A happy wife is a happy life, or so the saying goes. I first heard this phrase watching one of those Bryan Baumler home reno shows on HGTV. Given the vocations of my wife and myself, having days off that line up are rather difficult. When we get to spend time together, without the four kids around (rare as that is) we usually go on a day excursion.
Before Christmas, we went on one of these sojourns west of town, seeing where the car will take us. We landed at Adelaine’s Tea Room in Prescott. I am not a tea drinker by any means, but it is where we ended up so as a good husband earning brownie points, in we go. This little shop, some would call quaint, is not much bigger than a large living room and it is filled with tea and tea things. Tea pots  makes a great gift (hint hint), tea, tea accessories  who knew there were accessories for tea, (I always thought you just needed tea, a pot and a cup.) and dessert; many desserts. The shop opened last November by someone from Morrisburg, Susan Peters. She is a local historian, president of the local historical society, and a tea-somallier. Yes, a tea-somallier is a real thing. Just like you can pair wines with certain foods, a tea-somallier can do the same for food.
I am going to wander here for a second  oh look what I did, I connected the title of this column to what I wrote  just five minutes learning about tea with Sue, and now I know that you brew teas at different temperatures. Never using boiling water for green tea for example, heat the water to 170 degrees fahrenheit to steep the tea. And fruit teas like raspberry teas are not tea at all, they are called a tisane. Yes I could have Googled all of this, but had I not gone to this tea room with my wife, I wouldn’t have learned it.
Another thing I learned is that different teas are good for different health issues or benefits. Like green tea and tumeric can help if you have arthritis. Back to the desserts though. There were many desserts, but most importantly a new kind of dessert, Piecaken. What is Piecaken? Like the southern US fad of Turducken, which is the stuffing of a chicken, inside of a duck, inside of a turkey. How they do this I don’t exactly know, it sounds complicated. Piecaken is easy though. It’s a pie, baked inside a cake. In this case it was a pumpkin pie baked into a vanilla cake.
Piecaken is the best of both worlds, it’s like getting a slice of both desserts at Thanksgiving, without your wife looking at you with that look that says “really, another piece Phil?â€Â
Adelaine’s Tea Room is one of those neat little places that you can go for a bowl of soup  did I mention they have lunch food there too  get a nice cup of tea and spend some time with your spouse doing something they want to do. And if you’re good, you might even get to have a piece of Piecaken.
Note: Since writing this, I learned that Adelaine’s will be closing for now, possibly to reopen at a new location. Hopefully Sue does, it’s a worthwhile place to go.