Swirling Raspberries

A coffee-drinker I am not. A tea-drinker, however, I can claim to be. Both hot tea and iced tea suit my fancy on a regular basis. I like everything from a steaming mugful of Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon tea to the sugar-laden sweet tea of McDonald's. So, when a friend shared a recipe she found for homemade Raspberry Iced Tea, I was convinced that I needed to try it for myself. The fact that we were leaving for a mini-vacation last week and needed a simple recipe (and one that could easily tag along on our get-away) was simply a bonus.

So, late one night, I decided that it was tea-making time. I pulled out the five necessary ingredients and got to work. Very soon, I had a huge swirling, steaming pot of tea in front of me. I never would have thought that raspberries and tea bags could combine to make something so visually interesting. But, as I gazed into the pot, the vivid color of the raspberries alongside the natural browns of the floating tea bags looked simply beautiful to me. In all my admiring, I didn't act fast enough to grab my camera and capture this unexpected beauty. Before I knew it, my five minutes of steeping time were up, and I was trying to strain a gallon of iced tea into a large glass bowl. One glass bowl turned into two, and I realized that I had a rather large quantity of tea on my hands. "I sure hope this tastes good," I thought. Once the straining was finished, I just stood there staring at the bright red, still-steaming bowls. It looked wonderful and smelled even better.

"I can't wait until this is cold to try it," I determined. So, I scooped a spoonful of hot tea into my mouth, and I sighed. Delicious. Having never made homemade iced tea of any kind before, I was truly impressed. And once the morning came and my tea had rested for many hours in the refrigerator, I took another taste. It was like swallowing a little, beautiful burst of summer.

I figure that if a beverage is delicious and beautiful and refreshing and makes you feel like summer has jumped into your stomach, then it meets all the necessary requirements and qualifies as a superior drink. This, my friends, is one such beverage.