March 1, 2021
Category: Regenerative Recipes
Tea is apparently in our blood. I was born in Kenya right outside a tea plantation. I have been a tea lover (originally black tea and then moved to all sorts of tea) my whole life. My love of tea has gotten passed on to my daughter. I mentioned in a couple of other posts that my 8 year old daughter has her heart set on opening a tea shop when she gets older. We’ve been making plans for the business name, the tea types and other things she wants to sell, and now we’re working on her own tea recipes. We’ve really been enjoying them so I figured we would share some combos that we like below, even though we’re still at the very beginning of this fun journey.
We had a good mint harvest last year so we have used that in almost all of our trial recipes so far. Our daughter loves just straight mint tea so its been fun adding some ingredients to that. The ingredients we’ve been experimenting with the most are:
Mint – we have a couple different kinds of mint that were here when we purchased our property – mostly peppermint I believe
Peony – we also inherited a bunch of beautiful peony plants at our property. I didn’t realize they were edible until last summer.
Citruses – lemon, orange and lime. If I’m drying or juicing anything, I like to get the fruit from the discounted area of our local grocery store – organic if possible so I can dry the peel and the flesh. It will be much cheaper and the quality doesn’t matter as much when you’re juicing or dehydrating.
Dehydrated ginger – I try to get organic ginger so then I can dry the peel and the flesh.
Dehydrated apples – I often buy discounted “ugly” apples at our local grocery store to use for juice or dehydrating. Now that I have the dehydrator and figured out the PERFECT dehydrated apples, I am excited to dry some of the apples we grow ourselves. Our neighbors also have apples that have subpar texture that I may try to dehydrate and see how they do.
Cinnamon – I buy in bulk from a local spice company because we obviously can’t grow cinnamon in our Zone 3 Climate. I also put a stick in my coffee pot when I make coffee to make a quick and easy cafe on leche! I guess cinnamon is great for the metabolism too.
Dried Hibiscus – I buy organic, in bulk online, because we can’t plant hibiscus in our Zone 3 Climate. My husband drinks this a often since its supposed to be great for lowering blood pressure.
Our daughter is going to grow a tea garden this summer so we’ll have a LOT more experiments and recipes as we try more.
- 1t. Mint, 1t. Peony, 1/2t. Lemon, 1/2 t. Orange
- 1t. Mint, 1t. Peony, 1/2t. Lemon, 1/2 t. Orange, 1/2 t. Ginger
- 1t. Mint, 1 t. Peony
- 1t. Dehydrated apples & 1 t. cinnamon (We took cinnamon sticks and ground them up in a spice grinder. We obviously can’t grow cinnamon in our Zone 3 Climate.)
- 2t. black tea, 1t. dried bee balm flower (It is called Wild Bergamot because it has a similar flavor to bergamot, the ingredient that makes Earl Gray taste like Earl Gray. Bee Balm/Wild Bergamot is also a great pollinator attracting flower.)
- 1t. Lemon, 1t. Orange, 1t. Dried Hibiscus (we can’t plant hibiscus in our Zone 3 Climate so we buy organic in bulk)
Adjust quantities based on your preferences.
What are your favorite tea recipes?
To view other mint recipes, click here.