How Sweet It Is

I read an interesting quote a few weeks ago: "It's rough. It's been rough on that food. It's different eating here than it is at the house. Ain't got no sweet tea, and ain't got no fried chicken."  Boo Weekley, PGA golfer from Milton, Fla., interviewed by the BBC on Day 2 of the British Open, 7/20/2007.  I don't know much about golfer Boo Weekley, but I know that I like him, mainly because he loves sweet tea and fried chicken.

Sweet tea mania has spread from it's origin in the South to the rest of the country.  We can thank McDonalds for helping spread the sweet tea - this spring, they started serving it in about 3,000 restaurants.  Most restaurants in the South serve sweet tea, and in fact, if you order iced tea and don't specify unsweetened (ewwww) you'll automatically be given sweet tea.  Unless you're diabetic, I see nothing wrong with that.  Hot, flavored tea was the trendy drink until this summer, when sweet tea mania swept.

Legend has it that sweet tea was "invented" in the non-Southern city of St. Louis in 1904. The location was the World's Fair. An Indian tea merchant found himself unable to sell his product due to the sweltering summer heat. As a desperate act, he cooled his customers down by putting his tea on ice and adding sugar.  The rest is history.

My Grandma was not a tea drinker; in fact, she hated it.  But she still would make the best sweet tea that you ever drank.  She never tasted it when making it because she hated it, yet she made the best tea I've ever had.  I guess it was just a Southern Grandmother thing. 

I'm not sure if Elvis liked sweet tea, but I'm thinking that he did, since he was from the South. I bet he would have a glass of it with his peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  If he ever ate supper at a Po' Folks restaurant, I'm sure he would have had a Mason jar of sweet tea to wash down the pinto beans and fried chicken.  As a kid, that was the best part of eating at Po' Folks -- getting to drink out of a jar.  Now on special occasions (like when I haven't unloaded the dishwasher) Mom will serve our tea in pint jars.  With her being diabetic, she makes a pitcher of unsweetened tea, but wo do love our Splenda, and use a couple of packs to sweeten our tea.