I think one of the loveliest of all things is those unexpected things that you stumble upon. Just so was this post. I was looking for photos to use on the blog for this week's first post and came across this little blurb with a pretty little bedroom as the photo.
Doesn't that look refreshing?
Well the title below it was what caught my eye, "How Edwardians Kept Their House Cool". That looked like an interesting read. And what I found was this lovely photo...Isn't it stunning?
along with an article from an old Chicago Tribune on this blog.
When you're done reading this article and oohing and ah-ing over the photos within and just enjoying all the information, be sure to bookmark and take some time to explore the rest of her blog. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and you'll find her archives listed. Looks like she's still posting since there's a May 2020 archive.
This past weekend, Farmhouse Vernacular premiered her kitchen and pantry colors. This girl is NOT afraid of heavily saturated shades and she embraces that love. I have my own fondness for color. But I've known folks who were dead certain any show of color in their home was a show of poor taste automatically. Fear of color is a shameful thing. I mean it! God created a world full of color.
Just for fun here's a quiz from Sherwin Williams to help you identify your color personality...I have to say I was pretty impressed with mine. It said I'm a 'naturalist'. That's about right! The colors offered up with my identity palette would go lovely with the colors I'm already using in my home. What's more fun, two of the colors shown I've actually thought I'd use when I repaint my kitchen island which badly needs a facelift.
She Sheds...I have this dream of making the interior of my shed light and bright and lovely. I'd love a cool green and white scheme honestly but it's all raw wood, with no primer and will take loads of paint to make it pretty. One day... In the meantime, is this not the most adorable she shed?
I was telling a guest at Taylor's birthday party about my 'pretty lizard' and he looked it up online. It's a Western Fence Lizard and while he's very similar to his cousin the Eastern Fence Lizard there are distinguishable differences. I don't know why this Western fellow decided the humid sunny South was a good residence but I would reckon he hitch hiked over one way or another. It's a rare day when this screechy girl can say "Oh you're pretty!" and not dance about and scream because she saw a lizard.
Speaking of new species, I read this article in Southern Living about the Orchid Bee who is a native of Mexico but has migrated to Florida and is enjoying the orchids there. He's lovely.
I was curious when I opened an email from Southern Living Magazine that said "Secret Ingredient for the Best Iced Tea." You can watch the video if you'll click on the link. The secret ingredient is in the written narrative below. If you DO watch the video, then I have to share that I was in a bit of a state of shock. Here's why: I have NEVER seen anyone EVER make sweet tea in that manner! If you are Southern and you do then please let me know and let me know where you learned that method. Is it a family thing? Or is it a regional thing?
Let me tell you how we made it. My grand mothers and great grand mothers all did it the same way on both sides of the family. Now Grandma Stewart was in South Carolina her whole life long and that's where Grandmother grew up. I recall watching her sister, my aunt Eula Mae making tea in her kitchen in the very same manner I'm about to describe, so I feel comfortable saying that our method is the TRUE Southern Sweet Tea method for our areas.
You'll want a pitcher to make the tea in. Most pitchers are 2 quart capacity. It was pretty typical for us to use 8-10 tea bags. We'd put those in a small saucepan, add about 2 cups water and heat until the water just came to a boil.
In the meantime, we'd put sugar in the empty pitcher. How sweet you want it is really up to you. We used a LOT of sugar when I was a girl growing up but I preferred to do it to taste. I'd start with 1/2 of the sugar and then I'd add more until it began to taste sweet to me. Some folks like it sweeter.
I have to say that since 2015, I really prefer unsweetened tea with NO sugar and no sweetener of any sort, but we're talking my youth and how a real Southern group of women taught me to make sweet tea. Some liked something akin to pancake syrup and some like Grandmother, who'd gone through rationing and being very poor, used saccharine tablets along with a small amount of sugar. Don't even bother telling me how that will kill you. She lived to be 84 and drank her saccharine tea every day of her life.
But let us return to where we left off. You put the sugar in your pitcher. Once that water has come to a boil, turn it off and let it sit for about 5 minutes to steep then pour that tea into the pitcher, right over that sugar. Then stir and stir until it has all dissolved. Now add water to fill the pitcher up. At this point you can taste it to see if you want it sweeter and you may add more sugar.
