Chattanooga Tea Tour 2012 - Part 2, Court Side Tea Room

With the taste of Miss Audrey's dessert still resonating on the taste buds, we hopped back on the interstate - using the direct route - and continued our journey toward a 1:30 appointment at the next stop, the Court Side Tea Room.

Now, before I get into this, I first have to say the owner is a very nice woman.  She has the right personality for running a tea room.  Her intentions are sincere, and I'm sure she put a lot of thought into everything.  It's the execution that falls a little flat.  What follows is by no means meant to be reflective of her as a person, it's a critique of how she runs her business.

We drove around the block the first time we pulled up.  We weren't sure where to park.  There was a business next door with all the parking spaces next to the building labeled "For Customers Only."  (Great.  While we're having a relaxing tea, the store owner will tow the van of "them outsiders".)  We parked next to the road, hoping those were fair game.

We walked up the brick sidewalk to the porch, tugged on the door....  and it was locked.  Locked?  We knew it was the right place - the sign out front said so.  There was another sign in the window that indicated it was Open.  Tried the door again.  Still locked.  She knew we were coming - we made reservations.  Well, we were early, by 12 minutes.  As we stood there wondering what to do, the owner came and opened the door for us.  Okay, good.  She even called us by name.  Right place, right time.

The dining room was, well, the dining room for the house.  It was a quaint house, nicely decorated - not exactly with a theme per se, but it was comfortable and pleasing.

Our table

We were seated at the table in the center of the room. (Obviously, since the door was locked prior to our arrival, we were the only ones there.)  She shared what she had planned for our meal, complete with dessert. 

She said she had "a selection of teas" that we could have either hot or iced.  We asked what the selections were.  She disappeared for a few seconds and came back with a saucer with six different tea bags on it.  O...K...  Seeing how I haven't been to that many tea rooms - in case you're not keeping count, this is number three for me - I cut her some slack, chastising myself for making an assumption that tea rooms only use loose leaf tea.  I chose the green tea.  Sweetie chose iced tea and was given iced green tea.

Complete with Valentine's decorations

Our tea.  See the pitcher on the left?  Yeah.  That's what my tea was served in.  The only thing I could think was maybe she thought that was a more manly selection.  There were "real" tea pots sitting around that would have worked just fine.

One more thing before I tell you about the food.  Most of the pictures are of half-eaten items.  I'd like to say this is by design, giving you a chance to see the inside of the dish, but, really, I just stink at remembering to take pictures when the food first arrives.
The salad was a generous serving of spinach leaves, with strawberries, kiwi, sunflower seeds, and croutons, with a little serving of balsamic vinaigrette dressing.  I'm not a dressing person.  I usually stick with Thousand Island, and sometimes if I want to go crazy, I'll do Catalina.  But nothing that sounds like it has balsa wood in it.

It looked really tasty.  We gazed longingly at our salads after she served them -- no silverware.

After she came back and discovered us with handfuls of spinach held up to our mouths, she realized what we were missing.  OK, that's what I thought about doing.  Actually, we sat there politely waiting for her to return.

Once we had silverware in hand, we dug in.  I'm not a spinach lover, but I have to admit that was a great salad.  I had my doubts about the vinaigrette, but it was good, too.

The sandwiches were Black Forest Ham with Swiss, and Chicken Salad.  We each got half a sandwich of each, along with a generous helping of ... potato chips.  (Really??  Yeah, really.)  The bread looked like it was Arnold's bread from Kroger.  Definitely not homemade.  The chips would've been redeemed if they'd been made from scratch, but, alas, they came from a bag.

Fuzzy, partially consumed sandwiches

After the sandwiches, she told us about the dessert and then went and got it for us.  It was a two-layer chocolately confection, with the bottom being a sort of mint ice cream Klondike bar.  That part wasn't bad, it reminded me of an Andes Mint.  Laid on top the ice cream bar was what resembled a Little Debbie Swiss Roll.  They were drizzled with a chocolate syrupy pudding piped onto it.  There was also a strawberry with the chocolate syrupy pudding piped on it as well.  ("Chocolate syrupy pudding piped on" is the closest my limited culinary experience comes to describing it.)

