Libertarian, most people I know put sugar and lemon in their iced tea. Very few people drink it plain. (I am one of them though.)
Here in New Jersey, I’ve had no problem finding fried chicken. But good iced tea? Forget about it.
I miss biscuits. Mmmm…biscuits!
Popeye’s. I haven’t had their chicken in years. But every time I go into center city, I find a Popeye’s and stuff myself with biscuits
Ahhh, but there is a very big difference between putting sugar and lemon in your tea and sweet tea. Unsweetened iced tea that you try to mix sugar into doesn’t hold a candle to tea that’s been brewed with the sugar in while it’s hot.
Then of course, there’s the most amazing Sun Sweet Tea!
Tea brewed slowly in a big glass jar on the patio with the sugar mixed in is the best drink in the world, IMO. Add some fresh mint, and you could just die.
Hold it.
There are some people trying to pass themselves off as Suth’n here who are spelling that drink as two words, with two T’s.
Iced tea with sugar added (lemon optional) is Swee’Tea, pronounced as it sounds, with no internal juncture and a single T sound. Though only resident in the South for four years, I have this straight from my landlady, who has lived on the same road here for, well, a right good number of years. 
I’m going to have to disagree completely. I’m an Okie originally, and lived there for the first 27 years of my life; the culture in Oklahoma is very close to that of Texas. I have lived in Columbia, SC for the last 5 years. They are two different worlds.
Texas may have been part of the Confederacy (and the displaced Five Civilized Tribes who were moved to Oklahoma were also slaveholders), but it had a different economy and a different landscape. This part of the country is cattle land. Rather than stately Georgian mansions and the landowner sipping juleps on the porch, you have Ben Cartwright-types downing redeye at the saloon. It’s cowboy culture–go to Dallas and see how many boot stores there are, and then come to Columbia and try to find the 2 that exist here.
Texas is an odd duck in that it went with the Confederacy, but it is most definitely not southern.
And yet another thread about the South devolves into a debate over food… What are y’all trying to do? Get us shipped off to IMHO? 
stofsky, I grew up in rural Georgia, and spent plenty of time in Texas as a lad. (Having an aunt in Houston and friends in Dallas.) My observation is that the similarities between Texas and the rest of the South are much greater than the differences. Ditto Oklahoma, for that matter, though my experience with that state is more indirect, coming in the form of interaction with Oklahomans.
(After all, stofsky, the Native American tribes that were removed to Oklahoma were Southern tribes, and had been contributing to and participating in Southern culture for a couple hundred years before the Trail of Tears. Furthermore, a good portion of the Sooners were from Southern states.)
South Carolina is almost a place unto itself. Spend some time in Tennessee or northwest Georgia or northern Alabama, and I bet you’d find the culture there pretty similar to that in Texas and Oklahoma. (The strange obsession with boots excepted.) Plenty of horse-and-cattle culture in those parts of the South, and not a mint julep to be found.
Can you get grits in Oklahoma restaurants? How about barbecue? 
What’s the quote about South Carolina? “Too small for a country, too large for an insane asylum”?
I don’t know, Polycarp. In Louisiana we just always called it Iced Tea and assumed that it would be sweet. In South Carolina it is definitely always Swee’Tea.
And having lived in both Houston and Columbia, I can say they are definitely two very different worlds. The size of the city certainly plays a part, but the cultural diversity and mix of backgrounds is totally different, too. They do have more in common than, say, Houston and Boston, though.
“[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.” — A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union, February 2, 1861
My fiancee will be happy to know that our new home of North Carolina is sweet tea country. Kentucky, for some odd reason, is not–restaurants occasionally have both varieties, but they usually just point to the sugar packets on the table when you ask.
I’m not a big iced tea guy, myself, and when I do drink it I’m not overly fond of the diabetic coma-grade brew that Tamara prefers. This is probably something we should sort out before the wedding.
Dr. J
[celestina scratchin’ her head]
Um, stofsky, spoke, et al, just what do y’all mean by Southern? Can’t Southern be all types of things? I mean, there really ain’t no monolithic Southern culture because as we can see from the variety of responses in this thread, folks got different notions of what Southern is.
[giggle] I do find it amusing how all them Texans are trying to distance themselves from the South. Well, they probably are in that liminal zone between being Southern and Western. But still, do they really want to be called “Damn Yankees?” 
As far as I’m concerned, Texas is in the South, but it’s a different type of Southern.
Anyway, I guess I’ve said all that to say that I’m just wondering what makes Southerners Southern in y’all’s estimation since y’all seem to have these notions all wrapped up fine? Is it just the geographical location, the accents, the privilegin’ of Iced Tea, having a slave past, having some elements in certain places still being slow to improve regarding race relations, running barefoot in the summer, having hot, humid weather, having certain types of barbeque, and other types of food and drink. . . what?
Why? The pride thing is easy to understand, but why feel bad for Northerners? Did you visit in February or something? 
I only feel bad for southerners when I think of what some of them seem to consider eatable or when they’ve been stuck by a natural disaster. Other than that, they rarely seem in need of more pity than anywhere else.
What makes the Scots Scottish? What makes the Masai Masai? The same things that make the Southerners Southern. Location, history, food, music, history, tradition, way of talkin’, all that kind of thing.
Hi.
Originally from Mississippi, now living in Tennessee.
I never thought about being from the South until I began attending Dopefests. I mean, I never heard my own accent, really - everyone sounds the same here, so it’s a process of simple assimilation… and I’ve not taken the time to travel much up North, until now.
However, I now have a bunch of friends from places like Ohio, Illinois, and the like, and they always point out the accent to me.
I have only one response to it:
I am not the one who sounds weird, folks. You are.