Where I Come From
Experiments in Tea
For several years now, I've been struggling with a certain caffeinated beverage that rarely comes canned in aluminum: tea. (Of course, now it does come in cans, and bottles, both of which are very probably disgusting and are doubtfully fresh-brewed.) Now, in spite of what most people seem to assume, I am from the South, where tea is our Coke-Cola, and Coke-Cola is our water (and water's what you serve in prison, or to health-nuts, or when you're not feeling very hospitable toward your guests). And when I say "tea," in the South there is only one kind of tea that exists: it's strong, and it's sweet, and it's always cold. Your dentist should be able to tell how many glasses of tea you've had in a year based on the number of cavities you come in with (given that I only had three cavities last time, you can tell that life at Duke has lead me to neglect my Southern duties).
Drinking tea is like breathing; both are necessary to sustain Southern life. It's already bad enough that I don't like grits and have had the phrase "Yer nawt frum arawnd heyr, arr yew?" drawled at me IN MY OWN HOMETOWN. If I didn't like tea, well god, I would be a hopeless yankee. If Uncle Trasker, and Virgil, and Gaynell thought I didn't like tea, they'd never invite me back to the yearly family Christmas Bingo and Chowder Soup Get-Together, let alone any of the church potlucks. I'm pretty sure my entry would be wiped out of the family directory, and they'd repossess my copy of the church cookbook. Luckily I do like tea, sweet iced tea ("s'waiyt ahsd tay"), and we can avoid that horrible ostracized fate. However, I would like to make a small confession: I'm an iced tea snob. I never drink iced tea in restaurants, at home, during holidays, on vacations, from work, on airplanes--but I have a good reason. In my life, I have experienced less than five glasses of iced tea so perfect, so exquisitely and unbelievably delicious, that to drink anything less than these paragons of liquid refreshment would be sacrilege. I don't want to say that Robert E. Lee would roll over in his blessed grave were I to drink inferior iced teas, but that's pretty close to the truth. I just can't drink bad tea when I know such immaculately superior tea exists in the world, when I know that my own taste buds have experienced that miracle and have danced with praise for it. I can remember the last glass of godly iced tea I bore witness to; it was spring break, my senior year of high school, in Savannah, Georgia (as would only be proper). I was wearing pseudo-antebellum dress, dining in a stately example of fine Southern architecture, and the tea was sweet enough to pay for my dentist's retirement. Ye gods, it was amazing. And it came on the heels of a glass of iced tea a few days earlier, also in Savannah, which had been a distillation of Southern charm poured in a glass and served in a wonderful hidden little restaurant. I've gone two years now without a glass of good tea.
But that's not my real struggle. My struggle has been with a strange variety of tea that has been referred to not as iced, but as "hot." In my experience, the majority of my hot water has been bathwater, and the majority of the hot tea I've had to drink has tasted like weakly flavored bathwater. I've tried and tried to attempt to enjoy hot tea, drinking black hot tea, green hot tea, flavored hot tea, green tea frappuccino (which isn't actually hot, and which tastes like green vomit, and coincidentally, also looks like green vomit), spiced hot tea, and all with no luck. Every time I sip on some hot tea, my taste buds twist in confusion and whisper to each other, "What, she's 19 now? Why is she still drinking bath water?" Unless of course I drink extremely hot tea too soon, in which case they scream "WHY IS THIS BATH WATER SO HOT??" The only exception to this rule has been Oregon Chai tea, which is strong, flavorful, and rarely tastes like tea to me, which is exactly why I like it so much.
What does it matter, you probably don't care to know and doubtfully are thinking to yourself, well, it matters because I hear tell rumors that these hot teas are full of so-called benefits of the health variety, and are supposedly good for sore throats (which is what I currently have after about forty minutes solid of screaming in Cameron Indoor Stadium last night). For now, I still dislike the taste of plain hot tea, but I've started making progress. Progress with one Irish Breakfast tea bag, about seven ounces of water, two packets of Splenda, and a French Vanilla individual creamer. Granted, the drink that was created bore little resemblance to hot tea, but I drank it, and somewhere amid the sweeteners it was actually tea, and that tea (/French Vanilla creamer / Splenda) was actually palatable.
