Sweet Tea

I am southern to the core…give me sweet tea over water any day (I almost would choose sweet tea over red wine, but that wouldn’t be a true statement). Each week I buy a gallon of Milo’s famous sweet tea (www.milostea.com) from Costco. I feel certain my mom, not to mention my grandmother, would laugh to think that I actually purchase sweet tea rather than make it since the two-step process is so easy-  just boil water and steep the tea bag- voila easy enough. But really, great sweet tea is an art form. It’s not that simple. It’s like great french crepes…it takes practice. For the record, I can make sweet tea…but Milo’s is just so tasty – the perfect amount of sweet to mix with a juicy slice of fresh lemon.

But today….there was no Milo’s sweet tea at Costco. Tragic. Please tell me they are out rather than they have discontinued selling this southern delicatessen. Perhaps, the beautiful SPRING weather caused a run on sweet tea. Afterall it was in the mid 70’s yesterday and everyone was out and about enjoying a much deserved reprieve from Winter.

I stood in front of the shelves where Milo’s typically lives, only to find eggs. EGGS? really? My tea has been replaced with eggs.

In search of a substitute, I headed to Bi-Lo. If Milo’s is gone forever, I need another tea for the hot summer months. I really wanted to drive across town to Whole Foods and purchase Sweet Leaf (another favorite), but that would be a short term solution. I needed to find a new, readily available, alternative to Milo’s.  So I tried  Gold Peak. It was a stand out on the shelf. A sucker for cool packaging, I felt good about my purchase…until I got home and C. began to read the label. All kinds of weird things in this tea…and the worst part, it wasn’t made by some hip trendy group (like sweet leaf and Milos)- it was made by Coke. This wasn’t some cool tea blend thought of in someone’s small apartment kitchen nor was it a sweet tea that had been brewed in a cool old southern restaurant for years…it was an artificially flavored chemical layden tea concocted in a lab. And guess what…it tasted like it was made in a lab. YUCK!  Half a lemon and a cup of water later…I still couldn’t drink it.

C. felt so sorry for me that he freshly brewed his own rendition of sweet tea for my afternoon fix. Thanks C! So much for trying something new…sometimes ya can’t beat what you already know and love!