Iced Tea and the "Linda Lee"

When my sister and I were teenagers, and my kid brother was barely old enough to help, my dad would drag all of us to the boat yard on Long Island Sound where he kept a 28’ sloop that always needed work. We’d spend an entire day in the hot sun scraping the wooden hull, polishing brass, and cleaning every square inch of the “Linda Lee” so we could spend the summer weekends sailing.

Our mother made gallons of the most thirst-quenching drink I’d ever tasted: a blend of half iced tea and half orange juice. We’d never heard of an Arnold Palmer, that half-iced tea-and-half-lemonade drink marketed these days by Minute Maid and Trader Joe’s, and we never gave Mom’s unique concoction a name. We also never saw how she blended the ingredients, but it’s a good bet that Mom used powdered tea mix and frozen orange juice concentrate, things I’d avoid today. But I remember the smell and taste of that refreshing drink even now, so many years later, whenever I am working outside on a hot summer day.

Nowadays, the boat is gone, my father and my mother are both gone, and my siblings never mention it any more, but much of what it means to me to be a family spending the summer together is blended into a simple mixture of iced tea and orange juice.

Today’s Iced Tea

Always start with freshly brewed tea. Basic iced tea begins with your choice of black tea. Pekoe is good and robust, especially when adding juice to the blend. I recently used whole-leaf black tea flavored with ginger for a pleasantly zippy flavor.

6-8 tea bags

4 Cups hot water

4 Cups (1 quart) cold filtered water

½ cup sugar or ¼ cup honey

Brings 4 cups of water to a boil. Tie the tea bags together and drop in the water to steep for 5-8 minutes. Any longer and it will get too strong and tannic tasting. After steeping, take out the tea bags and discard. While the tea is still hot, sweeten with granulated sugar or a sugar substitute like Stevia, Agave, or Truvia. Use a light hand with any sweetener if you plan to add juice, which will automatically sweeten the tea. Place the hot tea in a glass pitcher and add the remaining cold water. When the brew has cooled down, cover the container to keep other flavors from the fridge from affecting the tea and place in the refrigerator. Makes 2 quarts.

To this basic tea, add fresh squeezed orange juice to taste. If you live in New England, you may want to defer to a regional favorite and add cranberry juice instead of orange juice. Southerners may want to use lots of mint; others might try fresh raspberries.

Some other tips I’ve learned about iced tea:

• When serving, make sure the ice cubes you add are fresh, not cloudy or “old” looking, as they will affect the bright flavor of the tea.
• Always use a glass container; plastic and metal imparts unwanted flavors to the tea.
• Don’t try to keep any batch of iced tea longer than 2-3 days, as the flavor goes off after a while.