The Tea That Launched a Thousand Manuscripts

Just a short post about cool beverages (hey, we’re getting warmer weather now!), and my former boss at the university press. I was reminded of her delicious iced tea last weekend when we visited her during Boonville’s annual Big Muddy Folk Festival.

She served us some of her tea while we were there. So delicious and refreshing! I had to make some today for myself.

Jane was the managing editor and, I’ll bet, played a part in creating darned near a thousand published books. (Maybe a lot more. Or maybe I overestimate slightly.) Those of us who worked at the University of Missouri Press during her long tenure were used to seeing her large, insulated cup of iced tea on her desk. It was a fixture, just like her computer, her dictionaries, her copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, her thesaurus. The stack of manuscript pages for the current work. And a stack of page proofs to be sent to the author, proofreader, and indexer.

Ahhhh, the university press. Where I once edited a manuscript, translated from German, to be published in an English edition, that had sentences that were so long I had to scroll down in order to finish them. Yes! It was double-spaced, DOS, WordPerfect 5.0, and it wasn’t a gigantic monitor, but the whole sentence wouldn’t fit on my screen at one time. I kid you not.

Now, please realize that what follows only applies to a few cases. And it’s my opinion only. I don’t want to make it sound like drowsiness was a big problem for any of us: it really wasn’t. For the most part, we had good, interesting, important manuscripts and incredibly nice authors. But a few manuscripts were indeed snoozers. I’m sure you can imagine. I mean, sometimes I’ve told people about editing, say, index manuscripts, and how I rather enjoyed it. “It’s especially nice to have some Bach or other baroque music playing. All those straight lines and right angles: perfect for making sure all the entries and page numbers are in the right order!” Just telling people about that kind of makes their eyes roll up in their heads.

Once (“only once,” ha ha), while nodding and plodding through one of the snoozers, I truly nodded off while editing. My finger was on the “down” arrow on my keyboard, and I started awake to find the manuscript flying upwards on my monitor, lickety-split. “Heck!” I thought. “This is terrible! What’s the last thing I remember reading?” I had to scroll back for my last change, or my last query.

I figured out lots of ways to keep awake while copyediting some of these projects. My morning coffee kept me chugging for a while, then it was lunchtime, but then there was the dreaded midafternoon lull. It was quiet, and I was digesting. I figured out that Polar Ice–flavored chewing gum could rouse me. I also learned to take a fifteen-minute break behind the building to practice my trumpet. That woke me up! (Well, the smokers in the office took smoke breaks, why couldn’t I?) When the drowsiness was really bad, I would put a small bowl of fresh, raw cranberries on my desk, and chew up one of those when the florescent lights’ humming lulled me to sleep.

What I’m describing is the “goofus” method of being an editor of scholarly manuscripts. Now, I’m about to share with you the “gallant” method: Be like Jane!

Jane’s m.o. was to get up super early, work out, then basically be the first person at the press. She doesn’t drink coffee. Instead, she drinks this tea she makes. There’s caffeine in it, but not much. She’s an efficient worker, so she kept to her schedule and was able to depart for home right at 5 p.m.

So this is her recipe for her special iced tea. It’s how she told me she makes it a few years ago, though according to what she said last week, she changes it a little depending on what she has on hand, or what she’s in the mood for. The bag of black tea can vary, though I indeed like to use Earl Gray.

Here’s the formula:

• 2 teabags green tea
• 2 teabags jasmine tea (which is also green tea)
• 1 teabag Earl Gray (which is a black tea)

That’s it! Make a pitcher using this formula, and you’ll have the deliciousness of the Earl Gray and jasmine, and the health benefits of green tea. Enough caffeine to keep you chugging along, but not enough to make you jingle-jangle. Also, the punchiness of the Earl Gray is softened with the other flavors. I think you’ll like it!

. . . But I’m pretty sure I’m not ready to give up my morning coffee.

My Lemonade Atroci-tea

I admit it: I should not be proud of this . . . but guess what? I kind of am. But this does fit into the category of “childhood culinary atrocity.” Reading it, you’re gonna go “. . . ewwww.”