Fill a glass to the top with ice then pour that warm tea over the ice. And that's how you make 'proper' Southern Sweet Tea!
One last thing: Dalgona Coffee. I've been hearing about it forever now it seems, at least since pandemic isolation began and everyone was trying it. I held off but this morning I missed my hot tea and got up far too early after sleeping far too little and I didn't figure using instant coffee to make myself a cold brew was going to rev me up too much.
My impressions: super easy to make with an electric mixer. Uses pantry staples (at least for me). Not as sweet as I thought it might be at first but it sweetens as it dissolves in milk. It makes enough for two and you can set some aside for tomorrow if only one of you is willing to drink iced coffee. Putting decaf coffee powder on my shopping list...
Dalgona Coffee
2 tbsps. instant coffee powder
2 tbsps. sugar
2 tbsps. cold water
Use whip attachment to mixer and beat until it forms stiff peaks.
Fill a tall glass with ice and almost full of milk, then dollop on coffee. Use a straw to mix and stir a little, but most of the foam is going to stay on top.
Let's just skip Starbucks until November when I can get a Gingerbread Latte. For summer, I'm going Dalgona!
12 comments:
Hi Terri,
Your "recipe" for sweet tea is pretty much the same as my mother's method. The only difference is that she would make tea early in the day and put it in the refrigerator to get cold. Of course, she also put ice in the glasses as well. I still use her method with the only difference being that I sweeten each glass separately with sweetener as I can no longer have sugar. I agree with you that this seems to be a Southern method. By the way, I am definitely enjoying the Grace Livingston Hill book that I won in your give away.
Blessings,
Frances
Frances, because my mom worked we tended to make a gallon of tea each night as we prepared supper. And yes, we poured if over glasses full of ice and we had it year round, no matter how cold it got! lol
I am so glad that you confirmed my idea that making tea in the manner I said is Southern. And glad too you're enjoying the book.
I've just ordered myself a Kindle version of one I'd ordered online but the book never reached me. When I contacted the seller, my money was refunded immediately. I looked online and find the book has suddenly gone scarce and copies that are available are in the $30 range for paper backs. I bought mine for considerably less. I told JOhn, I wonder if the seller realized how low their price was and found they could get more for it? It's a thought...Anyway the Kindle version cost the same as the one I'd ordered, sigh.
I have never heard of putting that secret ingredient in tea.
I'm from Virginia, so more Appalachian southern than Scarlett O'Harra southern, but my mamma taught me to make a simple syrup for sweet iced tea. Your way sounds good though, and I love me some sweet iced tea anytime. :)
My Momma taught me to make sweet tea just like you. It was the first thing she taught me to cook and cornbread was the second thing. I’m from North Alabama.
I love saturated, jewel toned colors. I find that blue and white room too bland for my taste, too hospital-like. We don't have a white room in our entire house, or even pale colors. My clothes are like that, too, very vivid. I have always been a well-upholstered woman, sometimes more and sometimes less, but never slim. One of my step-mothers kept telling me that large girls should wear black because it is so slimming, but I always thought they were going to see me coming anyway so I might as well make it worth the look! She used to tell me I dressed like a "fat hooker," as recently as three years ago. My response was, "yes, but yet I have been married only once and you are on your fifth marriage, so I guess being a hooker paid off for me."
Hi Terri,
This is probably more information than you want about making tea ... I’m a northern girl, through and through! But, I love my iced tea, just unsweetened, please. I’ve never liked sweet tea. Years ago, I got into the habit of making sun tea. You put the bags in cold water in a jar and set it in the sun for a few hours. Then, I needed to make tea and it was evening or not a sunny day, I don’t remember exactly. I simply put the tea bags in the jar of water and left it to sit overnight on my counter. That worked fabulously. My mom called it my “shade” tea. Eventually, the day came that I was in a super hurry to make iced tea. I put the 8 tea bags in my usual 1/2 gallon jar and pour about 4 inches of boiling water over the tea bags and let them steep. Then I filled the jar with water and removed the tea bags. Best tea ever! That’s been my go-to method for making tea now for years. I was pleasantly surprised to see the initial tea making process was the same in the video as what I do. And, I will drink ice tea year round.
