SC - Feast Beverages

[Mordonna22 at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/3/2000 11:59:41 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
troy at asan.com writes:

<<  My experience with other areas
 where the populace has been accustomed to receiving certain dishes every
 time, such as honey butter and herb butter, I have simply announced in
 the morning that there will be no honey butter and no herb butter, but
 there will, for example, be an herb cheese, olive oil, and honey for
 dipping bread into. People thought about it for a second, then got on
 with life. I expect that unless your alternative beverages are something
 really bizarre, your experience would not be too different >>

I could wish that it were so, however....
Sweetened Ice Tea is insidious in Southern Life.  The only meal where it is 
not commonly served is breakfast.  We take it in our thermoses to work.  We 
drink it with meals.  We drink it in the evenings watching TV, or sitting on 
the porch, or reading, or sewing, or participating in our hobbies.  We get up 
in the middle of the night and have a glass or two.  Some of us never drink 
water.  Some of us never drink coffee, or soda.  Some of us never touch 
alcohol, but we ALL drink ice tea.  It's use has evolved in the last few 
decades to the point that you can get Unsweetened Tea at most restaurants, 
but only as an alternative.  They still serve the sweet stuff.  I remember 
how surprised I was when I moved out here that the tea in the pitcher on the 
table at the restaurant wasn't sweet, they didn't have any that was 
presweetened, and I had to sweeten my own!  
For those new to the list, we had a discussion on here not so very long ago 
on the proper way to sweeten tea.  Most of us born in the South who learned 
to cook in the South aqreed that it must be at room temperature or warmer to 
be properly sweetened.  Colder temperatures result in having undisolved sugar 
crystals and having to use much more sugar to get the proper degree of sweet 
taste. 

Mordonna the Cook,
SunDragon's Western Reaches
Atenveldt
(m.k.a. Buckeye, AZ)