House Wine

Dolly Parton said in Steel Magnolias that: "Iced tea is the house wine of the South." She is so right.

Rob wants to post the definitive iced tea recipe, and I think that whatever he posts is gonna be wrong. It'll probably be a good recipe, but iced tea, like gumbo, or cornbread is a regional folk food and has as many legitimate variations as people who are making it.

Most folk foods are simple recipes that are designed to feed a lot of people cheaply and quickly. Your Momma (or Grandma) saw a wagon coming around the bend in the road and told you to kill a chicken. She knew she was going to have to feed people quickly and could make chicken and dumplings with a little flour, salt, and the broth that comes from boiling that chicken.

Or, your PawPaw saw people coming down the bayou and decided the thing to feed a bunch of people quickly was a gumbo. Kill a chicken (we wuz tough on the chicken population), cut up some sausage, pull some onions and okra out of the garden and in about an hour we have a gumbo.

Iced tea was a staple, and still is around my house. Tea, water, sunshine. You got tea. With or without sugar, add ice and you have a drink that satisfies and has certain health values that are only recently coming to light.

Some folks make great tea. Others don't. Iced tea has to be cold, strong, flavorful. If you can taste water, you didn't let it steep long enough, or you have bad water. Sugar it or not, I don't care.

It's like cornbread. Everyone makes it differently. It's a folk food, and we should savor the regional variations. As regards cornbread, though, I have to say that if you believe you should put sugar in your recipe, click here.

And to Rob, I say: Put up that recipe, old hand. It'll probably be wrong.