Iced tea, anyone?

Oh, how I love iced tea in the summer... Love it! Sweet and cold, in a glass filled with ice cubes and fruit... My favourite one by far is the Summer fruit tea from Simon Lévelt (yes, I'm aware that this website is Dutch, sorry), which is a blend of all types of summery fruits, like peach, apple and citrus, and blossoms like hibiscus and orange blossom. And it's pink. What's not to love?

I'm fully aware that you all might know exactly how to make iced tea and that I might sound like the redundancy department of redundancy, but here's a quick rundown of how I do it.



Get your favourite, summer-y flavoured loose tea. Like I said, mine has all sorts of dried fruit in it (and hardly any tea, I believe, so basically it's not even a tea) but if you're a big fan of green tea and lemon, go for it!

Grab a lemon and grate the peel (and put it in a bowl, don't toss it out!), then cut up the lemon in thin-ish slices.

Also, grab your sugar. I used almost a cup in 1.5 litres of tea which was slightly too much as it was very, very sweet but the BF seemed to like that, so if you like sweet, go for it!

I usually make about 1.5 litres in one go because that's how much can go into the largest soda bottle I can still fit in my fridge, so by that reasoning, heat up slightly more than 1.5 litres of water. Once boiling, turn off the heat and dump in your tea, sugar, lemon peel and lemon slices! I use about 20 grams of tea a litre, which is slightly on the stronger side.

Now let it stand for a while. Once it has cooled down enough, you can pour it into a bottle that can fit in your fridge or, if you're not a hillbilly like me and actually own a pitcher, you can use that. Filter the tea when pouring so the bits and pieces and slices of lemon will not end up in your tea. (trust me on this, those slices you dumped in when it was still hot will no longer look tasty and fresh. If you want, you can cut up a fresh lemon and put those slices in your pitcher or bottle, along with a whole bunch of ice cubes, when you serve the tea. Gives it a nice bit of extra flavour.)


Now for the fun part. Grab a glass, and throw in about 4 ice cubes. Then fill the glass about half-way with frozen fruit! I usually use strawberries, as they're slightly larger and give off a lot of juice, which means added noms. Another way to go is by freezing bits of fruit into your icecubes. Stick in a drinking straw and enjoy!

And don't be like me and knock over your glass when you've had one sip. Sure, the ice in my lap was refreshing on a hot day such as we had yesterday, but I still feel sticky, even after a shower...

Yesterday was scalding hot, and I haven't slept for more than a few hours so today I have a throbbing headache and a bad temper. But boy oh boy, the weather today... Look at that. The sky is yellow, people! Yellow! We've got a lot of rain coming our way by the look of it. The bf is looking forward to it, after getting about the same amount of sleep. He's been playing songs that reference lightning or storms or rain all morning.

See? DuunDUN, DuuunDUN, Dundun, dundun, dundun, dundun... Okay, so that doesn't look like much yet, but there's more coming, trust me. I'll report back as soon as possible whether we've flushed away or not. Now I've got to go and find my rubber boat, I think it might come in handy.