All through the meal I drank my tea, resisting the urge to swing wide my pinky finger from the dainty little cup.  It was a smooth tea, very pleasant to drink, and a nice compliment to the meal.  However, with each cup, the tea would get a little more stringent.  I had a strong suspicion I knew what the reason was, but still, it tasted good, so I kept drinking.  Maybe I'm interjecting false memories after the fact, but I think it tasted a little pulpy, too.

When I got to the bottom, as I suspected, the tea bags were still in the pitcher.  There were four of them resting on the bottom - with the tags still attached(!).  Tags?!?  In my tea?  Might as well tested the water temperature by dipping a finger into it.

At some point in the visit, I needed to visit the "Powder Room" - that was the sign on the door.  It was a large room with an antique claw tub, and a dressing/sitting room past it, curiously, with a handwritten note on the door saying "Please do not close."  I found out why.  The window in the dressing room provided the light for the powder room.  There were no bulbs in the fixture above the vanity.  And the sink only had cold water.

Well, it was finally time to leave.  You'd think this nice little meal might have taken a total of 45 minutes to an hour.  After all, we were still half an hour away from our final destination, plus we were going to be losing an hour crossing into a new time zone, and we had a concert to go to.  No, it's almost two hours later.  (Note to self - light conversation with customers is good - going on and on about pets is not.)

She brought the check.  I thought all the surprises were out of the way.  Au contraire!  The dessert, which she brought out without asking us, was a separate charge.  If anyone knows me well, you know I never pay to get a dessert if it's chocolate.  Well, that raised my blood pressure some.  The total bill was over $32.  For lunch!  And a small one, at that!  (OK, breathe.  It'll be all right.)  We anticipated that these smaller tea rooms might not be equipped to take plastic or checks.  We thought we'd make it simpler by bringing good ol' American currency.  I laid down two $20 bills. 

She picked them up and said, "Oh, I'm sorry.  I don't have any change."  I think I stared in disbelief.  Let's see - there was a sign on the front lawn - we were served a meal, even if it was an assemblage of store-bought food - we were presented a bill - yup, this is supposed to be a business.  So, I dug deeper in my pocket, and Sweetie looked in her purse, and we were able to come up with the exact amount, plus a little extra for a tip.

With money in hand, we settled up the bill, said some pleasantries, and beat a path for the van.  Fortunately, the van was still there.

That experience gave us plenty to talk about as we continued on to Chattanooga.

Thank you for sticking with this to the end.  This is longer than I normally write, but there was SO much to include.

Chattanooga Tea Tour 2012 - Part 1, Miss Audrey's Tea Room

This week was the fruition of the VD gift (also here).  It was time for our excursion to auditory awesomeness.  While a TSO concert would ordinarily be sufficient, we decided this trip needed more.  We love tea, and although my Sweetie's been to a couple of tea rooms, I've only been to one - that's now out of business.  I try not to let it hurt my psyche too much.  Wait - I've been to a tea shop that also served afternoon tea, however, they've closed their physical presence and now just maintain a virtual presence on the web.  Where's the number of that therapist?

Using the web, we planned our stops.  In case you like tea, I'll give a shout-out to TeaMap.com for being a wonderful source of information.  One can pull up a whole state of tea room entries and click a link that Google-maps everything on the list.  That's really helpful when one doesn't know that Arlington, TN, is closer to Memphis than it is to Bristol.

Anywho, thanks to TeaMap, we also discovered that most tea rooms had limited hours on limited days of the week.  Three were right on the way, at most, just a dozen miles off the interstate, but only two of them were open Wednesday.  One required reservations, the other recommended them. 

The first stop was an 11:30 reservation at Miss Audrey's Tea Room in Manchester, TN. 

If I had taken the right exit off the interstate, it would've been an easy off/easy on trip.  I had to make it challenging by getting off one exit too early as my Sweetie - who happened to get a call from her sister at that time - was frantically trying to motion with her free hand that I was going the wrong way.  As a guy, I know this:  there are no wrong ways, just the direct way and the long way.

Miss Audrey's is located in a historic looking home (not sure if it's officially "historic").  We were given a choice between "fruit tea", iced tea, and sweet tea.  Sweetie got the fruit tea, and I got the unsweet iced tea.  After asking, the waitress said they also had hot tea.  No flavor choices, no choice of green, black, etc., just "tea".  Since we're adults, and we didn't have any kids with us, we were able to order dessert.  Strawberry shortcake for me, and pecan "cobbler" ala mode for the Missus.  It looked like pecan pie to me.  We had about a tub of whipped cream between our two desserts.  Regardless of the names, or the abundance of whipped topping, these dishes were delicious!  Worth skipping the entree to get to it instead.

