The one item I have and use the most of each day is......water. It goes into my coffee, tea, and all meals in one way or another. I even need it to make my messes and to clean them up. I can't do anything during my day without my favorite thing. 
WOW Can Man you made me stop and think how we tend to overlook the really simple and yet most important ingredient of all that we do!!! Lol Thanks, Cathy
I'm currently reading cover-to-cover (and enjoying the heck out of) "Screen Doors & Sweet Tea" by Martha Hall Foose. It's a fantastic book of recipes and tales from the Mississippi Delta.
This surpirsed me but her recipe for sweet tea calls for seeping the tea-bags a half hour in a pitcher of cool water, then adding a boiled and cooled simple syrup, then topping off w/ cool water and ice. Because I'd only ever been exposed to tea brewed on the stove-top or sun-tea style outside on hot days in a jar, I presumed tea needed heat, but evidently my thoughts are a bit off.
This surpirsed me but her recipe for sweet tea calls for seeping the tea-bags a half hour in a pitcher of cool water, then adding a boiled and cooled simple syrup, then topping off w/ cool water and ice. Because I'd only ever been exposed to tea brewed on the stove-top or sun-tea style outside on hot days in a jar, I presumed tea needed heat, but evidently my thoughts are a bit off.
CAG - With our long winters and snowy days - we don't get "sun" for sun tea like other areas. So I've resorted to placing the bag(s) (orange pekoe, black, green, whatever) in a glass gallon with cold water and let it set a couple hours and I have my "sun" tea. Just as good.
mama- may I ask?... where r u located?
I too am always somewhere where the days are chilly and the winters long. I worked in Alaska for 13 years up until March, and when I wasn't in AK I was usually home here in Illinois. Of course Illinois winters aren't nearly as long as those in AK, but they're some years every bit as tough, for sure! (many remote, but largely unpopulated regions of Alaska experience terrible conditions, but those areas where people actually live have much milder conditions, considering...) I enjoy any place where the year is divided four ways- I don't enjoy any season enuf to deal with it exclusively for a whole year!
I too am always somewhere where the days are chilly and the winters long. I worked in Alaska for 13 years up until March, and when I wasn't in AK I was usually home here in Illinois. Of course Illinois winters aren't nearly as long as those in AK, but they're some years every bit as tough, for sure! (many remote, but largely unpopulated regions of Alaska experience terrible conditions, but those areas where people actually live have much milder conditions, considering...) I enjoy any place where the year is divided four ways- I don't enjoy any season enuf to deal with it exclusively for a whole year!