Ice tea, lemonade, and other summertime drinks

Yvonne Smith

Yvonne Smith

Greeter
Staff member
When I lived in Idaho, the only ice tea that was served anywhere was plain unsweetened ice tea, and usually with a slice of lemon on the top of the glass.
After we moved to Alabama, everything changed. Here, if you ask for ice tea, the default version is sweet tea, and if you do not want the sugary syrup tea, you have to ask for “unsweet tea”
I like ice tea, and often make sun tea in the hot summer days, and both Bobby and I drink it with no sweetening or very little. I like lemon in mine, and I also like flavored teas like peach and raspberry.

Today, I made lemonade and then picked a bowl of strawberries and put it all in the blender and we now have strawberry lemonade.
It is actually pretty good !
The strawberry takes some of the bite off of the lemon and the flavors work together really well.
 
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I drank my final glass of sweet tea at about age 10 in East Texas visiting an old aunt. I got really sick to my stomach and vomited. Any tea after that was unsweetened, but I haven't drank tea for years. I see no reason for drinking that colored water when iced coffee is available. It is easy to make.

Two teaspoons instant coffee with one cup milk in tall lidded pint drink bottle. Add six to eight cubes of ice and shake up. Shake till all coffee is dissolved. Fill to the top with water and shake some more. Refrigerate when not being drank.
 
I have no idea why restaurants cannot seem to make good iced tea. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to make it. Like Hedi, I absolutely refuse to pay $4 for bad iced tea, especially when it is very cheap to make. What a racket! The tea is either so weak that it's barely tea-flavored water or it's bitter from being boiled or "spunky" from sitting in an urn since yesterday (or the day before). And even worst, some of them used powdered iced tea mix....blasphemy of the highest degree!

I was raised on Southern Sweet Iced Tea, sweet enough to send you into a diabetic coma, a little tea and a lot of sugar. When I grew up, I discovered that I like very strong unsweetened iced tea with lemon, lots of lemon. I drink gallons of it a week.
 
If I am going to drink lemonade, it has be with freshly squeezed lemons. None of that fake powdered or liquid stuff. I also like one or two squeezed oranges added to the lemonade, plus a couple wedges of lemon and oranges added in the pitcher; and a little sugar to suit my taste.
 
I watched some YouTube videos about making Aqua Fresca and using things like watermelon or cucumber. I decided to try making a cucumber one, and it is actually pretty delicious and super easy to make.

I added a little lemonade drink mix instead of sugar, peeled one cucumber and most of one lemon, (leaving a little lemon peel) and added those into my blender with some water and blended it thoroughly.
Then I added a few cucumber slices and lemon slices and poured some over ice to test it out. I ended up adding a little more lemon to make it a little more tart, and it has a nice, brisk kind of flavor.

Cucumber has a lot of minerals and electrolytes, and so does watermelon, so I will be making this kind o f drink more often. I only made one quart today, just to see if we would like it or not.
It looks like Bobby is drinking his, too; so that is a good thing.
This video gives you the basic idea, and you can use either lemons or limes. I had lemons, so that is what I used, but I am sure I would also like it with limes.
I think the water melon would be good with fresh oranges.

 
The cucumber Aqua Fresca was good, but I thought it needed more flavor besides just the cucumber and lemon, so I added some pineapple and blended it again, and I like it a lot better now.
I am still going to try making one with watermelon, but so far, we are just having the fresh watermelon to eat every day.
 
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