The atmosphere was nice, quiet, and relaxing.  Although I didn't see any power cords, Sweetie says the setting was elegant, complete with chargers.  Overall, it was a pleasant place to visit.  We plan to go back to order a meal next time.

Getting back on the interstate was a breeze since they were only a half mile from the exit I should have taken.  Taking the direct route was much quicker.  We were on our way to the next stop - let's just say we were about to have the most interesting stop of the trip.

(For the uneducated, which I was until Wednesday afternoon, "chargers" are plates used as place mats, that all the other plates are sat upon.)

Fat Tuesday!

I completely forgot yesterday was Fat Tuesday.  It wasn't until I read about one of the Mardi Gras parades that I remembered.

Fat Tuesday is one of the days I most miss Michigan.  We always looked forward to a nice, plump, creamy-filled, sometimes still warm, paczki (pronounced PUHNCH-key - it's got a soft double O sound, somewhere in between noon and punt).  Paczkis are Poland's gastronomic gift to the world.  Most people look at them and say, "Oh, it's a filled doughnut."  Oh, no, no, no.  Anyone who says that has never had the pleasure of letting one of those gooey, powdery morsels pass their lips, swirl around the inside of their mouth, and then lovingly slip down the throat and settle into the stomach with a satisfying goodness.  

And for those who say they've had paczkis, but have never had one from an authentic Polish bakery in Hamtramck (Ham-TRAM-mick), Michigan.  Fat Tuesday in Hamtramck is like Black Friday at Toys R Us.  People line up for hours to take home a box or two of sweet goodness.

Heaven on Earth?  Pretty darn close!

My favorites are Bavarian creme and strawberry.  The hazard to liking strawberry is it's very similar in appearance to raspberry.  Most people have an irrational predilection towards the latter, making for a very unpleasant surprise when expecting the former.

When we moved to Tennessee, I looked a few times for paczkis without success, but I didn't have too high of hopes because I knew they need a higher concentration of Polish immigrants, like in Hamtramck. I always thought that with all the Michigan "immigrants" to the area, that some pastry shop would capitalize on filling the void by filling the stomachs with lots of sticky sweet filling.  

A few years ago, I found paczkis in a Publix.  I heard people rave about Publix's bakery, so I thought they might have them.  I practically danced to the checkout line when I found some.  I prattled on to the cashier about how she hadn't lived until she ate on those.  She smiled at me like she was making a mental note to buy pepper spray on her way home.

I buckled the box into the car seat because I didn't want anything to happen to it.  I rushed home to give one to my Sweetie, and to my second wife (yeah, I'll have to explain that one sometime), who grew up in Michigan.

Bleah.  Oh, the sorrow.  They were poor imitations.  It was box of a half dozen poser paczkis.    Now I fully understood the sorrow of Lent.  (Ok, maybe that's a little too melodramatic.)

So, if on a Fat Tuesday in the future you find yourself in Michigan, or in an area that has a large number of people of Polish descent (corrected), I encourage you to throw off any caloric concerns and heap culinary merriment on your tongue in the form of a little ball of fried dough.

The Big Surprise

What was the big surprise? A card.

You know what the best thing about being unconventional is?  That even when something "normal" is done, it's refreshing because it's not expected.

And, technically, I didn't spring the card on her at that time.  It was hidden in the car, and I pointed it out when we arrived at the restaurant.  She did, however, wait unti after we ordered to open it.  But only after exclamations of "What did you do?", and "I didn't get you anything", and "I didn't think we were going to get each other anything."

Of course, she was greeted with something red and frilly and mushy.

Standard V-Day Accoutrement

You don't get to see the inside - I don't want you to see how I fumble over words when I don't have Ctrl-Z and a delete button within reach.

And, well, maybe the BIG surprise wasn't so much the card.  The card wasn't the only thing in the envelope.  There were a few pieces of paper wedged inside the card.  First, there were two of these:

21st Century version of an E Ticket

Yes, that's a ticket to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in concert.  You may think you haven't heard of them, but au contraire.  It's likely you've seen this somewhere on the interwebs (it's only had over 31,000,000 views):

Most people know them for their awesome, electrified, rockin' versions of Christmas classical songs.  They excel in combining Mozart with more volume, Pachelbel with power rock, and Ludwig with, uh, Ludwigs.

