Sunday, June 29, 2008


Summer time tea - cool, clear, and easy breezy!
Eons ago when I was newly married, my brother-in-law told me about making tea, not the sun tea method that was popular in the then 1970's but rather tea steeped in the refrigerator. He referred to it as Tupper Tea; my sister, his wife, had hosted a Tupperware party and her hostess had been featuring the pitchers they had (in brown, burnt orange, or harvest gold) and one use was making iced tea in your refrigerator. He was so impressed with it he told me about it when he saw my new brown pitcher in our first apartment. I made it then for my growing family and now make it for just-the-two-of-us in a simple old green glass juice bottle. I use tap water and 2 tea bags, basic black tea bags. Mine happen to be Life Boat tea today, I'm using up a box of this and it works well. I love to make flavored tea by using one bag of simple black tea and one of a flavored tea so its not too overpowering. My bottle is a quart size. 
Use any bottle you have, or your favorite pitcher that has a lid. (or cover it with plastic wrap to keep other odors/fragrances away) Pour in cold tap water, add the tea bags and chill for 3 or more hours. I recommend a little more tea bags than you'd use to steep iced tea using hot water, but not too many more! If it is too strong you can add cool water to your glass, no problem.  When time has passed you will have already chilled tea - thus your ice cubes don't melt quickly. The tea is clear - it doesn't cloud up, even when you serve it up over a period of a few days. No special tea is needed but if you serve it with a slice or orange, lemon, lime, pineapple, melon, sprig of mint, you name it, that makes it extra special. 
I love the green glass bottle, it reminds me of ones my mother had, her sister had one, too. When I was a child and came in from playing outdoors in the summer, cold water was kept in such a jar. It was wonderful to pour iced cold water into a glass and drink it - ahhhh! This was long before refrigerators with ice machines, cold water on tap, no filtered water, etc. It was a simple time with simple pleasures. We have lost that in our high-tech world. We forget to slow down, touch base with those we love, those we live by, and those we want to get to know.
As I sip my Refrigerator tea today I am pondering upon a few things. Does my life color the world I move in? Does it change for good, like water in a jar with tea bags? Do I add flavor to it even when its an average day? Do I leave good flavor especially when its a wild overly busy day? What flavor do I pour into others lives? I pray that I leave the fragrance and 'taste' of Christ in how I live, what I do, what I say, how I say it, even what I don't say. How about you?
Truth For Life
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal processions in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 
2 Corinthians 2:13-15

1 comment:

From A Creative Heart said...

Soothing, tea time thoughts!! I am sooooo glad to have found you...I have missed your tea time insights, ideas, decorating and friendship.

Email me when you get the chance...
Debbie
dailygrace@bellsouth.net