I can tell my wife is a Southerner. She’s all excited today because the iced tea spoons she ordered arrived. I just keep giving her blank looks.
“What’s wrong with a teaspoon?”
“You just don’t understand.”
Obviously.
Technorati Tags: iced tea, Southern culture, spoons
Methinks my husband protests too much. He was excited too.
And he did admit that longer spoons make sense to stir the sugar at the bottom of a tall glass.
And he makes iced tea for meals and drinks it with me.
I didn’t say I don’t like iced tea (Oh, and it’s not “ice tea” either). And I do see the sense of a longer spoon. I just never considered it a problem until I married a Southerner. I just used my little teaspoon to stir up the sugar.
But you know what would be even better? A little simple syrup to sweeten the tea. I think Alton Brown said something about that in one of his shows…
I can’t believe a geek like you, Dom, didn’t automatically understand the need for the longer handle.
(Are they those ones w/ the kinda cropped spoon part? Those are the best.)
But you should be making a simple syrup anyway. Then you can move on to Mint Juleps. Plus southerners sweeten the whole pot anyway.
Man, if I had a set of iced tea/tom collins glasses I’d be making Pimm’s Cups.
Heh. Heh. The ‘trials’ of married life! Actually I wasn’t aware that there were special ‘iced tea spoons’ either. I’m assuming they’re like the long-handled variety they used to give you in ice cream parlors with your sundae or malted milk…?
Of course we didn’t have ‘iced’ tea back in Ireland – unless someone left the tea-pot on the back window overnight in winter…
Not to worry Dom, coming from diverse backgrounds does make for some ‘translation’ difficulties. My wife still doesn’t believe me when I refer to a certain culinary instrument as a ‘fish-slice’…
“Plus southerners sweeten the whole pot anyway.”
Not in Texas, or at least not usually. I can think of one BBQ place where we go where they offer you a choice between unsweetened and pre-sweetened tea. Mostly at restaurants, though, it’s unsweetened. Certainly in my family although iced tea was always on the table at dinner time we put in our own sugar or not according to taste.
I always refuse “sweet tea” because I think it is too sweet. And I kinda like the sugar accumulation when I get to the bottom of the glass.
here’s a picture of the ones we got: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001MS978/qid=1137802685/sr=1-3/ref=pd_bbs_3/103-0686959-7349460?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=284507
I think Paul Revere would approve.
Dom,
You are correct about Alton Brown’s use of simpe syrup. At Google, search for:
“Alton Brown” “simple syrup”
And another difference I had to get used to (being a Southerner myself) up here in Yankee land was the difference in names for what we always called “soft drinks”… like soda (I always thought that was something with ice cream) or “pop” or whatever else such drinks are called. And I too never heard of Southerners sweetening the whole pot of iced tea. Yuck! Dom, just don’t clang the glass when you stir! It could cause some delicate thing to get a case of the vapors!
What in the world is the matter with you, Dom.
You use iced tea spoons for iced tea served properly in appropriate glasses.
You use teaspoons for a cup of hot tea.
What is so difficult about this to comprehend?
I swear, you’re giving us Yankees a bad name…sugar.
Well, you two have certainly refined the argument about who will take out the trash!
I have iced tea spoons. Not only in the good stainless, but in the everyday stainless as well. Does that mean that Ohio is a Southern state?
In any case, what they mostly get used for is to stir the coffee in my husband’s two-cup-sized coffee mug.
I have Ice Tea spoons as well. They come in handy.
Why, Miss Kelly, ah’m not so properly trained in the ways of gentility as y’all apparently are. Ah generally jes use mah finger to stir anything that ain’t boiling.
Charles,
As an ultimate Alton Brown fan, I already have the Good Eats Fan Page bookmarked: http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/GEFP/index.htm
next Christmas I’m going to get Dom a t-shirt that says: “ALTON BROWN SAYS…”
Re: here’s a picture
Looks just like lemonade spoons to me.
How did I get by all these years without’em?
Lilo . . . Shhhhh—they’re iced tea spoons when in a glass with tea and ice (and, usually, sweetener), lemonade spoons when in a glass with water, lemon juice, and sweetener.
My Scots husband, resident in Canada for 30+ years, finally understands that when I say “coke” when referring to soft drinks I do not necessarily mean a product of the Coca-Cola Company; it is a more generic term in my parlance.