Watermelon iced tea

It was Sam who gave us our first taste of watermelon iced tea. She cut seedless watermelon into small cubes, dropped them into glasses of iced tea, gave Speedy and me each a glass and, oh wow, were we wide-eyed with surprise! So simple, so basic, so very refreshing. How could we not have thought of that?

The key, of course, is good iced tea and seedless watermelon. Unless you want to spend a long time prying the seeds out of regular watermelon — who wants to do that? — I really recommend the seedless variety.

You can make watermelon iced tea the easy and lazy way by just mixing powdered iced tea with iced water and dropping in the watermelon cubes. But if you have the inclination, you can transform something basic into a real treat by brewing your own tea. That way, you can choose the exact flavors, the strength of the brew, and control the amount of sweetness and tanginess as well.

And since, these days, the term “iced tea” also refers to cold drinks made with infusions rather than real tea, you can choose to make a brew of herbs and fruit peel to make your “iced tea” caffeine free.

Here are some things to ponder upon before making watermelon iced tea:

Tea, herbal tea, infusion and tisane
Homemade flavored iced tea
Rosebud iced tea

For the sweetener, you can use sugar, coco sugar or honey or, if you really want something terrifically aromatic and flavorful, try infused simple syrup.

You can make your tea base following any one, or more, of those ideas then just drop in well-chilled cubes of watermelon. Voila! Watermelon iced tea.