Secret of the South: Sweet Tea

I was talking to tea-dom's own Emily Thomas about how I loved the weird iced tea she'd made, and to explain the difference between it and mere Snapple. Emily did her impression of Dolly Parton as Truvy Jones in Steel Magnolias exclaiming, "Sweet tea! It's the house wine of the South!"  I shrank back in horror, but then realizing her Dolly impression was over, made a gesture for her to please continue.

"When, I look back on any given memory of my childhood in Florence, South Carolina ," she began, "my mother always seems to appear out of nowhere to refill all of our glasses with sweet iced tea. We drank it more than we drank water.

"This did not seem strange to me until I moved to New York. I ordered sweet tea in a restaurant and the waitress gave me a funny look and said, 'We don't have sweet tea. We have tea and we have sugar.'

"I, like any Southern Belle worth her grits, know that there is an immeasurable difference between real sweet tea and this sweet tea imposter, which most Northerners are used to." Here she eyed me with a judgmental concern.  "There's no way to get iced tea sweet enough when it's cold. To make real sweet tea, the sugar or other sweetener, such as honey, must be added while the tea is boiling to form syrup, which then infuses the tea with its signature flavor. When I briefly explained this to the waitress, she said, 'Wow, I'm surprised you're not really fat!'

"This was the first time I had ever thought about the fact that sweet tea may not be good for you. However, I need this type of indulgence once in awhile, not to satisfy some girly sugar craving, but to satisfy the need for a reminder of the South, where there is less concern for keeping up with the latest weight loss "breakthroughs" and more concern for things like family and tradition. While growing up, my family treated food just as they treated any other gift shared between people who actually cared about each other. There were no low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb substitutes for anything in our house. Why feed someone a huge muffin made of bran flakes and air when you can feed them some green beans you grew in the backyard that you prepared with your great-great grandmother's recipe that she got from an innkeeper in New Orleans ? Why eat scrambled egg whites for breakfast only to feel hungry again forty minutes later, when you can eat something that is satisfying not only because it is actual food, but also because you know someone put thought and energy into preparing it for you? Using Splenda instead of sugar is not a substitute for taking care of one's body." I nodded, and indicated that though I was a splenda junkie, I intended on taking a cure real soon.

"This attitude about food is apparent in every aspect of living in the South. People recognize the connections they have with people simply because they live in the same place. "Everyone says hello to everyone else, people are loyal to their hairdressers and grocery stores and auto mechanics. Similarly, Northerners attitudes about food tend to show up in other places: just as people pretend that a fat-free marshmallow brownie is an actual brownie and tastes delicious, people here in the big city pretend that they are not surrounded by a hundred other people on their way to work in the morning and everyone ignores each other. "

"Well gee, Emily," I said. "What can we northerners do to change all this?"

Emily pointed out that Arizona 's sweet tea in a can for 99 cents is an alright substitute, though it is made with corn syrup instead of sugar. "Otherwise, the only restaurant I've had with decent sweet tea is Daisy May's on 11^th and 46^th.  Not only is it perfect, it's served in a mason jar, which is adorable. Most of the time, I just end up making my own with my gran's recipe which is to boil two separate pots of water, 5 cups each. When the first pot boils add ten tea bags, remove from heat, stir, let cool. When the other pot boils, add a cup of sugar and lower heat, stirring until sugar and water form a nice syrup. Mix the sugar syrup in with tea, let cool, add lemon slices if desired and pour over ice."

Though my own tea-related memories were nowhere near as rosy, I had to admire Emily's trusting faithfulness to the old school values which stress family over health. Emily herself is appealingly thin, and yet quaffs sweet tea like she's been crawling through desert scrub for the last three days. It's sweet that's for sure, it's different, it's worth it... it's American heritage in action. I still like splenda though.