Posted on 01/30/2002 10:41:25 AM PST by aomagrat
Sweet tea, as one of the characters in the movie ''Steel Magnolias'' noted, is the house wine of the South.
It is what we drank when we cooled our houses with attic fans. As a teen-age hay hauler, I'd drink a jug a day.
When I sit around telling stories, that's what I drink, winter or summer.
I am the uncaped crusader for the preservation of the tradition, which is in trouble. Young people don't know how to make tea, and bottled liquid they call tea is sprouting like kudzu in stores.
Here is my tea pedigree:
I have consumed sweet tea at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House in Savannah, Ga., and at Crooks Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., where you sweeten your tea with a concoction of mint and sugar water. I have drunk sweet tea with George Wallace.
My sweet-tea crusade developed in a roundabout way in 1993 after I spent a day picking Silver Queen corn in south Alabama. I, sweaty and dirty, went to a catfish joint and ordered a glass of tea to go. The cashier brought a full pitcher and set me in a rocking chair on the porch. I felt obliged to drink the entire pitcher.
I wrote about that woman's kind heart and proposed that sweet tea is much more than a drink. It's the memories of our grandmothers and Sunday lunch. It's a symbol of our hospitality. I invited readers to share a sweet tea memory. Readers rhapsodized.
We learned the importance of tea. My bosses at the Mobile, Ala., newspaper allowed me to sponsor a contest in which a panel selected the best sweet tea. The New York Times published a story about my crusade, which was followed by a story in Saveur, a fancy New York magazine. Then, Southern Living published a small story in which the writer proclaimed me a ``sweet-tea evangelist.''
In 1999, I took the crusade to Oklahoma. The battle there has been lost. To put Oklahomans in perspective, one day I was in a cafe in Hobart. After determining that sweet tea wasn't on the menu, I was happy to find that pinto beans were.
''You have any rice to put under those beans?'' I asked the waitress. She looked at me like I'd ordered a scoop of topsoil.
I have learned that the sugar you use matters. (You can't beat Dixie Crystals.) I use tea from a company in Mobile, which perfected a blend that is as clear after a night in the refrigerator as it is the moment you make it.
Peas were the worst. Fortunately they were not as prolific as butter beans. Shelling butter beans was a several times a week thing at my grandma's house.
When God made this earth he dropped in a tea bush so we'd always have a piece of heaven this side of the grave.
A nice full-boddied Assam is my favorite.
Bird
Having married and with two small boys, my husband joined the army, and we were stationed at Ft. Bragg N.C....one day out for a day of shopping, we stopped at a little restaurant in Fayetteville,N.C, called 'The Ark'....we went in for lunch and had some delicious seafood ...they had a huge dispenser with 'IcedTea' or 'IceTea', or 'SweetTea', whatever you want to call it...and the tea was free...so I thought I would give it a try and see how it was...well it was cold, and sweet and delicious....it was the first time in all my life, I had IceTea which I liked...it was wonderful....and it was free, as much as you wanted...
Later on we went on down to 'The Ark' for dinner....all you could eat Southern BBQ, and freshly cooked seafood, and all the IcedTea or SweetTea you could drink...
Now we live in the Pacific Northwest, and the IceTea here is nothing compared to the IcedTea in the south....I guess all that heat and humidity, has years ago, allowed southeners to perfec this wonderful drink...
No, unsweetened tea is better with certain foods, liver comes to mind, but overall I prefer it sweet.
So9
Georgia State Law REQUIRES restaurants that serve tea to give free refills.
Luzianne is the best. Generic Black Tea works. 6 bags to the gallon, thrown in after the water is boiling. Stand there and watch it for 30 seconds and cut the eye off. Let sit until cool enough to hold on to. Pour more than a cup and a half but less than 2 cups of Dixie Crystals white cane sugar into a glass gallon container (cider jugs need funnels, Wal-Mart has wide mouth jars with screw off lids and a little spigot on the bottom). Pour warm tea in. Close lid. Find a boy and make him shake it vigorously until you get tired of hearing him whine. Fill big glass to the top with ice. Pour tea into the ice. Enjoy. Start another gallon 'cuz that one won't last long.
We found a major national chain restaurant HQ'd in Kentucky. Hallelujah, surely THEY would understand iced tea, even in the winter time. The wide eyed stares should have warned me, but I persisted. If iced tea is on the menu, I want a glass.
Well, I was able to spot them hunting around the kitchen, finally finding a jar of instant tea over the kitchen hood. They needed a long handled spoon to chip out a few grains of caked instant tea.
The tea chips joined water in a glass, followed by an eternity of stirring to get it to mix. No sugar, and nearly no mixing of the sediment. They quickly covered the cup with a lid.
The server smiled as though she had just created life in a glass. The kitchen crew peered out from the window in the kitchen and wondered if anyone was fool enough to actually drink that stuff.
My Yankee wife, oblivious to the realities of instant tea, paid for it and watched as I decided if I could actually taste the mess.
After much goading I removed the lid and tasted just a sip. No sugar, old instant tea, mostly undisolved, made by reprobate Yankees! Absolutely horrible! I didn't dare drink thru the straw and get the stuff on the bottom.
A beaten man, I had to wait for another week to have something decent to drink, when we came south again.
In case any one has any doubts, instant tea is NEVER considered real tea!
Ahh, sweeet tea.
That's because you are a Yankee.
Have you seen the Mason jars with the handles on them? They are made specifically for drinking tea (with sugar, of course) and Jack & Coke.
That ain't cornbread. That's corn cake. They probably eat it with canned pinto beans, as well.
Any one else heard this tale, fable or truth ???........... At 48 years of age I'd hate to get ill after drinking this for 46 plus years :o)
Stay Safe !
Probably the same government official that keeps telling us that over easy eggs are deadly.
But they're a whole lot easier to pick than butter beans (I know, I had to do both!)
I never minded picking butterbeans.
1 cup flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 large sweet potato - cooked and mashed
2 Tbsp honey
Preheat oven to 375 F.
With a good electric mixer, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt till combined. Cream in butter with fingers or a fork until it resembles small crumbs. Add in sweet potato, honey and buttermilk untill mixed through. Don't over mix.
Press the mixture into a 1 inch deep cookie sheet that has been lined with wax paper and refrigerate for 2 hours. Cut out circles with a floured cookie cutter or glass. Place on cookie sheet lined with wax paper again and bake for 10-12 mins until lightly golden brown.
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