We don't even ask for sweet tea. If the tea is not sweet, at least a little, it is hot tea, or chinese tea.
And southerners rarely drink hot chinese tea.
It never really gets cold here, you see. In the winter, 50 degrees is freezing cold. Still no warrent for hot beverages, maybe lukewarm at best.
A traditional southerner will offer you a beverage before you get your coat off. It comes from horse and buggy days, when travelling was hot and thirsty work. A good host will still offer you a beverage upon arriving in your air conditioned sedan, even if they see your Bo-jangles cup still in your hand. You might be out!
The sweetness is also an artifact of the south. Unsweetened tea is bitter and does not invite copious consumption. Beverages that entice you to drink more stave off strokes and heat exhaustion for people who work outside in 100+ weather, whether they are modern gardeners or old-school share-croppers.
You cannot truly make it sweet after it is cool. So those sugar packets that are ubiquitous are useless for sweetening tea.
Proper tea is made this way: A glass jar awaits with one cup of sugar for one gallon of tea. One quart of water is boiled in an open pot and removed from the heat while you open the packets of family size tea bags (Lipton in eastern NC). Three are added and allowed to steep for 4 minutes. Then the hot tea is added to the gallon jug, stirred to dissolve the sugar, and then topped off with cool tap water. The removal from the heat and allowing it to cool slightly from boiling before adding the tea is the trick to mellow tea. Tea thrown into boiling water sends off bitter tannic acid that you do not want. It is served over ice. It is too concentrated to drink straight up.
The official house wine of the south gives you sugar, coolness, and a mild caffeine hit all at once. It was the original Pepsi or Coca-Cola. Genteel and wealthy people would whip you up some lemonade, which was pridefully expensive due to the rarity of lemons, but not so much anymore.
Refridgeration has changed this tradition, but the culinary traditions that co-evolved with iced tea now mandate that they be served with tea because the flavors marry so well.
Beware unsweetened ice tea in the south. There is no telling how long it has been sitting around as no one here drinks it and it sours at room temperature. Consider yourself warned.
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In my family, tea was never served to children. It was considered a grown-up drink. Probably dueto the caffeine. My Boy is almost 4 and he has never drunk anything except Silk, Milk, and water. I tried to give him some tea and his reaction was, "yuck" and to spit it out.
He will learn.
Sweet tea is a normal component of "soul food". A lot of urban areas have a lot of blacks that bring a fondness for sweet tea with them.
It is like minnesota folks and their dried fish. I'm not gonna eat it, but I can guess where anyone eating it is from. Or thereabouts.
I can't tolerate lemon in tea, though. This is a northern addition. You either wanted lemonade or tea. Make up your mind.
Lemon in tea is an aberration and should be stopped. I do not know why people insist on putting that yellow wedge onto my perfectly good glass of tea.
When my wife and I were in London on our honeymoon, I put milk in my hot tea for breakfast only because that's what you're supposed to do apparently, so I thought I'd try it like that. It wasn't bad at all!
I happen to like mixing sugar in after it's cooled because of that last, sweet, icy, grainy swallow at the bottom of the glass.
A concoction...maybe even a non-alcoholic cocktail.
But definitely not sweet tea.
Did you eat it with horrible frozen dried fish?
I'm pretty much a breakfast optional kind of guy, but I was kind of peckish, so I ordered eggs, hash browns, ham, toast and, you guessed it, tea. I was brought a glass of a lightly tea-flavored thin syrup. I drank it to be polite (I was in a foreign land after all and felt the need to abide by local custom), but my teeth ached all the way back to Mass. To this day I attribute my diabetes to that glass of treacly fluid.
If you could come to my house, I would make you an excellent southern dinner suitable for a diabetic and serve you tea that might change your mind on it.
1 3/4 c sugar
18 c water
bring to boil in large saucepan and turn off heat
wash outside of six lemons
roll lemons on cutting board to soften them up a bit
cut lemons in half and juice, reserve juice
add halved lemon shells to still hot water
add 3 family sized tea bags
(optional, add some sprigs of mint)
after two hours of just sitting there on top of the stove, no heat, add the reserved lemon juice
strain and chill
cheers! and look forward to trying yours.
