herbal ice tea
You may remember 
Three of my favorite things converged recently: David Byrne, sweet tea, and booze. Down south, the latter two are common enough on their own, but now Firefly Distillery has combined them with Sweet Tea Flavored Vodka.
I was beyond skeptical when my friend brought a bottle to an outdoor David Byrne show in Atlanta. I'd never even met a canned or bottled sweet tea, or for that matter a flavored vodka, worth spitting at (most necessitate spitting out). I expected something cloying and artificial-tasting.
To my surprise, Firefly exercised remarkable restraint in infusing--or should I say brewing--the vodka with (according to 
The kids and I spent 3 days last week in the Southern Adirondacks. A family friend, who is quite an outdoorsman, and experienced birdwatcher, purchased about 40 acres a couple years ago near Hinckley Reservoir in upstate New York. He has been telling me that I need to come up for a visit, and we finally took him up on the offer. One thing that he mentioned in advance of the visit was that he wanted me to show him what was edible on his property. The next several posts will all be from that visit.
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My first interview is with Mike Morton, the owner and founder of TeaFrog, founded in 2006 and based online out of Oakville, Ontario with distributors throughout Canada. I've spoken with Mike through reviewing many of his teas for the STeaP podcast since late 2007, and he was all too happy to answer a few questions about his company.
BRANDICE: Tell us a bit about starting your company.
MIKE: I have been a tea drinker for all of my life, and until about 4 years ago, the only tea I knew was Orange Pekoe Tetley Teabags. :) My daughter visited Japan in 2004 and the family that she stayed with sent back a gift package of good green tea. At the time I had no idea how to brew it, taste it, etc, and we could not even read the packaging because it was