Sweet as Sugar

I've had several people ask recently in emails what "sweet tea" is. That makes me sad for you. Poor Yanks. :) According to Wikipedia, "Sweet tea is a form of iced tea in which sugar or some other form of sweetener is added to the hot water before, while brewing the tea, or post-brewing, but before the beverage is chilled and served. This variation of tea enjoys most of its popularity in the Southern United States." Basically, sugar-water with tea. What could be bad about that? I learned (re-learned, probably) today that the solubility of sugar in water varies with the temperature of the water. Since sugar is added to sweet tea while it's still hot, you can dissolve more sugar in the tea. Whatever it is, it's magical.

It's funny to realize that people have never had sweet tea. I've always taken it for granted. It's a staple of the South, but Farmington is just north of the Sweet Tea Line (like the Grits Line and the Coke Line). There were a few restaurants where you could order sweet tea (Captain D's, for example), but not many. We always had a pitcher of sweet tea at home when I was a kid. I'm not sure how that came to be... maybe because my grandparents are from Virginia? We weren't allowed to have soda (yes, "soda") at home unless it was a special occasion, but we still had plenty of sugar in our diets! Besides the fact that it's fabulous, I think I love sweet tea because I associate it with home. I can remember being little and at school or camp and just really, really wanting a glass of tea. I think it was more than thirst. Before I knew what "homesick" meant, I would sometimes long to be sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of tea.

When I was little, my dad worked at a home for children just up the block from our house. There was a playground at the home, so my brothers and I would go up there and play sometimes. We would also go to visit my dad at his office. As long as he wasn't in a session with a kid, my dad would stop what he was doing and visit with us for a while. We often went to the dining hall to get a glass of sweet tea and then talked with Pop while we drank it. It all seemed natural enough at the time - we were quite big, after all - but now I can't imagine having a little kid randomly walk into my office for a visit.

I didn't think much about sweet tea for many years, but as soon as Ian and I found out we were moving to North Carolina, we started looking forward to having sweet tea again. (Houston was a little hit-or-miss on the sweet tea front, but we found enough of it to get Ian - a diet soda drinker, no less - hooked on it.) Since we arrived in Charlotte, I've virtually stopped drinking alcohol. Why get a beer when you could have a sweet tea instead? At a Mexican restaurant, I agonized a bit over whether to have a sweet tea or a margarita. The sweet tea won out and later I noticed someone at the next table drinking both. Genius. There are still the meals that virtually require a glass of wine (steak, particularly) and in those cases, wine usually wins, but it is a rare exception. I've started making sweet tea at home sometimes, too. It's mostly because we're trying hard not to eat out very often and a serious sweet tea craving is enough to make me decide we should eat out even though I don't have much to do all day except think about what to cook for dinner. I don't know why, but it really never crossed my mind to make sweet tea at home before. I knew how to make that before I knew how to cook anything else. Making tea is how I learned that it's a bad idea to pour hot tea into a pitcher that's been in the fridge all night. But since we're responsible adults with weight to watch, I've arbitrarily decided that I can't make it at home more than once per week. We just have to go out for it on the other days. :)

Here are a few links I found for more information about this Southern delicacy... Enjoy!

• Sweet tea recipe from grits.com (basically the way I make tea) - http://grits.com/tea.htm
• http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/IcedTeaHistory.htm
• What Makes Southern Sweet Tea So Special? http://www.slate.com/id/2171917