Posted on 01/30/2002 10:41:25 AM PST by aomagrat
Sweet tea, as one of the characters in the movie ''Steel Magnolias'' noted, is the house wine of the South.
It is what we drank when we cooled our houses with attic fans. As a teen-age hay hauler, I'd drink a jug a day.
When I sit around telling stories, that's what I drink, winter or summer.
I am the uncaped crusader for the preservation of the tradition, which is in trouble. Young people don't know how to make tea, and bottled liquid they call tea is sprouting like kudzu in stores.
Here is my tea pedigree:
I have consumed sweet tea at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House in Savannah, Ga., and at Crooks Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., where you sweeten your tea with a concoction of mint and sugar water. I have drunk sweet tea with George Wallace.
My sweet-tea crusade developed in a roundabout way in 1993 after I spent a day picking Silver Queen corn in south Alabama. I, sweaty and dirty, went to a catfish joint and ordered a glass of tea to go. The cashier brought a full pitcher and set me in a rocking chair on the porch. I felt obliged to drink the entire pitcher.
I wrote about that woman's kind heart and proposed that sweet tea is much more than a drink. It's the memories of our grandmothers and Sunday lunch. It's a symbol of our hospitality. I invited readers to share a sweet tea memory. Readers rhapsodized.
We learned the importance of tea. My bosses at the Mobile, Ala., newspaper allowed me to sponsor a contest in which a panel selected the best sweet tea. The New York Times published a story about my crusade, which was followed by a story in Saveur, a fancy New York magazine. Then, Southern Living published a small story in which the writer proclaimed me a ``sweet-tea evangelist.''
In 1999, I took the crusade to Oklahoma. The battle there has been lost. To put Oklahomans in perspective, one day I was in a cafe in Hobart. After determining that sweet tea wasn't on the menu, I was happy to find that pinto beans were.
''You have any rice to put under those beans?'' I asked the waitress. She looked at me like I'd ordered a scoop of topsoil.
I have learned that the sugar you use matters. (You can't beat Dixie Crystals.) I use tea from a company in Mobile, which perfected a blend that is as clear after a night in the refrigerator as it is the moment you make it.
But it's so tasty!
And the quick just under the edge of your thumbnails sore for days, too.
I can't really speak for my brother though. He just loved Southern BBQ.
No no. This is a nation that has entire aisles devoted to electric kettles. It doesn't taste the same. I've made it a couple different times and it never tasted the same as it did back home. I can't figure out why. Perhaps the tea is different? I don't know who that Earl Grey fellow is but he don't know diddly squat about iced tea ;-). Seriously, it doesn't taste the same, don't ask me why.
It's weird little things like that make you homesick. For instance- here in the UK- you're not supposed to put electrical plug ins in your bathroom. Want to blow dry your hair- leave the bathroom. They seem to have a bit of a phobia about electricity in the UK- all the plugins have to have a switch (like a light switch) to cut the juice off at the wall. Many's the time I put on a kettle of water to boil somewhere during a tv commercial and ten minutes later I was fustrated to learn someone had cut the appliance off at the wall- I guess out of fear that it would cut itself on while no human was in attendance and organize the other appliances into rebellion. At least it's not like that in the rest of Europe.
And another thing that ticks me off here... (don't get me started ;-))
Besides fried chicken, I'd love to have one of my Sainted Grandmother's tea cakes.
I never knew why they were called tea cakes. They were a sort of cross between a biscuit and a cookie. Not sweet like a sugar cookie, but with a wonderful vanilla flavor. Very plain.
They were absolutely wonderful. If anyone has a reasonable guess as to what a tea cake is, and can offer a recipe, I'd be eternally grateful.
You must be talking about the Rock Inn cafe.
Yes, I have lived around here for most of my 35 years.
Hudson's is excellent. Real fries, excellent sweet tea in those extra large styrofoam cups, and their inside sliced pork is to die for.
Needless to say, the new Sonny's that was built near the interstate isn't doing very well.
If you haven't been here in a while, you wouldn't recognize the place.
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