| Our cup of tea
The calorie-free beverage steeped from leaves is quite literally our cup of tea -- or more precisely, our glass of tea. Years before trendy cafes put ice into coffee and christened it with an exotic-sounding name, there was ice tea. Today, more than eight out of every ten servings of tea we take in the U.S. are chilled. "Consumers like the taste. It is light and refreshing," said Joe Simrany, president of the Tea Association of the USA. "Plus, it is increasingly associated with a great many health benefits." Richard Blechynden is commonly credited for popularizing the summertime beverage more than a century ago, when he was manager of the Indian tea pavilion at the St. Louis World's Fair. Blechynden served black tea over ice to great fanfare in 1904, though cookbooks dating back to the early 19th century show that American housewives had already been enjoying chilled tea as an ingredient in summertime punches.
Steeped with great Canadian tea
There's no real mystery as to why the Mysterious Rose wows at first sip. Leon Li of Ten Ren Tea skilfully slips a multitude of harmonious flavours into his iced tea creation – soaking, straining and blending blueberries, plums, simple syrup, brown sugar syrup and Taiwanese oolong tea with ice. He deftly shapes a thin slice of red apple into a flower and sets it afloat on the thick, dusty rose elixir, alongside a plump bubble tea straw. "This is the drink of all drinks," Brendan Waye of the Great Canadian Tea Steep-off tells a small but rapt audience Monday at the Canadian Coffee & Tea Show at the Toronto Congress Centre. "This should be framed, not drunk." But drink it we must (we being the steep-off judges), and the sensory memory of this vibrant and complex creation lingers.
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