1st Course in the 4th Circle of Hell's Kitchen

I’m sitting here watching re-runs of Glee, sipping on finger-quote sweet tea. Welcome to Tuesday night.

You see, I made an attempt at sweet tea last night. For those of you who are living vicariously through my blog, I hope you are getting at least a couple of servings of vicarious vegetables a day because I’ve never claimed to be a good cook. On the contrary, you might struggle to find a worse cook. Though I can’t say I suck at it because I generally avoid trying it. It's like saying I suck at having a colonoscopy - I might be good at it, but we'll never know.

When I moved into the house, I had the genius idea to buy cheap food that would keep a long time in order to make my cabinets appear full and to have stuff in the house in case someone came over who could cook. Included in that purchase, were 100 tea bags and 5 pounds of sugar. Last night I put them to not so good use.

While I cooked the frozen chicken tenders [Note: This time I got fancy and put them on a salad.], I decided to make tea. I read the tea bag box which had directions for making one quart of unsweet tea. Turns out, I needed a gallon of sweet tea. It was at this point I started the process. With a call to Mom. She got me started, but I made the critical error of sounding semi-confident on the phone and asking specific questions. Therefore, as soon as I hung up, I had more questions and had abandoned enough of my independence for one day.

So I pulled up Google. 3 queries later, I all but threw in the towel. I was 15 seconds away from trying to calculate fluid ounces to non-fluid ounces so that I could use a Gatorade bottle to measure the sugar when I finally found something with a measurement on it. Sure, it was a piece of Tupperware that was previously home to leftovers from Mom. And yes, my dear mother, I do intend to keep that until you specifically ask for it back.

When it was all said and done, I had made drinkable tea. Honestly, it’s not great, and I have no idea how to improve the process next time, but I count it as a victory nonetheless.

So, to my future wife [Because I know you’re reading this… Well, know is a strong word.], don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’ll mow the yard and change the air filters, but if dinner is left up to me, we’re having Hot Pockets. I love you.

Now if I could figure out how to get my freezer to stop auto-defrosting my ice cubes, I could really pull the wool over the south’s eyes, fill up my Mason jar glasses with some sweet iced tea, and make them think I was from around here. The Mason jar glasses were courtesy of my grandmother... A meal really is a team effort around here.

Finally, I know Glee isn’t real, and some of you may not consider it cool [which is ironic, considering the glee club itself isn’t cool at McKinley High], but Quinn Fabray, if you’re reading this and have ever wanted to go to dinner with an auditor who has a low-traffic blog, I’d be more than happy to oblige. I promise at as many real dates as you want prior to Hot Pockets.