Castemere
Legacy Name: Castemere

My dearest friends tell me I have a certain feline charm. Not only in handsome lilac fur, mind you. I make it a point to befriend all I meet, regardless of their differences. Why must fire sprites and water nymphs fight when they are both partial to a certain lusterberry tea that I have quite the skill in making?

In fact, if there's a tea in this world or any other that I can't put my paw to and perfect, I will happily surrender my prized golden turnip award into your keeping.

Tea is so vitally important to any gathering. The Mad Hatter and the Spring Hare...wonderful fellows, really...but so very limited in their beverage choices. A simple brown steep one could just as well pour from the basin of a hardened mud pitcher in the floating swamp.

No...a truly worthy tea should be more versatile than that. It should pair well with the petals of any flower. (I hear you can learn quite a bit from them, though I find them rather dull in their constant preening.) It should taste as good at the bottom of the ocean as it does on the peak of the highest mountain. (Which may be Mount Zapreegle or Mount Gogoobligoo depending on the time of day, angle of the sun and number of flying freenblats that just happen to be perched on one peak or the other. They're quite the competitive lot, those freenblats.)

Nearly as important as your tea spread are the number and type of tea cakes you intend to offer your guests. These must dare the unexpected realms of Flavor and Taste so that no amateur chef can hope to re-create the masterpiece you provide for the eating pleasure of your guests. If you don't have at least fifty-eight different selections, don't be surprised if the Tea Cakery Association never comes knocking on your door with a word of congratulations and a complimentary bag of cake flour.

Cheshire is my delightful companion who has a knack for sniffing out unusual and interesting new sources of tea leaves. Whether they lie under a Banshee Bush in full wail or thirty feet beneath the depths of Dry Lake, my Cheshire will locate the tea trends of tomorrow by making me a present of their base leaves today. She has her own little saucer and cup with her name engraved on both.

(For the record, my Ches is in no way related to the more famous - or infamous - Cheshire Cat. What view you take of him will greatly depend on which fork in the road he guides you to with his cunning smile and mad eyes.)

Along with smashingly good tea, one must have suitable conversation. A few favorite topics of mine include teapot design strategies, herb garden layouts and the Royal Guard FlamingoBall Annual Championship Tournament.

Just don't talk to me about politics. It makes my fur bristle just thinking about that rude, pushy, all-around evil woman that would dare to mock the authority of the White Queen, the true ruler of Wonderland.

Well now, just look at me. My fur is literally bristling at such unpleasant thoughts. Join me in a relaxing cup of tea, won't you? You're just in time for today's little party. It should be quite a good one.

Tonight's topic of choice? Mushrooms: Friend or Foe.

The Glad Footer (third cousin thrice removed from that loveable Mad Hatter) starts us off with a fascinating history of the various growing patterns of tree-scale toe fungus. The Backward-Hopping Toad concedes that such a fungi exists but is no fun guy by any means, having suffered the affliction on his own magnificent webbed feet. We move on to those mushrooms that grow, those that glow, and those that cause water to flow...upstream, of course.

Then we get a rather strongly-worded denial on the domestic fungus crop from a tweedle-mouse that nearly lost her acorn home to gwalla-gwalla mushrooms gone wild.

I can't resist bragging just a tiny bit about a spectacular sweet spore mushroom tea I've only recently added to my recipe book after a visit to a most well-versed sage whose cave can only be accessed by playing a flute on the full moon in front of a particular rock shaped like an egg timer.

I do so hope you've enjoyed this little visit with some of my dear friends. Come back any time and I promise your mind...and your teacup...will never be emptied.

Loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland