i disagree. tea kicks ass. and you get to drink it with the queen in one of those tiny cups with your pinky sticking up in the air.
Sugar, mostly. Lemon. Milk depending on type/mood. Honey, on occasion. Equal/sweet n low if sugar unavailable. Ice
"I forgot about hot tea." You guys kill me. Molasses?! My folks are Bluenosers, and they used to put molasses on bread, so I'm familiar with this 101 uses for molasses maritime attitude, but tea is a new one on me. Is that with or without the Carnation condensed milk? I prefer my Orange Pekoe (Red Rose, of course) with a bit of milk. Earl Grey I have black. Herbal I avoid if at all possible.
Excellent! Little pink packets rule. Blue packets just don't measure up, and don't even mention real sugar (it takes a lot of it to get something sweet enough to drink, then it's too syrupy sweet, and it won't dissolve... not to mention being bad for your diet). Lemon is OK if it's fresh, but none of those nasty canned iced tea things from the vending machine with too much lemon juice already in them. Lime is better. Another thing is to stick in a spring of fresh mint. (Not sure if this works well as the same time as the lime.) Here's a pet peeve. I hate when people (esp. fast food restaurants) serve iced tea at room temperature. It needs to be cold before you put it on ice. Otherwise, you put it over ice which melts immediately and you end up with lukewarm watered-down... swill. Not to mention the room-temp tea container sitting out all day is supposed to be a good medium for bacteria.
Back in the old outport fishing days a century ago, sugar was terribly expensive and difficult to obtain in Newfoundland. You had to be pretty wealthy to have a jar of sugar cubes. Thus, when the average joe-fishermen sat down for his daily "mug-up", molasses was pretty much the only thing available to sweeten his tea. It's not really all that common anymore, but there are still quite a few old salts from around the bay that adhere to the tradition. Carnation milk is the devil. Pretty darn popular, though. Like molasses, its widespread use stems from the unavailability of fresh milk in the old days.