Iced Tea Season

For June 8, 2022

You can’t truly experience summertime in Missouri without iced tea. At this writing the temperature early on this June day is 56 degrees, more of a hot chocolate morning, but residents of the Show Me State know sweltering weather will materialize soon enough.

How do you make your tea? Boiling water was poured into a saucepan containing Lipton tea bags. I guess that saucepan had no lid, because a plate was used for steeping. When the tea bags were removed, the sugar was added. That concoction was poured into a pitcher or jug, tap water was added before going into the fridge. Ice cubes were dropped into individual glasses on serving.

Not very scientific, but the satisfying taste was consistent. When I started making tea, I used the trial-and-error method for determining the number of teabags and how much sugar to add. (I had asked a billion times for the how-to’s of gravy and cornbread. I didn’t want to add iced tea to that list). Modifications had to be made depending on the size of the teabags and amount of sugar on hand, but I managed.

Even tea hasn’t escaped trends. For several years sun tea jars could be found on window sills or backyard picnic tables. That is deemed not so safe these days, but we never suffered any ill effects. It didn’t taste quite as good to me since we added sugar to each glass.

Then sugar became the bad guy, and liquid Fasweet became the go-to sweetener. That eliminated the dilemma of trying to dissolve sugar in a glass of sun tea, but using that sugar substitute was way more unsafe than brewing tea in the kitchen window.

And that instant tea. Yuck. I could never dissolve enough sugar to camouflage the bitterness of that stuff. Water tastes better.

June is National Iced Tea month. If everyone raves about yours, do posterity a favor and write down your ingredients - including the amounts - and outline your procedure. Friday (6/10) is Iced Tea Day. Enjoy it how you like it. And have a sweater handy in case sultry temps stall a bit.