But not so fast! I recently resurrected this beverage a few weeks ago, when I saw they actually still make Lipton Instant Tea. So I bought a jar! I mixed up my old formula to the best of my memory, and I found it genuinely tasty. In fact, it’s better than I remembered it, which is saying a lot.

This recipe (if you can call it that) dates back to high school, when I used to sometimes bring a lunch, including a big cup for my tea. Here’s how I would make it.

In the morning, or the night before, I prepared a lemon-tea-sugar concentrate ahead of time. I used a small (2 oz.) Tupperware “midget” condiment container for my mix, which was about 1 heaping teaspoon of Lipton Instant Tea (unsweetened), about 1 heaping teaspoon of sugar, and about 1.5 ounces of ReaLemon lemon juice. I’d shake the juice with the tea and sugar, and it would form a sludgy, muddy slurry.

The horror.

It was ugly, but it blended easily with water I’d get from a drinking fountain at school. I guess I’d bring a plastic spoon with me, one that would fit into the cup along with the little Tupperware full of my sludgy stuff. (I don’t remember getting ice at school . . . though maybe I’d get a cup of ice from Taco Bell, across the street, which is where we band kids went for lunch nearly every day.) Or maybe I did without the ice.

(BY THE WAY, I'm using some pictures of old plastic souvenir/giveaway promotional cups from 1980s Columbia in this post. . . . Like, remember when Shakespeare's cups were opaque tan?)

And yeah, it’s gotta be Lipton instant tea, not Nestea. The two taste completely different. Instant tea is, almost by definition, terrible, but of the two brands, Lipton is the only one that’s tolerable. Nestea is the devil. It just is.

No, we didn’t have Nalgene bottles or Yeti sealable cups back then. So I just used one of the ubiquitous big plastic, indestructible cups that restaurants gave out back then. Faddenhappi’s, Harpo’s, Shakespeare’s, etc. You know the type.

I usually used a Harpo's cup, for the Mizzou logo and for the fact that it was from a bar. And what's cooler than the local college bars when you're in high school?

(And gosh, remember Faddenhappi's? I loved that place. They were at 700 E. Broadway and served pizzas and loaded baked potatoes; the same toppings could work for both. They probably also served salads.)

Here’s the fun part about my humble beverage: it’s basically an instant “Arnold Palmer.” An Arnold Palmer is half lemonade and half iced tea. My version simply has less sugar and more lemon, making it extra sour. Even in high school, I liked sour drinks.

No, I would not make this for company. Never. But just for little old me?

Well, let’s say, what if it’s a busy workday, and you don’t really want to spend any time brewing up a pitcher of tea. Or maybe your air-conditioning has gone out, and you want iced tea without turning on the stove, or heating anything. Instant tea is so fast.

In graduate school, I shifted away from instant tea, forever. I made sun tea all the time when I lived in Arizona. I’d get tea in bulk from the local health-food coop. In Montana, I’d set out my jar of sun tea on the back steps. Like any good lesbian, I have kept a cabinet full of boxes of various teas, black and herbal. Until a few weeks ago, I don’t think I have ever purchased instant tea. Once I moved out of my parents’ house, I never bought instant tea.

So, now that I have a jar of powdery brown Lipton Instant Tea, I’ve had fun returning to my old concoction. I’ve been experimenting with adjusting the ratios of the various ingredients. I’ve been discovering that if you put a lot of ice in it, the ice melts and mellows whatever flavor was maybe too dominant. Taking the initial few sips certainly wakes you up. But I can sip on it all afternoon.

So that’s all. Just a little salute to my former self, before I became all “foody” and snooty.

And when you consider I've happily enjoyed dirty martinis (about which a friend of mine once said, "Don't you love them? They taste just like poison!"), this rather sour lemonade-and-iced-tea blend ain't too bad.

Now I’m trying to decide if I should “confess” to more childhood culinary atrocities. What do you think? Did you “cook” things as a juvenile that today, you’d shudder to think of?