re supposed to click on it with a spoon around the top and eat the weird runny yellow liquid stuff inside, which I had never done before. I’m not a fan of eggs unless they’re fried and partially burnt, and I didn’t enjoy the taste, but the experience was definitely worth it. Frankly, I’ve always wanted to try eating eggs this way, and it was fun.

Teatime isn’t teatime if you don’t have tea. And no, we didn’t make our own tea, so we have yet to undertake that adventure. But we tried some English tea and Irish breakfast tea. It was my first time tasting Irish tea and I really enjoyed it. Hannah got the teacups at the local DAV and they were very authentic.

Ooh, and we also made pickled onions, which I had never even heard of before. It tasted sour and sweet at the same time. I’m not an onion person, but I must say that they tasted pretty good. Not only that, but they looked really pretty, particularly if you put them in a clear glass jar.

 

Sardines on toast was … interesting. I do enjoy fish, but sardines taste strange to me. I never really thought that having sardines on toast was an English teatime delicacy, but the country is surrounded by sea. So I had half a slice.

 

Put the whole meal together and it makes for a very pretty, tasty teatime luncheon, as well as a photography opportunity. It was very authentic. All we were missing was two armchairs, a roaring fire, and blankets of snow outside, but when you live in coastal South California, the combination of the three is very rarely seen.

Have you ever made food from a favorite book or movie? I’d love to hear all about it! In the meantime, thanks for reading!