It isn’t unusual, even for a seasoned cook, to have a kitchen disaster while preparing for a tea party. The hostess is often doing several things at the same time; it is easy to forget the tarts in the oven when chopping vegetables for the salad. Mechanical problems occur because appliances are doing extra duty. And a rotten headache or sick kid can really throw off the prep day.
I had my own kitchen problem this morning while trying to make these Avocado-Almond Tea Sandwiches. I’d carefully selected my avocados, firm to the touch with some give. I allowed them to sit for a couple days. But when I cut into the first one, it had nasty brown spots. Down the disposal it went. The next avocado was the same, spoiled.
Had I been preparing this recipe for an actual tea, I would have been peeved to have had to run back to the store. And even then I would have suspected the other avocados might be bad too. To tell the truth, I probably would have bought some prepared guacamole and finished these tea sandwiches with that as the base, adding the bacon and almonds.
Most tea party problems can ultimately be solved just that easily. Keeping the sense of panic out of any situation makes everything go so much smoother. We’ve all probably experienced having one thing go wrong and then another and then because we’re stressed and not thinking clearly, we can’t do anything right.
We want everything to be perfect for our tea party. We want to please and impress our guests. That’s okay. We should be making our best effort to do so. Like the t-shirt says though, stuff happens.
I have no photo of the finished tea sandwiches today. The recipe is not complicated and, I’m pretty sure, not difficult to imagine how it looks. The light green avocado on white bread gives the perfect Spring note to the Winter White and Spring Green Tea Party.
Almond-Avocado Tea Sandwiches:
Seed, peel and mash 1 large ripe avocado. Add 1 tablespoon lime juice, ¼ teaspoon chili powder, ¼ teaspoon seasoned salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Stir in ¼ cup toasted chopped almonds and 2 slices of crumbled crisp-cooked bacon. Cover the surface with plastic wrap and chill up to 4 hours.
Cut thin white bread on the diagonal for the tea sandwiches. Remove the crusts. Spread with the avocado filling. Use a small canapé cutter to create a cut-out in the top piece of bread so that the pretty green filling shows through.
