 Hello, welcome back to Ascension Nature. We've got a very special episode today. We are going to be reviewing some crazy weird 50s foods. This is all thanks to the wonderful help of Ms. B. Townsend. Yes, her channel, Ms. B. Townsend's Vintage Tips and Tricks, and she suggested let's do a collaboration talking about various 50s foods in some of these strange and odd dishes that they came up with. And in tandem with that, I decided to do some talking about tea. So we've got several different levels of tea today, iced tea, because in America in particular, 80% of Americans drink iced tea. And that's still true up to today, apparently. I did some recent research and they were saying how like over 80% of Americans still primarily drink iced tea. Part of that all stems back to the history of the tea rooms. Now, if you don't know anything about tea rooms, basically, they started getting established right around the beginning of the 1900s. They actually are part and parcel to the beginning of the suffragette movement, which is very interesting from a historical aspect. It was pretty much the first place, if not one of the first places where women can actually start their own business or go without having to have a chaperone go with them. So women could just go to a location to one of these tea rooms. So that's why it ended becoming like a house where women would meet for the suffragette movement is because women could go there without men accompanying them and talk about things. The concept of the tea room actually began in the United Kingdom in the late 1800s. And it wasn't until the 1910s where you really see tea rooms start to show up in the United States. And as they grew, you could even find tea rooms in Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Prohibition in addition to helping fuel America's desire for tea in general really helped to boost the tea room boom. And by the mid to late 1920s, tea rooms were seen as a national institution. The most amazing aspect of tea rooms is that they were the first common places to be fully staffed and operated by women, oftentimes with women being the primary patrons. During this time for a woman to be unescorted meant that they were possibly up to naughty or improper activities. Also before the tea rooms, the restaurant business was seen as a rather nefarious place for a woman to set up shop and trying to work in one would likely lead to a woman's reputation being tarnished. In the 1930s, the Nancy Drew mysteries were first published. How is this relevant? Well, in some of the Nancy Drew books, they mentioned tea rooms, which at the time was code to the reader that Nancy and friends were independent women who could get things done without having a man having to be involved. So the tea rooms have a very interesting history and it actually by the time of the 1950s when this food was coming around, they actually were becoming extinct just because they're kind of out of their purpose. Yeah, well there you go. Maybe we have to bring them back, but with a new vibe. Like the vintage community, reclaim it. Reclaim it, yes, reclaim the tea room. But as far as the iced tea is concerned, I've got three different kinds here today. We're going with the standard unsweetened tea. Then we're going to go with a partially sweetened iced tea and then a full on southern sweet, sweet tea. So I think there's like an expression as southern as sweet tea, if you've heard that before, and there's other different versions of that. But this again is something that's a modern microcosm just kind of splashed back into history. It didn't really actually take off that way until it started getting more marketed by people until the 1880s and 1990s. In the 1950s, people still had the option to go either way. I saw some research about some people talking about their parents or their parents talking directly in certain papers saying that, yeah, we actually would presweeten our tea and some other people would, but then, you know, other people would say, no, actually, we have it unsweetened and have a thing of sugar on the table and you'd sweeten it to your own level. So I figured, okay, let's try it on the three levels with having no sugar in there whatsoever, a little bit of sugar, and then lots of sugar, as a lot of people in the south tend to have it nowadays. A first recipe for sweet, non-alcoholic tea was in Marion Campbell Tyree's 1879 cookbook, Housekeeping in Old Virginia, and this recipe actually uses a green tea, not black, which isn't surprising as before World War II, the amount of green tea drunk in the U.S. was equal or greater than black tea. The rise of sweet tea is oddly partly in thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Several historians note that after the 60s, southerners were in a bit of an identity crisis, having had some of its traditions greatly changed following the civil rights battles, and as a way to assimilate other members of their community, sweet tea became a bit of a rallying point for people to have a safe means of relating to each