By School started this week in Lexington, which doesn't affect me directly since all my children are grown, but I noticed it the way you notice a change in the weather — the buses running again, the traffic heavier in the morning, the neighborhood quieter during the day. Clay would have been starting his junior year if he'd gone to college. He didn't. He went to the Army. He came home different. He's sober now, one year and two months, and that's the only graduation that matters.
Drove to the butcher on Southland Drive, the one that actually has a counter and a man with a apron and a saw and doesn't pretend that meat comes from a factory. Bought a pork loin, four inches of pork belly, and soup bones. The pork belly is an experiment — I want to make my own bacon, cured and smoked, the way it was done before Oscar Mayer decided to do it for us. Found a recipe online that calls for pink curing salt and five days in the refrigerator and I ordered the salt from Amazon, which is a sentence that would make Betty's head spin — ordering salt from the internet to cure pork that her mother cured in the smokehouse with table salt and time and faith.
Made pork loin for dinner Wednesday. Brined it overnight in salt water with garlic and peppercorns and a bay leaf, then roasted it in the oven at 400 until the outside was golden and the inside was juicy and the kitchen smelled like Sunday dinner. Served it with mashed sweet potatoes and green beans from the garden and biscuits that I'm getting better at — not Betty's biscuits yet, but closer. The lard helps. I'm using lard now in the biscuits and the fried chicken and the pie crust and Connie has stopped objecting because the food is better and Connie is practical enough to choose flavor over longevity, at least at the dinner table.
Amber texted a photo of herself at a nursing conference in Nashville. She was wearing professional clothes and a name tag and standing next to a poster about pediatric triage protocols and she looked so much like Connie that I showed Connie and Connie said that's not me, Craig. I said I know. I said but it could be. She said no, it couldn't, I never went to a conference. I said that's what I mean. Amber is going where we didn't. Amber is going somewhere.
A dinner like that — the brined pork loin, the sweet potatoes, the biscuits I’m still perfecting — needs a proper glass of sweet tea beside it. Not the powdered kind, not the bottled kind, but real sweet tea, brewed slow and sweetened while it’s still hot so the sugar dissolves all the way through. Betty never wrote down how she made hers, but it wasn’t complicated. The best things at her table never were.
Smooth Sweet Tea
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes (plus chilling) | Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 6 cups water, divided
- 4 family-size tea bags (or 8 regular-size black tea bags)
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- Ice, for serving
- Lemon slices or fresh mint, for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Boil the water. Bring 2 cups of water to a rolling boil in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat.
- Steep the tea. Add the baking soda to the hot water, then add the tea bags. Let steep for 10 minutes. Do not squeeze the bags — this keeps the tea smooth and free of bitterness.
- Sweeten while hot. Remove and discard the tea bags. Add the sugar to the hot tea concentrate and stir until completely dissolved.
- Dilute and chill. Pour the sweetened concentrate into a 2-quart pitcher. Add the remaining 4 cups of cold water and stir well. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, at least 1 hour.
- Serve. Pour over a tall glass of ice. Garnish with lemon slices or fresh mint if desired.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 100 | Protein: 0g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 25g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 10mg