65/90, sweet tea

As the weather started warmer, I've had an insatiable thirst for sweet tea. Occasionally, I'll swing by a gas station to grab a bottle, but this is not cost effective... and most of the time it's more sweet than tea.

I want a hint of peach syrup with slices at the bottom of my glass, covered with ice cubes. I want just that hint of lemon with just enough sugar to pull the tart together with the dry, warm tea flavor. I want a pitcher sitting on my front porch, warming in the sun with a small collection of bees lazily circling.

I want to find the perfect sweet tea recipe.

I didn't like tea, not really, before I started dating Joe. He was drinking three cups of green tea a day, so I naturally joined in–not three cups, but most of one. For a long time, I struggled to get past the texture of the flavored water and the slime that my lip balm would make float on the water.

So last year, I decided to give sweet tea another chance. I bought a jar of instant, but it sat around so long after I'd opened it that the contents turned into one solid tea brick.

Then I tried making iced white peach tea, but didn't concentrate the tea flavor. I added ice, forgot about it, and let the whole mess get watered down. It sat in the fridge for about a week before I dumped it down the drain.

This time, I spent twenty minutes sifting through Iced Tea, Sweet Tea, Peach Tea, Quick Summer Tea and Southern Tea recipes before I found a few that looked like a good starting place. I'm avoiding sun tea for a bit... let's master inside first before involving the outdoors.

I brought two cups of fresh, cold water to a rapid boil. I poured it over four tea bags and let it steep for 20 minutes. I added what looked like a little less than two quarts of water.

At this point, Rachel, my roommate, asked what I was doing. She said she'd never used the concentrate method. She'd used enough tea bags and water to make a pitcher. I said I trusted the recipe, and I put the pitcher in the fridge.

At about 10 p.m. last night, when my eyes were burning from eight straight hours of computer work, I went back to the kitchen. I added some sugar to the tea, stirred it with the biggest spoon that I could find. I put the sweetened tea back in the fridge.


I still haven't tried it.

There are several domestic skills that I've mastered. Like scrubbing a sink or removing stains from glasses or making beds or baking pretty much anything (assuming the stove functions properly). There are also several that I am a large failure at. Like not killing things, growing things, cooking rice or removing stains from my clothes.


I'm always afraid to add to this list. It always moves me ahead in my mind, to the day my future child

asks me to help her make tea and I have to say I can't. I'm afraid to try the tea, even though that was the point of this whole thing, to keep trying recipes until I make one work in just the way I want it–that hint of flavor, that deep caramel color with hidden fruit slices and that perfect ping of ice cubes against the glass.

I'm going to go get a glass of tea.