other. And thus, sweet tea became one of the bed rocks of the new south's identity. Shall we start off and get it going? Yeah, let's do it. I wanted to try and just get the whole experience in one bite, but it's so massive. It feels like it's four finger sandwiches stuck in one. And the slabs are huge. Yeah, not too bad. Should we wash it down with some tea? Exactly, yes. So, this is the natural black iced tea. This is kind of the posh version. We've got the loose-sleep version. Always, if you're doing this in the south, or doing it in America, anyway, you're doing it with tea bags. I didn't want to go and just buy tea bags for the purpose of this, unless I actually found the orange pico, which is the traditional southern iced tea blend that you use. Orange pico is really hard to find over here, so I didn't, since I couldn't find that, I was like, I'll just use a standard black tea, and we'll go off of that, because if you don't have the orange pico, black tea is the way to do your iced tea. I have to say I like the iced tea with the sandwiches. I think that's a good combo. Not something I would. I think every time I've ever had iced tea, I've just had it as like a refreshing drink the way you would a coke or something, if you were hot and out and about. But afternoon tea wise, it's a winner. So, this is actually probably a touch weaker than you would normally have. Normally, when you'd be drinking it, it'd be a little bit stronger. I tried to let it brew a little bit longer, but I probably couldn't even go up longer, because it was a loose-sleep compared to a tea bag. Okay. And so it's not as strong as it probably would be with a standard one, is what I'm tasting it right now. Yeah, it's feeling rather, not very strong. I'm not bothered by it at all. But in addition to that, the way you normally would make a nice tea or a sweet tea is that you actually add a little bit of bicarbonate of the soda, or baking soda, into the mixture, because it helps cure the bitterness off of it. So very interesting. Part of what it might be curing the bitterness right now is that. I'll see you've added it to this. So I did actually add it to this. Okay. Wow. Yeah, I like it. It reminds me a little bit of, I was just thinking, I was thinking I hadn't had any sweet iced tea, unsweetened iced tea. But in Japan, I've tried their black teas and green teas iced, because they're everywhere in the shops. It's obviously a pretty standard flavor for that, but I really like this. They tend to mix green tea into almost everything. It tends to be a blend of stuff. Yeah, that's another interesting fact about the iced tea, is people think that iced tea really started around the 1904 World's Fair, where there's this guy, I think it was Thomas Sullivan? Or no, is that Blikenden, something more like that? Blikenden? I don't know. Thomas Sullivan's actually the guy who invented the tea bag in 1908. But Blikenden was credited with kind of popularizing it at the World's Fair, because he was like, Oh, I've got this hot tea that I want to show everybody. And he's like, Oh, no one's buying it. So he decided to ice it is the whole thing that people said. But actually, before that, in the 1896 World's Fair, there's documentation about another seller actually selling like tons of iced tea. Like I think in the modern conversion said it was like $50,000 worth of iced tea. So it's like not a small thing. Yeah. A lot of people have credited him with it, but it's not necessarily true. To give him his credit, though, while iced tea may have started to touch earlier, it was thanks to Blikenden that it became popularized, as the heat at the 1904 World's Fair was importantly very intense. And as Blikenden was giving his tea away for free, many of the fair's 20 million patrons quickly took advantage of it. And after the fair was done, Blikenden went to Bloomingdale's in New York and offered free iced tea to shoppers there, further solidifying its quickly escalating popularity. Ice tea actually started off as boozy. Yeah, in the early days before the war, it was actually all the early recipes included some level of booze in them. Okay, so Long Island iced tea is not a new invention? Yeah, not a new invention, probably. And it wasn't until after that time when it started getting repopularized by Blikenden and these other guys that the, and actually prohibition was another reason that iced tea became very popular in the United States, because they couldn't go to alcohol, so they started going to tea. I wonder if they were like, yeah, I'm drinking tea. Yeah. So another really cool fact about iced tea is that before World War Two, actually, consumption of tea in America was about 50% green tea and 50% black tea. And because of the World War, people don't quite realize that trade was not only cut off with Japan, but all of China for the most part. So basically green tea imports stopped. So by the end of the war, 99% of consumption of tea in America was black tea. And then thereafter, basically Americans kind of just ended up sticking with that until