The Lincolnshire Teaple: Raise a Cuppa Raise Awareness

Raise a Cuppa and Raise Awareness.

That is what the Samantha Dickson Brain TumourTrust was asking people to do as part of Brain Tumour Awareness Month, in March.

Tea being the nation’s favourite drink the SDBTT was asking people to hold their own tea parties to raise much needed funds to help those with Brain Tumours and help research into the disease.

So... I thought, how hard can it be? I like tea; I like parties, why not host one of my own!

I contacted the SDBTT and asked them for a tea party pack and I have to say I was excited when it came through the post. I had posters, invitations, and a sponsorship form, information about Brain Tumours and the Brain Tumour Trust and some badges from the charity.

Then I had to decide on a date, a day that would be suitable to get as many people round as possible. We settled on Sunday 27^th March between 1pm and 5pm and then invitations were sent out.

I set up a facebook event page so that we could all chat about it online and made it easier to ask everyone questions at the same time.

As it got closer to the date, I started to write a list of what food would be needed to accompany our tea. I got the whole family involved, my Mum made delicious scones and my Nanna made her very tasty plum bread with her secret ingredients (I’m not sure she even knows what they are now!)

In the week leading up to the party I tried to get definite numbers from people so we knew how much food to do and roughly how many people to expect – as much as we wanted it to be a success you can only fit so many people into a two bed flat at one time!

On the Saturday I went shopping to fill up with plenty of tea bags, milk, and sugar and all the food and ingredients for baking that I would need. I wanted to make homemade strawberry jam, I must have time to do that?

Making jam was something I had never done before and all the recipes I could find online said I would need nearly three days to make it! I had less than 24hours before people would be arriving, that was no good!

However, the supermarket solved my problem by selling ‘Jam Sugar’. This was a quick setting sugar, perfect, just what I needed.

I got home and set to work making the jam and gluten free brownies for a couple of friends coming with gluten allergies. Afternoon tea usually means lots of bread, pastry and cakes to me, all of which have flour, couldn’t invite friends with gluten allergies and not do something for them!

I spent more time cooking on the Saturday and made Blueberry muffins, which obviously had to be tasted whilst still warm – just to check they were ok!

Sunday morning arrived, good I thought its only 8am I have plenty of time. Wait, the clocks had gone forward and it was actually 9am! I hurried out of bed, had lots to do before people started to arrive.

More cooking involved making sausage rolls, lemon cupcakes and making sandwiches - Tuna mayonnaise and cucumber, cheese and tomato and ham.

We also had to set the table with the china teapot, cups, saucers, glass jug for milk and glass bowl for sugar, all brought by my mum –delicately handled was definitely the word when carrying and moving them!

We sliced the scones and put them on the tiered stand as well as putting all the cupcakes and muffins on cake stands. We put the rest of the food out on the table and it was nearly time for people to arrive.

“Quick, put the posters up”, “Take the apron off and put the kettle on!” “That’s the door!” all seemed to happen within the space of a few minutes.

Our planned rest before people arrived never happened; being host and hostess was our calling for the afternoon.

Friends and family came, drank lots of tea, ate cake and the delicious scones with clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam (how else can they be eaten?!) and made donations to the SDBTT charity by filling in the sponsor form and also entering out name card game to win a tea pot and Easter Egg –with all the money going to charity.

We had a great afternoon, lots of fun had by all with a fair amount of tidying up to do afterwards.

We raised £110 for the charity – not bad for an afternoon of drinking tea and eating cake!

So... How hard is it to hold your own tea party? It was certainly a challenge and rather tiring, but knowing it was all for a worthy cause made every second and every penny worth it!

Check out their website here to find out more about the SDBTT charity and what you can do to help.