Sweet tea - my southern comfort

I spent two years living in the South, and I enjoyed it even more than I expected.  A key part of my time there was spent eating the great food and BBQ.  For all the good and bad, I became obsessed with sweet tea.

Sweet tea is a traditional drink prevalent in all areas of the South.  It's not just iced tea with sugar added.  (I actually prefer that type of iced tea unsweetened.)  It's made differently and tastes much better.  The good of my obsession is how delicious sweet tea can be and how comforted it makes me feel.  The bad, of course, is the sugar content, but even worse, in my mind, is how difficult it is to get a good glass of it now that I'm living in the north again.

While I was down south, my favorite place to get this sweet nectar was a fast food chicken and biscuits chain called Bojangles.  They also had scrumptious biscuits and gravy, but the sweet tea was always my favorite.  Before leaving town to move back north, my last stop was Bojangles to buy 6 half gallon jugs of sweet tea to take with me.  Whenever I go back to visit, it's my first stop.

I've been told it's not that difficult to make sweet tea, but I've also never bothered to look up a recipe. I recently found a cookbook published by Southern Living that includes a recipe for sweet tea along with a bunch of other southern goodies.  Maybe I'll take a look and start making my own - create a little bit of the South in my northern kitchen.