Tea Party - "Kringle"

Do you know what "Kringle" are? It's the German word for pretzel, although our Kringle do not taste like pretzels at all. Kringle are simply bun dough which is rolled into a thick rope and while twisting and turning them an amazing kringle is supposed to appear! My Mom's were always very well done - but I tried that today and well, although they were tasty they didn't exactly look like the authentic ones from earlier years. We always only had a few of these since most of the bun dough was used for buns which everyone enjoyed even more.

My lovely niece Bonnie (I have permission to post this picture!) called today and we decided to have tea at our place. She was delighted with my very fancy chintz-like China which I inherited from my sister-in-law, Alice Willms#1 I seldom use this little set and when I saw how Bonnie was taken by the dainty cups I was very pleased and we enjoyed our tea party together very much. Traditionally we would be having coffee with kringle for sure but we opted for tea which we poured from the matching teapot. My mother told me many times how she as a little girl would sit on her Daddy's lap and enjoy warm kringle which her mother (who died when Mom was only 3) and later her grandmother who looked after them then for a year before she died, had baked. These were always dunked into sugar poured into a saucer "a Schattel" and then washed down with wonderful coffee. This was a precious memory for Mom since her Dad died while she was still so young -only 5- and she had so few memories of her parents.

So today Bonnie and I followed suit by dunking our first bites of kringle into some sugar in loving memory of my dear Mom and grandparents who have gone before us. Bonnie had courageously stayed with my Mom through the night the day my Dad passed away. It was so kind of her. Less than two years later when my Mom passed away, some of us gathered at Mom's condo to enjoy freshly baked "kringle" which I brought over for our coffee break while looking after some things there. Bonnie couldn't remember if she'd been there that time.

Al proves that he can use the camera too!

The rose in the butter.

I like to carve a rose into a fresh slab of butter before setting it out. My family's gotten used to it. So it came as a nice surprise earlier this summer when in a hurry to get the butter out and get on with the supper since little people were anxious to get going, our son-in-law casually stated, "Oh, no rose on the butter." Today Bonnie's first comment when she saw the butter was, "Oh,I've always wanted to know how to do that rose?" I told her to simply have some fun gauging up the butter:

- use a small teaspoon with pointed tip, have a small glass of hot water ready, dip spoon in hot water and working from the center of the butter dig a small half circle, dip spoon and continue around and around until it looks the way you want it to. You can always smooth things over by taking the back of the hot spoon and levelling it out, start again. It's that simple but adds a neat touch.