I Miss Sweet Tea!

Here is an excerpt from my new favorite magazine, Garden and Gun. It is like Southern Living, with an Edge.

"Sweet tea is the devil's brew, blood-sugar-wise. A glass of sweet tea is around 22 percent sugar, twice that of a can of cola. Add to that the ubiquitous free refills one is accustomed to getting with sweet tea, and you're looking at enough sugar to choke Augustus Gloop. When you drink sweet tea, your body starts to pump out insulin like water from a fire hose. Then, you have the caffeine. Which stimulates your adrenaline. Which confuses your metabolism. And keeps you from feeling sated, as one normally would after swallowing that much sweetness. Only a select few can eat seven pieces of cheesecake at a sitting, for example. But nearly everyone I know nods and says, "Just one more" when the lunch lady comes around toting the clear pitcher with the rubber band snapped around the handle.

Say what you will, but sweet tea is the real hillbilly heroin. To say Southerners drink sweet tea like water is both true and not. True because the beverage is served at every meal, and all times and venues in between—at church and at strip clubs, at preschools and in nursing homes. Not true because unlike water or wine or even Coca-Cola, sweet tea means something. It is a tell, a tradition. Sweet tea isn't a drink, really. It's culture in a glass. Like Guinness in Ireland. Or ouzo in Greece. "

I came across this article in Philadelphia, Ms while at a veterinary conference and immediately decided to find it the minute I got home and file it in my "Cool stuff to keep." So much of what it says is true! I do truly miss a big fat glass of swwwweeeetttt tea with crushed ice and a little piece of lemon ( or lime). Like I have said before, diabetes really busts the fun balloon!

My grandmother used to make her tea so sweet that you could see the swirls of melted sugar in the pitcher if you held it up to the light. She always made two pitchers for a Sunday dinner and had them waiting on the side table with a "tea towel" over the top.

In the past, people who had to have unsweetened tea were pityed ( not sure how to spell that, but it is pity in the past tense) and provided with whatever artificial sweetener was lingering behind the garlic powder. Now, there are lots of artificials that are not too bad, although I have found that the perfect tea or coffee compilation is : one yellow, one blue, and one pink. Sometimes two of each if it is a "route 44" size cup. The only bad thing is that they all come in different count boxes and it is near impossible to make them all come out equally in the end. OCD anyone?????

Read Garden and Gun.....it is a great magazine and really does give a great "pitcher" of modern Southern life.