(the introduction of lemon is bound to stir some passion, I know)
Do you guys still get that delicacy known as "blow toads"? Probably one of the best fish I've ever tasted, a relative of the much more dangerous Japanese Fugu. I had them at a friend's grandparent's house when I lived in Richmond, VA for a couple of years as a kid in high school.
I think we just went to the wrong place for breakfast, we went to lunch up the street and it was killer. I passed on the sweet tea, though.
I think you've probably also got some pots I'd like to run my eyes over, I don't know a lot about it, but I do know how to appreciate.
lightly sweetened tea
macerated cucumbers and tomato
collards cooked with jowl meat
pan seared pork chops with a spicy rub
pidgeon peas with fresh chopped tomato
dry pan fried cornbread
chilled watermelon for dessert
everything there is low glycemic index except the tea and the cornbread which you would limit. But it would all be really good.
We had chicken pastry tonight, a treat that requires extra insulin. But you don't have it all the time. Lunch was a salad of romaine, cucumber, and tomato with a light homemade vinaigrette.
I really like catfish, bluefish, and spanish mackerel. Also mahi and shark. But I eat fish out. I don't like the smell in the house.
Get this for weird culinaria: I like to cook on the wood kiln when it is firing. I always throw something up there to BBQ. I get about 2200 degrees inside the kiln and the top usually hits about 8-900 degrees so it does a nice pork roast. I have also wok cooked with my 150,000 btu raku burner. heat is heat!
I am building a bread oven if this heat ever lets up. Over 100 degrees today. No global warming my ass!
I would try your lemon tea. With that much going on, it sounds good. It is just the insipid singular slice of lemon in perfectly good tea that makes me crazy.
I even make (gasp!) decaf tea. It is even mellower than the regular.
Your menu makes me drool, I am so there. I love tomatoes and cucumber together, my grandmother used to do it on the farm in Vermont when I was kid with fruit that was just on the vine a few hours before. The acid in the tomatoes just balances the bitter from the cukes. In Seattle we're having the coldest Spring since something like 1917, while you guys back on the Atlantic seaboard are frying, we're freezing and getting rained on. So tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden are a ways off it seems. And we don't even try watermelon, the growing season just isn't long enough here.
What is your position on the Mint Julep?
I am a southern aberration. I hate mint. In all forms except the "Andes mint" chocolate candy. I cannot abide it, even in toothpaste. I was always a Close-Up or Tom's girl.
I have wondered, as you have written in this post, that this has become the norm due to the extreme heat. Most servers seem happy to oblige, but in some local restaurants, they are highly offended. I have been afraid that perhaps it is bad manners, but since I am a transplant, would not deign to ask or comment...Can anyone help me out here? I like to use my manners :) Thanks!
It is ok to ask for the rest of your tea "to go". I do not believe it is rude to ask.
But to be polite, I usually do it this way:
" Could I just buy a cup? I want to take my tea with me."
They will either offer you a togo cup for free, at which point you increase your tip by a dollar, or they will charge you for a cup. But now you know. Since every establishment differs, you will have to play it by ear. It is indeed about the heat. But I have asked for a cup for my coffee before, too. (again, the temp.)
I think that demanding a cup is very different from offering to buy a cup. The first doesn't allow for the extra inventory of cups that they do not charge for. In that way, it is rude. Most places have to togo cups with their regalia on them. That would make them free adverts as you walk around with your cup. I find that an agreeable exchange of services.
But really, just ask to buy one. They might say, "I;m sorry, but we don't do that." In which case, now you know.
Tea is very cheap. I would not ask for a togo cup of any other beverage except for my remaining coffee if they happened to refill it just as I was leaving.
Welcome to the South!
For me, tea= no sugar, and 1/8 of a lemon wedge squeezed into it, over ice.