Recipe Modification - Chai Green Iced Tea

Even though I've lived in the lower half of the US for almost 16 years, I've never quite taken a liking to iced tea. I can drink hot tea anytime, day or night, summer or winter, no problem. But I have never quite taken a liking to this Southern staple...until now...

Recently, after a long unair-conditioned car ride (yup, out again!) I had to stop for something cold. (It was 10 AM, too early for alcohol...at least for me...) I knew that there was a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop close to my destination, so I made a bee line towards it. I simply asked for an iced tea and the lady said it was blueberry and peach (or apricot or mint or something) iced green tea for the day. Holy cow! It was delicious!

So after going on about it for a while, Rhett, being the native Texan, told me that we should make some of our own iced tea, he had the tea bags and everything. But I was resistant. It's just going to be regular old boring iced tea, which he happens to love. (It makes an enormous impact on restaurant choices for him.) But he convinced me that we could try flavoring it ourselves. So we came up with Chai Green Iced Tea. Here it is...


Green Tea. You can also just purchase regular iced tea. But hey, maybe (who knows for sure) it is just a little healthier for you...doesn't hurt to try!

Chai tea. I love this one hot, so I figured I might like it cold too.

Anyway, there was a large discussion over what tea we would use as flavor. I was originally thing about an herbal passionfruit tea that we've had for a while that neither one of us really likes, but I thought it might be refreshing as a cold tea. Rhett thought that an herbal tea might be more overpowering than anything else and recommended that we try a black tea. He might have been thinking about using something more traditional, like an Earl Grey, but again, that just sort of sounds like boring iced tea to me, so we settled on the chai. This one in particular gives the iced tea a slightly spicey but coconut sweet flavor, very interesting being cold.

After boiling enough water according to the iced tea box, we steeped both teas together for 5 minutes then poured it into a pitcher. Rhett added a little extra cold water to top it off then we left is in the fridge to cool off.

BONUS!!! The flavor was great without adding any sugar, which is the last thing I need on a day as hot as today. And I used green tea, I mean what's the point of trying to be slightly healthier if I add all the sugar?
J.