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Memories steeped in sweet tea
The State ^ | Jan. 30, 2002 | Jay C. Grelen

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.


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To: aomagrat
OK, that's two posts lauding the benefits of Luzianne brand. Is it better than Lipton? Now, in my house, my wife (a non-tea drinking Californian: Yankee) makes me tea using Lipton's, but that's just because my Mama taught her how, and that's what Mama has always used.

I confess that I have switched to Equal instead of using sugar, to cut back on the calories. I'll sometimes drink two pitchers a day, and the sugar is just too much...

Lemon is OK, so is mint. But I'll skip the unsweet tea. BTW, Equal does a better job than sugar in sweeting iced tea in the glass.

61 posted on 01/31/2002 8:46:06 AM PST by TontoKowalski
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To: sweetliberty
I never minded picking butterbeans.

Oh, butterbeans were the worst to pick. With peas, you could just walk down the rows and pick by the handful. With butterbeans, you practically have to roll around in the dirt, because they're so close to the ground.

On second thought, okra was the worst to gather, because it itched.

62 posted on 01/31/2002 8:49:45 AM PST by TontoKowalski
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To: aomagrat
My Granny used to serve sweet tea in an Autumn Leaf pitcher at every meal in the warm weather.

I didn't know she was southern!

She was raised in land-locked Utah and ran a boarding house. She was the best cook in Utah county! I have recently aquired the pitcher she used and I will make sweet tea today (It's 5 degrees outside).Is Lipton's OK?

Comfort food.

63 posted on 01/31/2002 8:51:36 AM PST by KateUTWS
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To: blackdog
LOL!! I remember the first time I went out of the South on a trip with my family. Couldn't have been more than 10 years old at the time. We stopped into a restaurant up near Washington DC. All of us ordered tea to drink. The waitress brought the unsweetened tea and when my father asked for sweet tea, the waitress made the comment that there was sugar on the table.
64 posted on 01/31/2002 8:56:03 AM PST by billbears
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To: TontoKowalski
A Taste of Luzianne
65 posted on 01/31/2002 8:57:20 AM PST by aomagrat
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To: TontoKowalski
"With butterbeans, you practically have to roll around in the dirt, because they're so close to the ground"

You didn't use poles?

66 posted on 01/31/2002 9:00:33 AM PST by sweetliberty
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To: sweetliberty
No, Daddy liked the kind that were little bushes, about a foot high. Two feet if you were lucky. The beans hung down on the underside of the bush. I have to admit that they were wonderful beans, but what a pain to pick. Hoeing was no picnic, but it beat picking them.

He always planted a HUGE garden, and as the boy in the family, I was expected to do my part. (My sister's chores were inside the house. She thought I was lucky. In retrospect, we were both lucky.) I'd get stationed at one end of a row with a large bucket and be told to get started. There were many rows, and they went on and on and on...

67 posted on 01/31/2002 9:14:45 AM PST by TontoKowalski
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To: sweetliberty
You didn't use poles?

My grandfather planted corn and beans together so the beans would grow up the corn stalks.

68 posted on 01/31/2002 9:15:38 AM PST by aomagrat
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To: TontoKowalski;aomagrat
Do y'all remember Golden Crown syrup? It came in a blue can with a gold crown on it.
69 posted on 01/31/2002 9:30:39 AM PST by sweetliberty
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To: sweetliberty
I don't remember the name, but granny had a can of syrup that had a lid like a paint can. That was some strong syrup!
70 posted on 01/31/2002 9:41:33 AM PST by aomagrat
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To: aomagrat
"I don't remember the name, but granny had a can of syrup that had a lid like a paint can. That was some strong syrup!"

It was that type of can. It was rich stuff. i never tasted anything like it since. It was SO good.

71 posted on 01/31/2002 9:47:47 AM PST by sweetliberty
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To: all
I like black tea. My parents have a very British background, so it used to be our beverage of choice. We only made hot tea, but I love the cold variety too. What peeves me is asking for tea and getting a cup of hot water with a teabag in it. You can't make tea that way. Proper tea requires steeping the tea bags (or loose tea) in water that starts off nearly boiling, it can't be done in a cup. I like it strong, really strong. Red Rose and Tetley are the big brands up here (in Canada).
Now as to iced tea, I'd always had it cold, sweetened and with lemon. When I was younger, we were travelling through the north east and I got iced tea at a service center Burger King. It was unsweetened, with no lemon either. Yuck! That's not iced tea to me, just cold tea.
72 posted on 01/31/2002 9:48:39 AM PST by -YYZ-
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To: sweetliberty
I don't remember the brand, but it had the "paint can" lid on it. A little dab would do you...

I've enjoyed this thread so much. It brings back fond memories. My grandmother, raised in the rural South during the depression, was fanatic about canning and freezing vegetables. My wife does it now, but it's not because she HAS to like the fine women from my family did.

Of course, our backyard garden is really just some tomato plants, cucumbers, okra, and maybe a few beans. It certainly can't rival the scope of the gardens of my boyhood.

My grandmother also made Tomato Gravy. Which was home canned tomatoes mixed with a little bacon grease and water and salt and pepper and simmered in an iron skillet. Served over biscuits. My wife makes in now with her home canned tomatos, and it is a huge hit. It must be a Mississippi thing, because other Southerners I've met have never heard of it. It was a breakfast staple during my childhood.

You have got to try it. It can be made with storebought tomatoes, but home canned is much better. The biscuits must be made from scratch, but you don't seem to be a wop-biscuit kind of lady anyway.

73 posted on 01/31/2002 10:12:48 AM PST by TontoKowalski
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To: AppyPappy
Silver Queen corn sure makes me smile

Agree entirely. This new corn is so sweet I might as well eat a sugar cube. My husband tells me I am just hopelessly old fashioned liking Silver Queen. He had me thinking that I was the only one who remembers and likes it.

74 posted on 01/31/2002 10:26:16 AM PST by twigs
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To: Squantos
Sun tea

Yes. Apparently it is so. I reluctantly stopped making it years ago.

75 posted on 01/31/2002 10:27:29 AM PST by twigs
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To: twigs
What the reasoning for it ! Would like to know if ya have time to educate me.

Thanks and Stay safe !

76 posted on 01/31/2002 10:30:08 AM PST by Squantos
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To: billbears
Although I'm from VA, I never did much like sweet tea. One summer while a youth director at a church in Waynesboro, I organized a picnic and was responsible for the tea. Since I didn't like sweet tea, I assumed--wrongly--that others would not like it either. So I made it w/o sugar and put sugar beside it. People were furious and I heard about it for the rest of the summer. So much for gracious southerners, much less Christians! The complaining left me with a lesson I'll never forget. Now I make sweet and unsweet tea separately when around southerners!
77 posted on 01/31/2002 10:32:18 AM PST by twigs
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To: twigs
So much for gracious southerners, much less Christians!

The only thing that'll rile southerners more than ice tea is BBQ.

78 posted on 01/31/2002 10:37:36 AM PST by aomagrat
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To: Squantos
For the life of me, Squantos, I cannot remember exactly what happens to the tea. A neighbor of mine at the time read about the problem about the same time that I did and after discussing it, we both agreed that we should use more care in making it. B/c I worked, I could not bring it in after 3 hours, which was the maximum length of time that it should be left out. Herbal teas are particularly prone. I began making it in the refrigerator. Now I like that almost as much. Almost!
79 posted on 01/31/2002 10:53:23 AM PST by twigs
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To: NoCurrentFreeperByThatName
That's because you are a Yankee.

Hahahaha. Prove it.

80 posted on 01/31/2002 12:12:14 PM PST by riley1992
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