Aug 02 2008
Sweet Tea
When someone comes into my house, they do not have a lot of choice in regards to drinks available. I do keep bottled water on hand, since our tap water has a bad taste to it. Sometimes I have some soft drinks. I generally have the ingredients to make Kool-Aid. Rarely will you enter my home and open my refrigerator that you will not see a pitcher of tea. For those of you that may not be very familiar with my tastes that would be sweet tea. I am southern after all.
If it is fresh made, help yourself to the crushed or cubed ice in the door. If it has been in there awhile, you can still help yourself to the ice, if you want. It has to be cold. The weather outside is just too hot in the summer. Our winters are generally mild, but even if they were freezing, we would just use the weather to chill our tea. Who could do without the tea? That would be like asking me to stop breathing. I will not give up either one willingly.
If you are diabetic or prefer unsweet tea, you better stick with the bottled water. There is no way that I would be able to make you a pitcher of tea that is either hot or unsweet. I will show you where the kitchen is so you can make your own. The Luzianne website refers to sweet ice tea as the “house wine” of southerners. For this southerner, it is my lifeblood.
Sweet tea and iced tea go way back in history. According the Luzianne website at www.luzianne.com, iced tea may have began in the early 1800’s. It was first recorded in cookbooks as being made with green tea leaves and usually included alcohol in the mix. Over time, it has evolved into the almost syrupy concoction that is often ordered in southern restaurants as “sweet tea” or “unsweet tea”.
Even though the history of sweet tea and iced tea goes back much farther than I do, I am definitely old enough to be a stubborn southern woman. When you come to my house, I will offer you a glass of tea. Expect it with ice and with tons of sugar. That is, if you get there before I empty the pitcher. If that is the case, give me a few minutes and you can have some fresh tea. Same rules apply though.
We drink alot of tea at my house and I have to make 2 jugs. One for me with very little sugar and one for my husband and kids which has 2 cups of sugar.
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thanks, i will love your sweet tea :). i actually love anything sweet.
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So true. I’m a Chicagoan, but my grandpa (papa) hails from Kentucky. My best friend currently lives in Georgia where she has become so good at the sweet tea making that her friends there tell her if they didn’t know better they’d think she wasn’t a yankee!
I am from arizona, we drink iced tea, sweet tea, cold tea..anything that will keep you cool..come to my house and I will offer you airconditioning before the tea..
Well, I proved I was a Yank. DH and I went to Rockingham, NC to meet Internet friends in person. It was a Sunday morning, early. We didn’t know if they were up and about so we went to McDonald’s for breakfast. I asked for hot tea. The cashier taking our order looked at me, and went to get her manager. The manager said, “We’re all out of hot tea, but I can give you a cup of the sweet tea we’re brewing and see if that’ll work.”
Another customer said to us, “You’re not from around here are you? Nobody in NC drinks hot tea.”
A year later McDonald’s was serving sweet tea on their menu in Yank territory. Are the two related? Probably not.