Spring is springing, you know, and that means we shall all put our kettles and teacups away! We're soon due, you know, for vats and vats of iced tea. Prepare your pitchers and pans and glasses! Prepare your ice (only the finest!) and assemble your tea bags. Most importantly, though, get your iced tea spoons ready! What's that, you say? You haven't any iced tea spoons? Sit down, then, and listen up. I'll tell you a story.
My maternal grandmother was by no stretch of the imagination a Southern belle. She did, however, take iced tea very, very seriously. In her house, there were iced tea glasses, iced tea spoons, and an iced tea pitcher. This is what you called them, and this is what they were for. Iced tea. When one set the table for lunch or supper (a job designated to me my entire childhood and beyond), one set the iced tea spoons and iced tea glasses in their proper places. Even if you weren't a sugar-in-the-tea person, you still got a spoon, since you never knew when someone might become a sugar convert overnight. I loved this job. I still do, and when I set my table or my mom's table now, a wave of quiet nostalgia sweeps through me, and I deeply miss my grandma's tables, her dishes, and her tea.
What next, you may ask? Well, the table-setter has been designated, and now the vote is cast: tea or water? Even if we weren't at my grandma's, and it was just dinner at home with my immediate family, a vote was always necessary. This is still the ritual: the cook tells the table-setter when the food is nearly ready, although sometimes the cook handles this task herself if everyone else is off galavanting around. Typically the vote takes place five minutes before the food hits the plates (because no one likes melted iced in their drinks). The cook's command is, take the drink orders! or more commonly, see what people want to drink! or sometimes simply do the glasses!, or if things are feeling more rushed, damn it! we still need drinks! someone?!
Everyone is asked if they want tea or water. This means you may have either tea or water. If you want an additional beverage, you can get it yourself. But everyone has tea or water. You can choose, but come hell or high water, we will all be properly hydrated. There's a reason that this system has worked for generations. I mean, the hydration has paid off --
we do all have really nice skin, after all! The votes are collected, and the drinks are poured.
Everyone gets ice. The tea isn't flavored. It's regular black tea, although it's always decaffeinated if you're in my parent's house or my house. Sometimes you drink a lot of tea at a meal, and you don't want to be more affected than necessary (the liquor that you're drinking alongside your tea will take care of getting you affected). I do wish I had a nickel for every time I've asked tea or water?, as I've likely spoken this more than I've said anything else in my life. It's good to think about this; about how much good fortune has roared through me during my life; how many family meals I've been lucky enough to be a part of.
As I set the table each time, I'd crack the ice cubes from their trays into the ice pan, and my grandma would remind me to put 7 ice cubes in her iced-tea glass and 8 in my grandpa's. Was this just a trick to make me learn how to count? Certainly not. You may recall that I tend to be quite particular about things like ice amounts, so it's no surprise. Precision runs in the family. To this day, I find myself counting the ice cubes in my own glass, perhaps taking one out, putting some back in, taking another out. It needs to be right. A good, properly crafted drink is a very important thing.
I don't really recall a time when I didn't drink iced tea at my grandparents' house, and my mother remembers it the same way. Was I drinking iced tea when I was two years old? It's quite possible. The iced tea at my grandma's, as well as the iced tea of my mom's, was and is straightforward. Black tea, or a black tea/orange pekoe blend, typically in the form of Lipton, is the name of the game. These days, my mom and I usually make decaf iced tea, and I tend to mix it up a bit; green tea sometimes, rooibos or herbal tea the next. Sometimes a mixture if I'm feeling adventuresome!
My grandma made it incredibly strong and dark, and, back in the day, she'd doctor hers up with spoonfuls of white sugar. Later on, she moved on to Sweet n' Low packets, which she called pinkies. As in, Honey, hand me a few pinkies, would you? I loved it when I could beat her to the punch and offer her the pinkies before she even asked me to pass them.
The glasses were tall, and without iced tea spoons, you were completely screwed, because Lord knows you would never stir your tea with a table knife, lest you be sent away from the family forever. I have always taken my iced tea without sugar, although I love using iced tea spoons, so sometimes I will stir my tea in its glass and pretend that I'm making something happen. Occasionally, I will make a pitcher of sweetened iced tea, so the sugar will already be in it, but sometimes I'll add sugar to my glass of tea just so I can taste the syrupy sludge at the bottom of the glass.
I think often about long, elegant iced tea spoons, and other such utensils that basically only have one purpose. It seems crazy, and yet I am madly in love with this kind of crazy. My own iced tea spoons live in a drawer where they rarely see the light of day. And while they seem so elegant, one will read in any etiquette manual that they should never be part of place setting for a fancy meal. When the iced tea spoon has been used for stirring, I've learned, one should never place it back on the table. Either place it on a saucer or on an iced tea spoon rest. If there is no designated resting place for it, and it's a very informal setting, you may rest it on the edge or your plate, but if it's an affair that's a bit fancier, or you're surrounded by people you don't know very well, you keep the spoon in the glass and hold it to the side while you drink. Take notes, people! You never know where you'll end up and what kinds of things you'll be offered.
Iced tea spoons are often called soda spoons, too, and at my grandparents', they were the tool of choice for an ice cream soda, such as a purple cow, a Boston cooler, or a Coke float. If you order a milkshake or an ice cream soda at any restaurant, chances are very good that you'll be provided with an iced tea spoon to get the job done well. And if you're in the South and you're in the market for a set of flatware, you'll likely find iced tea spoons as a part of the set, as they will typically take the place of soup spoons. I mean, who wants to eat soup when you're soggy and melting? Head up north a bit, though, and it'll become trickier and trickier to locate iced tea spoons, especially in the winter.
My iced tea spoons are from a thrift shop, and I tend to polish them even when they don't need to be polished. My mom and my grandma taught me how to polish silver, and when I open the jar of polish and wet the sponge, I suddenly feel like I'm doing something very useful and important, akin to the setting of the table. I'll keep on track with this system, I know, because our roots are divine. Our traditions hold us. Even now, when I eat lunch or dinner at home by myself, I always ask myself the question: tea or water? In the winter, I may lean towards water, but once spring and summer are upon us, I'll always always go for the tea.