What they're also masters at is making a concert a visual experience as much as an auditory one.  Here's a clip of them on stage.  Two things: first, jump to about 3:00 minutes in for the music, and second, this was in 2003.  They've had nine years to make it even more exceptionally mind-blowing.

The downside to their tour is that it's not coming to Nashville.  The next closest location is Chattanooga.  So that's where we're headed. 

Past experience has taught us the balcony is prime real estate, not the floor.  That's the best place to be immersed in the production.

In high school we often drove 2.5 hours - on school nights, no less - to go to concerts in Oklahoma City and drive back home afterward.  With age comes wisdom - and the inability to drive that late.  So, we're making an excursion of it, taking a trip like we haven't done for a few years.  We're spending the night on the Delta Queen.  I also printed out this picture and included it in the envelope.

It doesn't go anywhere, but it's also not a Days Inn.  (I was going to compare it to a Holiday Inn Express, but that would make us look less smart.)

Another thing we're looking forward to is sampling Chattanooga's tea rooms.  Those should be fun to visit, like this, and this. There's also one on the Delta Queen, but sadly, I think it's closed for the season.

We have that to look forward to next month.  That capped off the VD Eve dinner.

The following night, Sweetie one-upped me in the "not getting each other anything" department with a home-cooked meal.  Complete with my fave, Red Velvet Cake.  I didn't think to take a picture of the rest of the meal.  Take my word for it - it was delicious.

It's amazing how she can make 1/2 a cake.
It's not like I ate that much.... (ahem)

Cards, dinner, cake - a pretty typical Valentine's Day for most people.  Fortunately, we're not like most people.

Did I mention how much I like Red Velvet Cake?

Post VD

Of course, I'm talking about Valentine's Day (what did you think I meant?).
Alright, so it was a cheap ploy to get you to read, but it had to be done this one time.

That reminds me of a story.  In high school, our English teacher told us plan she had in case she ever decided to become an author.  The first book she intended to write would be a smutty, scandalous book that people would be sure to get everyone's attention.  Then, the second one would be all pious and boring, but a lot of people would buy it just to see if it would be as bad as the first.  (At that point, the internet was still a non-graphical government application - there weren't any pesky bloggers around to instantly share their thoughts with thousands of people or less than a dozen all at once.)

Enough of that sidetrip.  Back to today, and to Valentine's Day.

Years ago we did away with the "normal", obligatory Valentine's stuff.  Flowers die - or are eaten, and subsequently regurgitated, by cats; cards are thrown away with a tinge of guilt; neither of us needs chocolate (I'm not a big fan of it anyway); usually money for necklaces, watches, earrings, diamond-studded grills, has been allocated to diapers, food, mortgages, band fees, and other mundane obligations.  Also, we've never felt our expressions for each other should be dictated by the calendar.  I prefer the spontaneity.

This year, Sweetie's schedule caused her days off to fall on Monday and Tuesday.  Since she has to get up even before o'dark:30, she's generally done for the day by 9:00 on the nights before she works.  We decided to go out to eat on Monday so we wouldn't have to be concerned with the time.  It turns out, that was never a concern. 

If you ever want to literally avoid the rush, go out to eat the day before Valentine's Day.  The restaurants and the servers will appreciate it.  Since we don't go there very often, we went to Applebee's this year.  (We just had pasta on Sunday, so we decided to skip Olive Garden this time.)  We were one table out of five others that were filled.  If restaurants allowed crickets inside, I'm sure we would have heard them. 

Our server's name was Gage.  I've heard of kids named things like Paris (no, not that one), London, Angel (as in Angeles), and Dallas, because of their conception location, so I couldn't help thinking if we were in Oklahoma he would probably be asked about his name a lot.  (Gage, OK)  He treated us like royalty, like we were his only customers.  We weren't because he had one other table to wait on - seated right next to us, of course (!).

So, we ordered a nice meal, and then I sprang the surprise on her.

Check back to see what the surprise was.

The Jack

(This is a little late.  I started composing it before going to Oklahoma, and then tried to finish it while there, but I'd already loaded my pictures to the home computer.  Those puppies were worth another 5,000 words, you know.)

