iced tea

My plans for the perfect glass of iced tea began this morning. On Sunday my sister-in-law gave me her old sun tea jar, and this morning I filled it up with filtered water and dropped in six bags of tea; two of Earl Grey and four of English Breakfast Tea. The jar went onto the balcony in the sunshine for about five hours. Around 2:30pm I suddenly realized I had no ice. I also remembered that the two empty ice cube trays in my freezer were empty because I had inherited them with this apartment, and there was an odd white crust around the bottom of most of the cube-compartments –”odd” being defined as 1) I don’t know what it is, and 2) doesn’t wash out easily. I nipped a bit of un-iced tea from the fridge, and it was good, but it wasn’t what I’d envisioned this morning.

I went to Target in search of ice cube trays; I wanted something colorful, rubbery, en vogue that made oddly shaped ice cubes (it’s been that kind of day). Target had no such ice-cube trays. It’s rectangular cubes for $1.50/per tray, or pleasingly oval-shaped cubes for $0.99 per two trays. Such synchronicity makes my usually indecisive shopping easy and quick.

Three more hours pass until one of the trays looks like the cubes are mostly frozen. I knock them out and sure enough, several exquisitly oval-shaped cubes rattle into my glass. (I later learned that a few of them harboured a watery reservoir which setup a fine iced-tea fractal: bubbles floating in inside the ice-cubes, as ice-cubes floating in a glass of iced tea, as iced tea floated around in my mind for most of the day.

Iced tea is at hand on a warm evening in early summer.

Lots of wonderful things come my way every day. But it’s rare to want something so simple all day and then to finally have it. I just had to tell you about it.