WTF: An Iced Tea Story

With the warm weather, my brain is telling me that it's iced tea season. Let me be frank, I am very particular about my iced tea. I don't drink hot tea at all. I don't like it and I've tried numerous times and numerous ways.  I am an iced tea drinker, but during the warmer months. Usually I drink iced tea only from Memorial Day through Labor Day. However, I will bend those rules if it gets hot early and if it stays warm longer. 

When it comes to iced tea, if I'm in the mood for something very sweet (and I usually am), I will drink a very cold Arizona sweet tea. No other brand of sweet tea will cut it for me. (Unless you're talking about the Millburn Diner's homemade sweet tea; that's another story but not easily accessible.)

 To avoid the calories, I usually drink diet iced tea. I am a huge fan of Wawa's diet peach iced tea as well as their diet raspberry iced tea. However, it has been difficult to find in recent years. Furthermore, I no longer live nearby a Wawa. When my parents were alive and had the house at the New Jersey shore, I would walk and get diet peach iced tea every time I was there. However, even before I sold the shore house, it was getting more and more difficult to find. The slots that would hold the diet peach or diet raspberry tea were always empty.  It was sad.

 Neither diet peach nor diet raspberry iced tea from Wawa is available in a larger size than one pint. I have petitioned them to offer in a half gallon but to no avail. This makes their diet peach and diet raspberry iced teas not very economical. With that said it is definitely worth it if you can find it. 

My mother was also a diet iced tea drinker. And she would often buy diet decaf iced tea from TurkeyHill. It was no Wawa diet peach, but it was good. And with no caffeine, I can drink it in the late afternoon with no ill effects. 

As it has been getting warm, a week or so ago I saw that Turkey Hill diet decaf iced tea was on sale at my local ShopRite. It was a little early in the year, but I figured it was on sale  so I should get it. Of course the sale price today is what the regular price was a year or so ago but there's not much you can do about that.  (Well you can b**** about how grocery prices are going up and up all while the president claims that grocery prices are going down and down. But what does he know? Has he ever had a diet iced tea? Has he ever even purchased a 2 liter bottle of his favorite drink, diet Coke? I think not.). 

On a particularly warm day, I opened the diet decaf iced tea. It was okay, but it wasn't as good as it had been in the past. I wasn't unhappy with it but I definitely wasn't happy either. 

This week Turkey Hill had their gallon containers of iced tea on sale. Diet decaf only comes in half gallon containers. Diet iced tea however does come in the gallon container. With a gallon being only a few cents more than a half-gallon, I decided I would go for the caffeinated diet iced tea. 

I brought it home and had a glass. Like the diet decaf variety, it didn't taste the same. It didn't taste that good at all. However I drank several glasses because it was hot outside (really hot for April in the Poconos). By the end of the day I really wasn't feeling well. I felt bloated and uncomfortable. And the thought of drinking anymore of the Turkey Hill diet iced tea was not appealing at all. It still isn't.  My stomach groans at the thought of it.

 So I have a nearly full container of diet Turkey Hill iced tea sitting in my refrigerator and I am not sure what I'm going to do with it. I don't know if there's something wrong with it or if there's something in it that is just not agreeing with me. It seems silly to just dump it, on the other hand it's even sillier to keep and not drink. And if it doesn't taste good you shouldn't drink it. 

 So WTF Turkey Hill. What have you done with your iced tea? Or is it me?  Maybe it's me.  Either way, I don't think I'm going to be buying it again. 

On the other hand when I was out the other day I passed by a Wawa. And I checked out their beverage section. There, in a newly labeled 16 oz. bottle, was diet peach iced tea. There was a sale. Two for $3. (Back in the day a sale would have been to for $2 but we know how things are going now.). I ended up buying two. I considered buying more but thought back to my recent Turkey Hill experience. When I got home I opened the bottle and am thrilled to say that is still as refreshing and delicious as I remembered it. Guess I need to go back to Wawa. I just hope they still have the diet peach on the shelves. Fingers crossed.