Make Delicious Iced Tea at Home
Iced tea is my favorite beverage both at home and when I go out. Unfortunately, it seems like more and more restaurants these days are using the concentrated syrup which is always a disappointment to me. There are actually certain fast food restaurants that I will not go to solely because they do not serve iced tea and others I make a special trip to because they do. While I am not a big fan of McDonald’s food, they do make the best iced tea and I love their big straws.
Fortunately, iced tea is easy to make at home and many tea manufacturers make it even easier by selling “family-size” teabags which brew a quart of tea. My favorite brand of tea for making iced tea is Tazo black iced tea.
I frequently make tea the way my grandmother taught me which is to bring four cups of water (to make a gallon of tea) to a boil and then place four family size teabags in the water and let steep for about five minutes. After removing the teabags, I pour this concentrated tea into a larger container with ice cubes and water to make up the rest of the gallon. If I don’t have room in my fridge for the gallon container, sometimes I will put that concentrated tea into a plastic drinking bottle and then dilute it with water when I am ready to drink it. It is a great space saver and I know exactly what color I like my tea to be, so it works for me. Another option is to use a brewing pitcher. These pitchers are nice because you are brewing the tea in the same container you will store it in which reduces the amount of dirty dishes. If you would like to know more about tea brewing pitchers, I have linked to a few below.
Tips:
- If you have trouble with your tea being bitter or you have over-brewed it, toss in a pinch of baking soda and stir well. The baking soda softens the tannins and reduces the bitterness.
- If you refrigerate tea while it is still warm, it may become cloudy. Wait until the tea reaches room temperature before chilling. To clear up the cloudiness, add a small amount of boiling water and stir.
- Your tea may also be cloudy if you are using hard water to brew the tea. If your water is hard, use bottled or filtered water instead of tap water.
Mailbox Covers Can Turn Your Mailbox from Drab to Fab in Seconds!
The humble mailbox is one of the most utilitarian objects of our daily life and, before the advent of the telephone and later, the internet, was often a person’s sole long-distance communication device. Sometimes I try to imagine what it must have been like during World War I or II waiting for word from a relative involved in battle. I have read stories about mail arriving from a loved one after he was killed in combat. Today, much of our communication is instantaneous, or nearly so, with cell phones, email and internet chat capabilities. It is definitely a different world now. I thought it would be interesting to take a brief look at the history of the mailbox in the U.S. and see how much they have changed over the years.
Home delivery of mail began in 1863 with the establishment of Free City Delivery, a service instituted in 39 of the largest cities in the U.S. In the early days of mail delivery, mailmen would knock at the door and wait until someone came to the door to take the mail. Understandably, this caused a lot of down time and delay in mail service so someone had the bright idea of installing mail slot in doors so mail carriers could slip in the mail and carry on with their deliveries without delay.
While people in the cities were receiving home delivery of mail, people living in rural areas typically had to pick up their mail from a post office that could be miles from their home. Certainly an inconvenience, especially in inclement weather. In 1896, however, widespread delivery to rural addresses was initiated. Because of the frequent substantial distance between rural households, rural mail carriers first used horse-drawn wagons and then later on, automobiles to deliver the mail, rain or shine. Again, in an effort to save time, the postal service requested that their customers to have post-mounted boxes at the curb to expedite delivery and in 1923, the U.S. Post Office officially required all mail recipients (rural or otherwise) to have either a mail slot or mail box in order to be able to receive mail.
The standard mailbox shape that we still use today with its curved roof and red flag was designed by a Post Office employee by the nameof Roy Joroleman in 1915. In order to promote production of a uniform mailbox standard, the design of Joroleman’s mailbox was released to manufacturers by the Post Office and that is the prevalent design that most households use today. Because the U.S. Post Office has controlled design aspects of mailboxes and mail slots, mandating their size and other features, there has not been much variety in mailbox design over the years beyond slight alterations in shape and varying materials.
If you are looking for a way to brighten up your mailbox, there are magnetic mailbox covers made expressly for that purpose that are removable allowing you to change the look of your mailbox as you wish. You can select a design to represent the season or current holiday or a more general theme that enhances the appearance of your home. Mailbox covers also make a great gift for Mother’s Day (that’s what I am getting my mom this year). Here are some of my favorite designs available from Amazon.
