The Lion, The Witch, And The Tea Party (#86)

 

For our Christmas film this year, we watched the BBC made for television version of The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. As mentioned, it was made for television and as such was originally broken up into six 30 min episodes. Despite that, it plays very well as a single movie. If you don't know where the breaks are, you wouldn't be able to tell. It is on the longer side though. Comes out to 2 hours and 50 minutes. For that reason, I started the movie earlier than I usually do and took shorter breaks. This film is a childhood favorite of mine and I actually prefer it to the version made in the 2000s. When BBC makes movies based on books, they really try hard to stay true to the source material. I was a huge fan of these books as a child, so I appreciate their commitment to authenticity.

For dinner, I decided to base our meal on Lucy's first trip to Narnia, when she has tea with Mr. Tumnus. We had a classic British style afternoon tea party. On thing funny about these books and subsequent movies is that despite the fact that Narnia is supposed to be a completely different world, the food there is very British.

I did some research on classic British tea time and the kind of things that are served with it. This website was super helpful to me. One tip that they gave which I found super helpful was to spread a thin layer of butter on the bottom slice of bread when making the sandwiches. This adds a little flavor, but also helps keep the bread from getting soggy. I made three sandwich flavors: egg salad, chicken with curry, and pimento cheese. I also prepared some crackers that were topped with cream cheese, chives, and a thin slice of smoked salmon. To give more options, I also had some saltines, small pieces of toast, jam, and orange marmalade available. The marmalade was a nod to the sticky marmalade roll that Mrs. Beaver makes in the film. I asked a friend who knows tea much better than I do to prepare British tea for the party.

The sandwiches were a hit and gotten eaten right up. I will say that prepping the sandwiches took more time than I expected. Also, they took up a lot of space on my dining room table. I think I understand why you see a lot of tiered plates used. It would have been helpful to me to have had that option.

For dessert, I had a few things. Some friends brought the kind of cookies and small snacks you would have at a tea party. We also had Turkish delight, which I put out early during the scene when Edmund is served it. For the Turkish delight, it was purchased through Amazon but from an authentic Turkish company. It was so good!!! I had Turkish delight only once before which I had bought at a candy shop. It was very disappointing: chewy and not very sweet. I assumed that that was what Turkish delight was supposed to taste like. The version that we had this time was vastly better. For starters, it had different flavors, not just traditional rose flavor. It was also the perfect sweetness and consistency. If you want good Turkish delight, I highly suggest that you order from this company.

Like last Christmas, I also had an assortment of holiday cocktails for my Bartesian cocktail machine, which is always a hit at my parties. Last year, I gift wrapped the pods and we had a white elephant gift exchange. I didn't do that this time, because it takes awhile and I didn't want to take too long getting people their drinks. Especially since we had a long movie. I still wanted to wrap them though as a nod to the gifts that the children receive from Father Christmas. So instead of doing a full white elephant exchange, I just had guests randomly pick one and if they didn't like the flavor they got, they could trade with someone.

All in all, I would say it was a great and successful event. The guests enjoyed the film and the food. Some even dressed up for it. I dressed up as Mr. Tumnus so that my guests can no longer say as Lucy did "I've never had tea with a faun before." Lol

Anything you would have done differently? Leave your ideas and suggestions in a comment below.