Sweet Tea, Cornbread,
and Fried Chicken
Sunday Dinner and
Other Family Gatherings

Sunday dinner is the special meal of every Southern week. It follows church. That’s the way it’s done. You don’t miss church to prepare the meal. You cook ahead, and everyone pitches in to get the meal on the table. Everyone helps clean up. Then you take a nap, a long nap. Every holiday in the South is centered around the familiar. You don’t try new recipes. You make the favorites that show up every year, made by the same person and served in the same bowl. Special occasions in the South aren’t for branching out into new horizons. In the South, a special-occasion meal is to remind you of who you were and where you came from. It’s that simple.

In the South, there is a delicacy known as “sweet tea.”
It’s not sweetened tea. It’s not unsweetened tea that you add sugar to at the table.

It’s prepared by mixing the hot brew with the sugar until it’s dissolved into a nice thick syrup,
a sort of tea concentrate, and then the cold water is added and poured over ice in the glasses.

Lemon and mint are added in some of the uptown places, but only to the glasses.
In Tea, sweet tea that is, is a very individual taste.

Iced tea is always the beverage of choice in the South.