Not only am I offering writing classes, but I’m also taking an online writing class. I’ve taken them before and have finally managed to maneuver my way through the online class components of technology and submitting my homework. My daughter, who is a professor at the university level teaches online courses is proud of my success. Me too.
This time I’m taking a class from Gotham Writers School. There is an in-seat program where students meet at the school located in NYC. They offer all kinds of writing courses from Playwriting to Novels. They also have a large selection of online classes.
The course I enrolled in is called, Food Writing.
I’ve wanted to take this class for a long time, but could never justify flying to NYC. I was excited when it was offered as a 10-week online selection.
So here I am, in week two. We are working on Food Writing Memoir this week. I had to write a piece about a food memory. I’ve been eating all my life and am quite accomplished at it. ;-) So I had a hard time thinking of a food memory that was worthy of 800 words.
I finally came up with something. My mom’s sweet ice tea.
Growing up just outside NYC, sweet, surgy iced tea was a complete novelty. It’s taken a while for this beverage to make its way across southern state lines, but it finally has. Southern sweet tea is a staple in North Carolina where my mom grew up. So it became a staple in our house, even in New York in the 1950’s.
Here's an excerpt from my recent homework assignment. It hasn’t been graded yet, but once the memory popped into my mind, it was an easy piece to write. And all the while, it seemed as if my mom was sitting next to me sipping a tall glass of tea; sweet tea, of course, just the way she liked it.
Iced Tea the Sweet Kind
When someone is born and raised in the south, no matter where you end up living, the southern upbringing in you never leaves. My mom had many claims to fame, but one stands out from all the rest. Sure, she was a wiz at making fried chicken, the way her mother taught her, the North Carolina way. I remember warm summer days when her faithful deep-fryer-chicken-maker would appear on the back stoop for a Sunday supper of lovely fried chicken. It was a large shoebox shaped contraption that stayed filled with golden frying oil. The flour-dusted chicken pieces were gently lowered into the bubbly hot oil nestled in a wire basket with a long handle for lowering and lifting. I suppose that’s why it was an outdoor project. It was actually quite messy and I’m sure the oil splatters were not welcome in the house.
I never thought it strange, frying chicken outside on the bumpy brick patio. But that’s where it always happened. For our family of seven, the fryer worked hard and long but the wait was always worth it.
Chicken isn’t my mom’s claim to fame. One would think her gift of Saturday noodle-making would take the honor as there were many weekends we kids were forced to duck and beware of long strips of drying noodle dough all over the house. It could be found between kitchen chairs, between clothes hangers in doorways and the like. It was always worth the trouble of ducking and dodging the hanging pasta when it was dinnertime. I know we were shooed outside to play no matter the weather, to let the strands dry in quiet peace.
Sadly, the perfect pie crust, fresh green beans sliced in just-right unison nor a fresh coconut cake made each Christmas for a Jesus birthday cake were not the culinary items my mom would be remembered for.
It was her iced tea.
That might sound strange, but sweet, very sweet, with lemon, iced tea in New York, just outside the City, was an oddity few had knowledge of before coming to my house. It was a staple, made fresh every day all year round. And it never went to waste. The leftover tea was poured carefully into ice cube trays and frozen to make ice-tea-ice-cubes.
The combo was a killer. As the tea melted into the chunks of frozen sweet tea, the tall glass was transformed into a sweet slushy wonder. It was legendary. It was her claim to fame.
My dad was a coach at a small college in town and we often had college kids from his teams or classes stop by. There was always room for one or more at the dinner table. The students loved my dad, but secretly I think they loved my mom’s sweet southern iced tea even more. They drank it by the gallons.