Ida Clare, It's Adventures in Canning

On my last post, I mentioned my mother, Ida Mama, but did I mention that we live really close to each other?   Close proximity is a nice way of saying that I recklessly gave my mother a key to the back door of my house when I moved here and she never fails to use it when it suits her and it suits her when the produce wagon comes to town.

I realized the error of my ways when she showed up with the following:

2 cases of Roma tomatoes

1 case of bananas

2 cases of peaches

about 10 whole cabbages

12 gigantic cucumbers

a bucket of string beans

and a partridge in a pear tree (Not really, I made that part up.)

Kill.  Me.  Now.

What I am wondering is why not bring in a case of beer that's already been canned?  That would have made the work week more palatable, if you ask me.

I’m not the only one singing the canning blues.

My birthday was a while back and due to our busy canning schedules, the wild celebrations with my Ida Mama and my Ida Aunts had to be postponed.  I am being taken to the "Tea Room" in Big Thicket. 
I wonder if they have Long Island Iced Tea? And if I could manage to drink several of them while we discuss our respective ailments and canning adventures:

"What's good here?"

"I've heard the basil soup is good, but I hate to order it when I have 26 pints at home."

"What about the spaghetti?  No.  Nobody makes it like the sauce you just put up from that 2 cases of tomatoes.  I'll never eat Ragu again."

"That's why my hands hurt, from peeling all those tomatoes.  I probably won't be able to hold the fork anyway."

"My neighbor says the banana bread here is the best she ever ate, so I might have it instead of the peach pie.  Anybody need a case of peaches?"  Everybody shakes their head no in unison.

"I'd rather eat dirt than eat another banana.  By the time we ate banana pudding, banana smoothies, sliced bananas on our cereal, made and froze 6 double batches of banana bread before all those free bananas turned brown, I am starting to feel like a monkey.  I would have been better off smoking the peel."

"I wondered why you were looking at my scalp for head lice."

Sigh.

"Uh waitress, I'll have The Long Island Iced Tea.  I'm going to drink my lunch."

Have a good week, 
Hugs,

Long Island Iced Tea and Strumpets

Ok, now that the hupla has quieted down and my royal hangover is over, I can confess that my BFF, Lady Tina Tiny and I did in fact have a Long Island Iced Tea & Crumpets Strumpets Party to celebrate the Royal Uniting. 

We were also celebrating that we know how to make Long Island Iced Tea (LIT) and that we happen to have between the two of us all the necessary ingredients.  In case you don’t know about Long Island Ice Tea, I have included a how-to video at the bottom of this post.  I’ll let you figure out how to be a Strumpet* all by yourself.

The one good thing about returning to Big Thicket is my best friend Tina. Tina Fredricks and I were best friends all through school.  Okay she was also my only friend.  Tina and I were both shy and could hardly speak to another person but for some reason we could talk to each other and we did, all day long. This was before texting when we actually wrote notes on paper with pens or pencils and passed them to each other in class or in the hall.

We couldn’t have been closer if we had been born Siamese twins.   We did everything together including having crushes on the same boys and it didn’t matter.  There was no competition or jealously because we both knew the boy didn’t have a clue that we were alive.

Tina never left Big Thicket but we stayed in touch through the years and it has been really great to get to see her everyday.  Tina married a local boy after I left town and is still happily married to him. 

Robert Timothy Tiny, the oldest son of Ben and Louise Tiny, and no, to my knowledge no one in the world has ever called him Tim Tiny.  You see when he popped into this world forty something years ago, he came in at 11lbs and 5 ounces and everybody who saw him from the doctor to the nurses to his parents said exactly the same thing, “My God he is big.” And it stuck.

Tina who is now Tina Tiny is married to Big Tiny and they are one of those couples that I admire so much, even if they have those really dumb names.

As promised here is a strumpet giving you directions on how to make the "Tea".



Beware the Long Island Iced Tea:  It can set your Inner Strumpet Free!
Hugs,

P.S. *A strumpet is a loose woman first described by Shakespeare. A crumpet is a piece of cake served with butter or a person (or, collectively, persons) considered sexually desirable.  Either way, it's good to be a tasty little morsel.