Sweet Tea

One of my sisters lived in Tennessee for a few years, and she warned me about Southerners and their sweet tea.  In fact, sometimes when she'd order tea at restaurants, the server would ask, "sweetened or...unsweetened?", clearly horrified that the latter option even existed.  Her friends thought it was weird that Northerners drink tea unsweetened.  Sometimes regular tea is referred to as "unsweetened sweet tea."  Here, sweet is an essential element of tea.

Southerners are very serious about their sweet tea, Texans no exception.  When they say "sweet tea", they say it casually, as if the word "sweet" was just an adjective.  So you can imagine my surprise when I ordered a sweet tea at a fast food restaurant and took a sip—it must have had like a bajillion sugar cubes dumped into it.  It was almost viscous because of the sugar.

It was kindof delicious.

When I visit my awesome friends in Fort Worth, they serve sweet tea of a similar (if slightly less intense) nature.  Much to the kids' delight, a little caffeine plus boatloads of sugar is certainly a great recipe for keeping me awake and hyper.

To all you people out there who drink normal tea, allow me to translate:  when Southerners say "sweet tea", they really mean "sweet—with some tea inside".