Well, in my experience tea biscuits are soft biscuits made with more baking soda and of course more sugar than a regular biscuit. Almost always made with raisins. I wish I had one right now.

Another southerner (by birth anyway) checking in... my husband is from Wisconsin and for our first Thanksgiving we had to have two sets of just about everything.

Sweet ice tea (me) and unsweetened (him), sweet potatoes (me) and regular potatoes (him), pecan pie (me) and chocolate cake (him), fried okra (me) and sauerkraut (him), green bean casserole (me)... the list goes on and on. Even our cranberry sauces were different! And he had never heard of grits, chicken fried steak, or putting sausage gravy on your biscuits.

David,

when the London fog rolls in and it's a cold dreary day, sure, hot tea is appropriate. But when it's 100 (38C) with humidity to match, you want your tea cold, poured over ice and with full of sugar. And some lemon too.

I find the idea of milk in tea revolting, but if you want it that way, okay, I won't try to judge you too much.

And for all the people who won't eat grits, just change the name to polenta and charge 4x the price.

Ncgrrl - Absolutely loved your comment about grits and polenta. There might be some rude awakening out there.

>And for all the people who won't eat grits, just change the name to polenta and charge 4x the price.<

I am afraid you have been misinformed.

Polenta is ground corn.

Grits are made from the dehulled kernels of the corn - a much more genteel product.

Texasaggie---green bean casserole! The culinary apex of civilization! With Campbell's condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup, french cut green beans (frozen), a bit of milk and a can of Durkee's French Fried Onions!

Truly, the ambrosia of the gods; I make it almost weekly.

I love "sweet tea" which is what Southerners calls sweetened ice tea. It's the house wine of the South and one of that region's truly wonderful contribution to American culture. Don't knock it till you've tried it. Plus, some of you must be crazy for dissin' Krispy Kremes. Have you never had one hot? Nectar of the gods indeed!

Sorry, David, but this Englishman loves iced tea, especially Turkey Hill Diet Decaf that comes in one-quart containers at the grocer's. No sweet tea for me, however. I am too used to drinking Diet Pepsi all my life to be able to stand a sugary drink.

I will never forget the first time Aunt Pat (of Old Windsor) saw me drinking iced tea. She picked up a magazine off of the coffee table and hit me over the head with it. Uncle Terry says that only atheists drink iced tea!

Atheists and arsenal fans. I Wouldn't have either in the house.

Reading this thread I am coming to realise why so many americans are a little on the large side. Not one thing has been mentioned that doesn't contain sugar, butter, cream or full-fat milk.

Surely you don't eat this stuff every day?

My best biscuit recipe becomes shortcake, as in strawberry shortcake with the addition of sugar.

David, America is hardly the only country in the world with overweight citizens. You Brits are doing quite well in that regard. From the current Sunday (UK) Times travel section:

"I’VE just returned from a week in Nice. Lovely hotel, divine weather, and the French were as stylish as ever. Just one thing ruined it — fat Brits...Every time an obese person lumbered by, blocking out all natural light and wearing some luminous thong, I listened out for the accent. More often than not, it was English."

There is a fair amount of fat, sugar and butter in the average British diet too these days.

I FEEL SICK
Havent you people heard of a fruit salad with a bit of low fat yogurt for breakfast or a grilled chicken salad for lunch. All the talk of gravy, grits and fried everything, yuk.
A biscuit to me is sweet often with a cream filling in the middle and chocolate on the outside. Which is what I believe you all refer to as cookies but we call them biscuits.

I actually thought it was British food that had an alarming amount of animal fat and heavy use of milk and cream all over the place (e.g., butter on meat sandwiches, Yorkshire pudding, hardly any vegetables or cooked to death and not edible, "fancy" food with cream sauces, fried candy bars as snacks, etc.). I have had limited experience in England--I very much enjoyed one visit there about 20 years ago. However, when I was there I found much of the food hard to digest and tried to eat in "foreign" food restaurants as much as possible. As for American food, I think what we eat at home is very regional and very ethnic. Many of the foods described in this thread sound "strange" to me because they're not what I'm used to eating and the cooking style in completely different from what I'm used to cooking at home. (That's not to say that I can't manage to get "large" eating foods cooked in olive oil instead of animal fat and flavored with herbs instead of sugar and grease, and that some hardworking or athletic nd active people who eat high grease/high sugar diets can't manage to be very thin.)

P.S. That casserole made from canned beans, canned soup, canned mushrooms, is, like Rick Steves, one of those topics that is dangerous to criticize; people who criticize them are often personally attacked. So I'm not commenting, except to make this comment about not commenting.

Not to mention how scones are typically served with one pot of butter, another of clotted cream, and a third of heavily-sugared jam or marmalade.

Which matters more, the <i>quantity</i> of life, or the <i>quality</i>? Your call.

Hi DW

&gt;Not one thing has been mentioned that doesn't contain sugar, butter, cream or full-fat milk.

Surely you don't eat this stuff every day? &lt;

You left out lard and salt.

Yes, there are people who still eat as their great-grandparents did - the diet of a field hand.

I have seen folks put as many as 9 packs of sugar in a cup of coffee.

I know people whose morning beverage is a Coca-Cola (also drunk with lunch, dinner and between meal snacks).

A dressing down on the American diet from someone whose e-mail address is &quot;custardmonster&quot;? Ah, the irony.

Many a time I have seen a Mom putting &quot;Co-Cola&quot; in a baby's bottle in Georgia. Even I had a problem with that!

kswl, I saw a woman giving her baby a Starbucks latte one day in Florida..

How awful!! Those mothers should be hanged!! Give the the good ol' days when mothers spooned cough syrup with codeine down their children's throats.

&gt;Give the the good ol' days when mothers spooned cough syrup with codeine down their children's throats.&lt;

Better yet, the days when you could get Laudanum.