Royal Updates: Kate Lunches With Camilla; Prince William & Kate at St. Andrews; George VI tea tin

Kate had lunch with Camilla, her soon to be mother-in-law at the Berkeley Hotel. Read the Mail Online article by clicking the photo. 


Kate and Camilla didn't have tea, but the Berkeley is famous for it's different style teas. A fellow member, Martha, of the ATAA or Afternoon Tea Across America group at Yahoo reported on the Berkeley's Pret a PorTea on a blog post she did at Pret A PorTea at The Berkeley with some fab photos of the fare. Well worth a visit!


Kate & Will also visited St. Andrew's on April 25th where they met. The visit was in honor of the school's 600 anniversary celebration and Kate looked lovely in red. The visit is more fully explained on the Prince Of Wale's website:

Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton revisit their university town of St. Andrews

And lastly, I want to honor the Academy Awards tonight because 

The King's Speech  

is up for 12 awards. I loved the film and they thought they portrayed the royal family very well. 

This is a lithographed tin that was made for the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth that we have at Time Was Antiques. For more info, click on the photos.

 

For more info on the King George VI coronation tin, click the photos.

Let's hope it wins!!! Have a great evening.

Antique English tin pudding mold Steamer...Hot

This is so cool it's HOT...and hard not to get steamed up about it......Okay, I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it!

Kitchenalia or kitchen collectibles are so much fun. This is an English tin pudding mold (or if a Brit, a mould) for steaming puddings (or if you're a Yank, desserts) that I LOVE to find in England when I'm there shopping for treasures. This one has a central spire or chimney which was used to convect the heat up through the middle to make sure the pudding is cooked all the way through.

You can even see years of discoloration on the outside caused by the boiling water in the kettle as the pudding steams. These work well for any kind of pudding...as an example the famous Christmas Plum pudding. These pudding tins were popular all through the victorian era to the second world war and some are still passed down in families to be used for special desert occasions.

To see more photos and info about the pudding mold use this clickable link to the listing at Time Was Antiques.

One of the great things about collecting kitchenalia or kitchen items is their relative affordability still. It's a great form of recycling and frankly, most of the older items are far better made and will last longer than their contemporary counterparts.

Here is a link to a great English Kitchenalia blog I found recently: kitchenalia

So the next time you are looking for a cooking ir kitchen item...thing of your local antique shop, flea market or swap meet. Old is new with an economic purpose again!

We have had the most beautiful week here...if you have been watching the Olympics in Vancouver which is northeast of us here at the top of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula you've seen what it's like here, but rain is coming in tomorrow. Sigh...back to normal. But hope it's spring where you are!