Well, I was also born in Harris County, Texas, and I grew up calling all soda “cokes” 30-40 years ago. And yes, this included “coke machines,” a term you state you are familiar with. However, we didn’t call them “coke machines” because they were owned by Coca-Cola; on the contrary, about half of them weren’t! (They were Pepsi, or more rarely, RC Cola.) They were called “coke machines” because they were full of cokes!
In any event, if you’ve never heard the term “coke” used as a generic term for soda, and we’re from the same area, either you’re not paying attention, or maybe we’re hanging out with different people?
We don’t have sweet tea around here and I don’t quite get how you make it. Are these the same kind of tea bags you’d make a hot cup of tea from (one tea bag per cup), or are they bigger?
Most people here who take sugar in their tea have 1 or 2 teaspoons per cup. Is that about right? Could I make a normal cup of hot tea, put it in the fridge and get sweet tea?
I’m not sure what size **Oakminster **is talking about, but companies like Luzianne do sell quart size tea bags for making larger quantities of iced tea. Usually people make a whole pitcher, rather than an individual glass.
Luzianne, for instance, claims that their tea is a blended especially for iced tea, but I don’t know how significant that is. I have never tried making a cup of something like English Breakfast, adding sugar, and then pouring it over ice, but it would probably be okay.
In case it’s not clear, what Luzianne means by that is that their tea brews a little on the strong side, thereby keeping it from getting too diluted when you add ice. I drink Luzianne myself, and I tend to agree with them that it makes superior iced tea.
Seconding Lamia’s observation - I have heard exactly the same useage. Whenever Mrs. SMV and I go out to eat, she orders a Coke - woman has a serious monkey on her back - and what she gets is either a Coca-Cola, or the question, “Pepsi okay?”. And we live in Atlanta, which really is Coca-Cola Co.'s back yard.
As for me, I am a sweet tea junkie, and that’s my default beverage. At least in the South; in other parts of the world I’ll get unsweeted tea with sugar to stir in. And - sorry, Labrador Deceiver - it’s not the same thing at all.
That said, there is quite a bit of variation in sweetness levels in different restaurants. Some times you get a mildly sweet beverage, other places give you what my family calls “barbecue tea” - brown sugar water.
Washington City (as it was known then) was a mix, but mostly southern; BUT it was the U. S. capital and location of congress and the President, so officially it had to be a pro-Union town, where there were many free blacks, and where McClellan garrisoned and trained his troops. In reality, there was much sympathy for the southern cause. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland because there was so much pro-south sympathy there. (There were many southern sympathizers in southern Maryland, including the Surratt family who conspired with Booth to assassinate Lincoln.)
Chiming in as a Yankee who has tried (twice, and hated) sweet tea -
Why even bother with the tea? I mean, from trying it from a few places in Atlanta, there’s nothing “tea” about it. It’s supersaturated sugar water. Just drink sugar water. Or hell, syrup, why not.
Next time I go (next month) I’m going to take a few crystals of sugar in my pocket. I’m pretty sure that once I seed this diabetic drink with a proper crystal the whole thing will crash out of solution. I’ll find two quarts of solid sugar with a thin, 1 oz. supernatant of “tea” on the surface.
You can make quite good iced tea out of any decent black tea–but it will probably get cloudy when you stick it in the refrigerator. Luzianne doesn’t. And the big bags are handy.