the modern times now, just the last decade or two when more research has come out on the benefits of green teas and other types of teas where people have started expanding more into different types of teas. But it's still like over 80%. I think it was as of 2020, it was 84% consumption is still black tea. Officially in 2020, 84% of all tea in America was black tea. And of the 84 billion servings of tea drank, 75 to 80% of it was iced tea. Wow. Yeah. That's so interesting that, you know, back then, I guess it was just green tea and black tea, whereas today when I talk to people, people seem to think of green tea as Japanese tea and black tea just as tea. Exactly. Yeah. But it's like, yeah, that all happened because of World War II. And it hasn't really changed since then. It's like, you know, almost a hundred years later. Wow. Yeah. Bring back the green tea. Well, I mean, they have, that's the one benefit of modern research and everything is that they have started getting more of that back in. Yeah. I guess it's also considered everyone goes on about the health benefits of green tea. Yeah. Yeah, that and like the more herbal teas are getting more popular as well and starting to take a big part of the market. So yeah, it is definitely shifting as far as that's concerned. We know where to find out all that information. So to give you guys some context, I'm sure we have a cutaway, but how fabulous do they look? Now we have another tea to go with this as well. Yes. All right, because served up a sweetened version. So this is like, what would be, is this like equivalent to today's sweetened tea? You were saying there's like a super version for the south. This is a moderate version of sweet tea and we have one that's going to be super sweet tea. That should be your full-on heaviest that you're buying. Second dessert. Cheers. Oh yeah, just like a little aftertaste. That's quite nice. It like balances the flavor really well. Yeah, definitely is like the sugar is not too heavy. I was a little afraid at first being like, oh, maybe that's gonna be too much just with the middle one, but it's like, no, now I'm drinking it. Is the lemon flavor only coming from the slice or is there lemon in there as well? No, I think it's just coming from the slice, if the lemon is. You know, traditionally you would serve it with a lemon and maybe mint leaves in there. Yeah, with mint leaves would be lovely. I like this one. Yeah. See how I go with the sweet one? I'm not a big, I never put sugar in my tea or coffee, so no, I might get converted. It's not as bad as I would have expected. I mean, texture-wise, there's nothing pleasant going on, but flavor-wise? I mean, I don't know why I'm still got three bites. So, we should try some proper sweet tea now. In fact, I think in some places that come along in the South, I'm trying to see actually there's still some sugar that's already settled at the bottom. Yeah. Just to give you the idea of how much sugar is in here and then, yeah, let's just give it a shot. Yeah, let's do it. Cheers. Here's to the end of eating that salad. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's very sweet, huh? Very, very sweet. You almost got a taste of tea. Yeah, it really comes to spirits. I mean, like I said, in a normal one, the tea would be a bit stronger, but this is, I mean, I've had some sweet teas that are definitely this strong in the South before. Okay. So, this is not unusual. I mean, you can definitely find this kind of a strong sweet tea. It's the reason you use tea bags with these is it definitely creates a much stronger base flavor of the black tea in trying to use a loose leaf tea, which unless you're steeping it, I think for twice as long. I only went like, you know, an extra five minutes over it. It's supposed to steep 15 minutes normally with these. I probably got to went 30 to 40 even and I maybe would have gotten closer to the flavor profile that I would normally have from the sweet tea. So, it's usually really dark as well. Yeah. I mean, it may actually look light at the end of the day, but it's going to taste much stronger. Okay. Yeah. It's pretty light right now. I think that's the sugar. I do notice too that like you the sugar hits you and then afterwards it's like a slow tea kind of after. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You definitely taste this in there instantly like, yeah that's a lot of sugar. Yeah. With mint leaves though, I think we put quite a lot of fresh mint in it with the sugar. I think it would be really nice. Yeah. So, that's it for our crazy venture into weird foods. If you haven't seen that video, please do. I'm going to definitely put a link to it here and into interesting levels of sweet tea and tea rooms and such. I don't want to drink another round of this because this is super sweet stuff, but please go check out Ms. Bee's channel. If you want him to learn more about other teas, watch some of my other videos, but otherwise until next time, you guys take care of each other. Be kind and don't put too much sugar in your tea.