That iced tea recipe sounds good. I am from NY so I didn't grow up on southern tea -- just plain old iced tea (which I do love). I'll have to try your version. I had never heard of Dalonga coffee until today -- twice. Rhonda Hetzel mentioned it in her blog post today also. She dislikes it though. Me -- I love coffee and tea. Mornings are coffee for me and then throughout the day I drink tea. I like both hot and cold versions of both. Have a great weekend, Terri!
we didn't drink cold tea ever. A friend showed me how to make sugar syrup that she then would add tea bags to and let is steep and then put in the pitcher that had some cold water in it(she broke a glass pitcher pouring too hot of mixture in it) I don't really like cold sweet tea but do drink lightly sweet (not Southern sweet as I worked in GA and Hubby lived in AL for 2 yrs) hot tea
Kathy, I hadn't heard of baking soda in tea either. It does make sense. One of John's friends family was Greek and the father told Dean's wife to always put a bit of salt in the coffee to cut the acidity. I thought that was interesting and when we got a brand that was a bit more acidic I tried that and it worked great. Perhaps the baking soda will do the same for tea?
Mable, I am trying hard to bring more color into my home but growing up there was only pale celery green. None of my relatives ever had much color on walls and furnishings were utilitarian sorts of colors. Granny deviated. She liked a sort of deep aqua color enough to buy dishes, pens, living furniture, cars and even clothes in that color, lol
Chris, I have heard about 'sun tea' for years but never made it that way. Truth: once I left home I had so many stomach issues due to drinking too much caffeine and so I switched to drinking water and nothing much but water for years. Stomach pain disappeared entirely. I was in my thirties before I started drinking coffee in the mornings and only five years ago I discovered I could ask for UNsweetened tea in restaurants and buy it at the gas stations when we travel. This year, I added 1 cup of hot tea to my morning routine and skipped the second cup of coffee.
Mary, I try to limit my tea and coffee these days. But I do enjoy a really refreshing unsweetened tea over ice on a hot summer day.
I cracked a glass pitcher from Grandmother's that I'd loved forever (about 4 cups big) with hot tea and so I now let it cool before pouring it into the pitcher. All in all though, I seldom drink iced tea at home. I might order UNsweetened iced tea in a restaurant.
I grew up in Southern California but my family is from Oklahoma. My grandmother made several pitchers of sweet tea every day for Grandpa and her nine grandchildren who lived next door or within a block. She taught me how to make it and it was almost exactly as you describe. She used Lipton loose leaf tea, however. When she taught me, she poured the tea in the little saucepan she used exclusively for tea then into a measuring cup so we would know how much it was - about 1/4 cup. The only thing I do differently now is that I put a bit of cool or room temperature water in with the tea before pouring the steeped tea over it. I once saw a pitcher crack because of the temperature difference in the glass and the almost boiling water. She made hers sweet enough to almost stand a spoon in it but over the years I've decreased the sugar to about 1/4 cup.
The color quiz was fun although with many of the questions I didn't care for any of the choices. The description of me was pretty accurate - Free Spirit - but I don't care for the color palette. I'm absolutely with you about loving color in my home. If you haven't seen it yet check out the YouTube channel Quintessence. The homes they feature are almost all stunning and most use a lot of color. I find this interesting as the owners are all designers. It seems most professionally decorated homes are lacking in color and yet the ones who are doing the designing don't take that approach in their own homes.
Your "northern" friend is hanging her head in shame.😶. I have never had iced tea. Always hot tea each morning. More shame😏. I buy gramps a container of iced tea powdered mix and he drinks that. I know, you can't believe I would confess such a thing! Please don't unsubscribe me! LOL. Have a wonderful day and stay healthy.Gramma D
Deanna, I love that your grandmother would pour out the tea then measure it so you all could see how much it was, lol.
I liked the color quiz too and I agree that while the description suited me the colors didn't match 'me' in my opinion other than the two samples I'd been considering for the island.
Gramma D, No shame. Sweet tea is a 'thing' that seems to be relevant to the south. I honestly never knew anyone who drank hot tea yet all my kids asked for cups of hot tea at some point in their youth and I'd make it for them. It puzzled heck out of me why they wanted it, lol.
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