Guest Guilty Pleasure - Theresa Meyers' Tea Time

There are a few other bloggers that are doing these Guilty Pleasure posts as well. It all started with C.J. Duggan and if you want a bunch of smiles, circle back to her site and see the comments to read other pleasures. Love to have you join the fun. 

This week I'm turning my blog over to Theresa Meyers who is celebrating her recent Steampunk Romance release of The Hunter. 


If you haven't given steampunk a try yet, Theresa Meyer's The Hunter, may just give you the incentive to give it a try. 
Please give a warm welcome to Theresa. 


My Guilty Pleasure by Theresa Meyers

There comes a time in every mother’s life when really you just need something to give you a boost. Mother’s-little-sanity-saver if you will. For me it doesn’t come in a tablet or a pill form, for that matter it isn’t solid at all.

And frankly, if I don’t get it once a week I notice. Big time. So does my family, and housework be damned.

My guilt pleasure is tea.

But not just any tea – that I could brew up on my own, as I do every morning. No, this tea is special because it’s shared with my non-writing mommy friends about once a week. Most of us have know each other since our children went to kindergarten together and are now braving junior high in a group. Some of us have sons and others daughters, but we all have one thing in common. We’re one another’s sounding board.

Now I’ll admit that usually the food’s not bad either! Each of us brings something once we figure out who’s hosting that day. A typical tea for us includes two flavors of tea (chocolate mint or vanilla, along with Market Spice or Assam) with half and half, a lunch, such as parmesan chicken with garlic green beans and rolls, or shrimp scampi with Cesar salad, a fruit such as fresh strawberries, mangos or pineapple, and a sweet such as Trader Joe’s Cranberry Orange Scones or blueberry coffee cake. And birthday teas—well, really they are sometimes better than anything your family could come up with. Each of us brings a gift for whoever is having the birthday and they get to pick which kind of cake they’d like and the lunch menu of their choice.

It usually only last two to three hours. After all, we all have to be home when the kids get off the bus! 

But in that short span of time it makes all the difference. We’ve laughed for one another, and cried. Cheered one another on with a new job. Given hugs when a child has gone off to college. I adore my tea girls. In fact I’m not sure I’d be sane without them.

Here’s one of the easiest recipes we use frequently:

Chicken Marsala

• Four to five chicken breasts, thawed and cut into cubes
• Three tablespoons butter
• One Tablespoon olive oil
• Half of a large sweet onion, chopped fine
• One 8 oz. bottle of Marsala Wine
• One Tablespoon corn starch
• Salt & Pepper
• Cooked pasta of your choice

Put the butter, olive oil and onions in a pan on medium heat and cook until the onions are nearly clear. Put in the chicken, and brown. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour in the Marsala wine, yes the whole bottle, and cover until chicken is cooked. Stir in corn starch thoroughly and let cook for a minute until sauce is thickened.

Serve over hot pasta.

So that’s my guilt pleasure. If you could join in on one of our weekly teas, what would you bring?

Raised by a bibliophile who made the dining room into a library, Theresa has always been a lover of books and stories. First a writer for newspapers, then for national magazines, she started her first novel in high school, eventually enrolling in a Writer's Digest course and putting the book under the bed until she joined Romance Writers of America in 1993

Come join Theresa Meyers on Twitter here. 

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