Who doesn't love a nice cup of tea?
Well, okay, historically I'm a coffee drinker, but over the past couple of years, I've also become a newbie gardener. One thing I grew was the herb mint, and boy, did it grow! I used my fresh mint in salads, and I drank mojitos, and I still had a large quantity left when September rolled around.
At the end of the first growing season, I picked the remaining stalks, tied the ends together into a bundle with twine, and hung them upside down in my kitchen until dry. I crumbled up the dried mint and bottled it into a shaker. By the end of the second growing season, I still had half of that dried mint left. Once this second crop had been dried, I didn't just have a shaker full of dried mint, I had a full coffee container. How was I possibly going to use it all?
I started off just feeding the mint leaves into a tea leaf strainer and drinking straight mint tea. Nothing wrong with that, but my creative gene decided there had to be more I could do with the mint. I started drying various fruits and began experimenting with making my own tea recipes.
To start with, I began fooling around with ingredients that I already had in the house. I cored and chopped a couple of apples (left the peels on), put them on a baking sheet, and dried them in the oven at 250 degrees until they looked ready. It took a couple of hours. I made sure to stir them regularly, and I did the research and learned that dried apples would last around six months. Next, I added various flavour combinations and made certain to record the exact measurements of each individual cup. Some were great; some, to be transparent, got dumped down the drain after a single sip.
Eventually, I branched out, and I ordered some new flavours (including star anise, dried ginger, and vanilla bean). I also decided that I didn't want every cup of tea to be herbal, and since I had recently purchased a box of Red Rose tea, I opened up some of those bags into a container and used that 'stock' as a black tea base. This, in my opinion, was the only part of the experiment that didn't fully work. The Red Rose tea leaves were so fine that they seeped through the disposable tea bags I had purchased and sifted into the bottom of my teacup. In the future, I will search out a better black tea option.
I learned a few things while doing all of this. First, I truly love creating my own teas. Not only does it satisfy me to be able to know every ingredient in my beverage and to select exactly the combination that matches my mood, making my own tea from herbs out of my own garden makes me feel like I am taking one baby step towards greener living. Plus, I think my recipes are delicious! I also learned that it is less expensive, at least initially, to simply buy tea in a box off a shelf, but once you have the supplies, they last a long time. Tea bags do not take much to fill, so a little goes a long way. I also discovered that (possibly because I didn't fill them completely) it took a bit longer to seep my teas than with store-bought brands in order to get the full-bodied flavour. This was not a major obstacle, so creating my own tea flavours continues.
Here are the Tea by Leigh recipes I came up with (in the design package I put together for friends and family this Christmas_. I'd love if you recreated them and let me know what you think. If you've ever concocted tea recipes of your own, feel free to share, and we can compare. Oh, and for the record, my personal favourite is... Chocolate Spice Tea. So yum!
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