For several years now, I've been struggling with a certain caffeinated beverage that rarely comes canned in aluminum: tea. (Of course, now it does come in cans, and bottles, both of which are very probably disgusting and are doubtfully fresh-brewed.) Now, in spite of what most people seem to assume, I am from the South, where tea is our Coke-Cola, and Coke-Cola is our water (and water's what you serve in prison, or to health-nuts, or when you're not feeling very hospitable toward your guests). And when I say "tea," in the South there is only one kind of tea that exists: it's strong, and it's sweet, and it's always cold. Your dentist should be able to tell how many glasses of tea you've had in a year based on the number of cavities you come in with (given that I only had three cavities last time, you can tell that life at Duke has lead me to neglect my Southern duties).
Drinking tea is like breathing; both are necessary to sustain Southern life. It's already bad enough that I don't like grits and have had the phrase "Yer nawt frum arawnd heyr, arr yew?" drawled at me IN MY OWN HOMETOWN. If I didn't like tea, well god, I would be a hopeless yankee. If Uncle Trasker, and Virgil, and Gaynell thought I didn't like tea, they'd never invite me back to the yearly family Christmas Bingo and Chowder Soup Get-Together, let alone any of the church potlucks. I'm pretty sure my entry would be wiped out of the family directory, and they'd repossess my copy of the church cookbook. Luckily I do like tea, sweet iced tea ("s'waiyt ahsd tay"), and we can avoid that horrible ostracized fate. However, I would like to make a small confession: I'm an iced tea snob. I never drink iced tea in restaurants, at home, during holidays, on vacations, from work, on airplanes--but I have a good reason. In my life, I have experienced less than five glasses of iced tea so perfect, so exquisitely and unbelievably delicious, that to drink anything less than these paragons of liquid refreshment would be sacrilege. I don't want to say that Robert E. Lee would roll over in his blessed grave were I to drink inferior iced teas, but that's pretty close to the truth. I just can't drink bad tea when I know such immaculately superior tea exists in the world, when I know that my own taste buds have experienced that miracle and have danced with praise for it. I can remember the last glass of godly iced tea I bore witness to; it was spring break, my senior year of high school, in Savannah, Georgia (as would only be proper). I was wearing pseudo-antebellum dress, dining in a stately example of fine Southern architecture, and the tea was sweet enough to pay for my dentist's retirement. Ye gods, it was amazing. And it came on the heels of a glass of iced tea a few days earlier, also in Savannah, which had been a distillation of Southern charm poured in a glass and served in a wonderful hidden little restaurant. I've gone two years now without a glass of good tea.
But that's not my real struggle. My struggle has been with a strange variety of tea that has been referred to not as iced, but as "hot." In my experience, the majority of my hot water has been bathwater, and the majority of the hot tea I've had to drink has tasted like weakly flavored bathwater. I've tried and tried to attempt to enjoy hot tea, drinking black hot tea, green hot tea, flavored hot tea, green tea frappuccino (which isn't actually hot, and which tastes like green vomit, and coincidentally, also looks like green vomit), spiced hot tea, and all with no luck. Every time I sip on some hot tea, my taste buds twist in confusion and whisper to each other, "What, she's 19 now? Why is she still drinking bath water?" Unless of course I drink extremely hot tea too soon, in which case they scream "WHY IS THIS BATH WATER SO HOT??" The only exception to this rule has been Oregon Chai tea, which is strong, flavorful, and rarely tastes like tea to me, which is exactly why I like it so much.
What does it matter, you probably don't care to know and doubtfully are thinking to yourself, well, it matters because I hear tell rumors that these hot teas are full of so-called benefits of the health variety, and are supposedly good for sore throats (which is what I currently have after about forty minutes solid of screaming in Cameron Indoor Stadium last night). For now, I still dislike the taste of plain hot tea, but I've started making progress. Progress with one Irish Breakfast tea bag, about seven ounces of water, two packets of Splenda, and a French Vanilla individual creamer. Granted, the drink that was created bore little resemblance to hot tea, but I drank it, and somewhere amid the sweeteners it was actually tea, and that tea (/French Vanilla creamer / Splenda) was actually palatable.