Saturday, Oct. 22, was the Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbecue.  This is one of the, if not the, biggest BBQ competitions in the country.  Teams must qualify to enter by winning another major competition.  It's not like anyone can just show up with a little Coleman grill, and a couple of racks of ribs, and their grandmother's "secret" sauce (that she probably got from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook anyway).

Me with a Jack Daniel's themed Barbecue Grill

There were teams from all over the world.  40 United States were represented.  Squeal-on-U-BBQ came from Alaska, and Up In Smoke made it from Hawaii.  There were 18 international teams.  The largest contingent was from our neighbor to the north, eh.

Walking around and seeing the names of all the crews was half the fun.  We got to see teams like I Smell Smoke!!! (Malden, MA), Hog Tide BBQ (Bentonville, AR), - they had both University of Arkansas and University of Alabama banners hanging from their tent - 4 Smokin' Butts (Millstadt, IL), and Chix, Swine & Bovine BBQ (Jessup, MD).  The last one's logo is a chicken, a cow, and a pig all dressed like businessmen.  This is serious stuff, but they have a  lot of fun doing it.

This overgrown house was interesting.
That's not a trellis next to the satellite dish.
That's a flag pole.

My favorite team had to be Motley Que Crew from Grosse Pointe Woods, MI.  They by far drew the largest crowd of the day.  One of their crew members is Guy Fieri.  If you don't know Guy, you need to.  He has a couple of shows on the Food Network.  My favorite is Diners, Drives, and Dives.  He puts a rockin' spin on cooking.  His spiky blond hair, two-toned gotee, and his tattoos and bling let you know he's not another Emiril or Julia.


Guy Fieri and the Motley BBQ Crew (he's drinking the water)





I don't think we'll be on TV since we were behind them.

 The highlight for me, though, was visiting the Squire "tent" at the Jack Daniel's Distillery. 

My son and me at the Squire Tent

 It's a privilege to be a Tennessee Squire. Jack Daniel's definitely treats their squires right. One can only become a Squire by being nominated by another Squire. It has nothing to do with how much you partake of the golden liquid. My predecessor (? sponsor? nominator? Squire Father?) only tasted JD for the first time last year. His predecessor, on the other hand, well, we joke with him that he doesn't need to be embalmed after he dies. Also, we all know it would be catastrophic if he were to be cremated.As for me, I imbibe every once in awhile.  I'd much prefer a glass of Dr. Pepper, but Jack and Coke, or even better, Lynchburg Lemonade, definitely have their times and places.

The trip was a lot of fun.  I'm looking forward to going back next year.  BBQ anyone?

When the Chips Are Down

Our "baby" is going off to college in less than three weeks.  We threw a party for him and his friends that was a graduation/off-to-school soirée.  We told him to invite a "few friends".  We were thinking 30 max.  His invitation list through Facebook was 42.  That didn't include the spouses of some of the parents, either. 

Two years ago we did kind of the same thing for the first-born, but we sent out invitations with the graduation announcements, we had no control over the RSVPs, and it was billed as a come-and-go open house.  We planned for 75, and got a lot less. 

Plus, the first time around, we ordered all the food from a local Mexican restaurant, because 1) Mexican is cheap, 2) most everyone likes it, 3) we could lay it all out and people could assemble it in whatever combination they wanted (nachos, burritos, tacos, with or without beans, etc.), and 4) it was easy.

As I said, we planned for 75.  We ordered food for 75.  They delivered what seemed like enough for 150.  We fed everyone that day.  We sent some with a couple of friends.  We ate on it for a week.  We took the rest to a family gathering and fed 20 people two meals with it.  So, I'm not kidding when I said we had a lot of food.

So, you'd think we'd learned out lesson, right?  Originally, we ordered for 30 people.  Two days before, as we watched the Facebook replies surpass that mark, we decided to increase the order to 40.



Just a few chips

This is the left over chips.  in case you can't tell by the drawstring, that's a "tall kitchen bag" size trash bag that we're storing them in.  We also have a gallon-sized ice cream tub full of queso, and a 1 pound margarine tub of salsa to go with them.

Plus, with all the beef, chicken, beans, and rice, we haven't been lacking for meals this week.  We froze the remainder so we wouldn't have to throw it out.  I may trade in my normal caps for a sombrero before it's all gone.