How I Make Tea

 Caffeine is a food group. Unless someone comes up with something better, I'm gonna stand by this statement. Many years ago, I was listening to all the garbage about how bad caffeine was so I decided to give it up. A couple of years later in January I was downing the asthma meds like it was the middle of July. It occurred to me that I didn't have that much of a problem in January when I was drinking caffeine, so I went back on it and was much better in about 3 weeks. Caffeine doesn't have near the side effects as asthma meds and since then I've found out that before prescription meds were illegal to buy without a prescription, caffeine was the drug of choice among doctors for asthma.

So anyway, I drink LOTS of tea and I am not ashamed :) I really don't care for just plain tea, so I go to my herb garden to give it a little lemony taste during the summer. During the winter, I try to grow a little inside, but  there isn't enough room, so I usually settle for a cap full of concentrated lemon juice if I haven't been to my mom's house in California and brought home fresh lemons!

I start by heating filtered water on the stove. While it is heating, I get my pitchers out and visit my herb garden.

I generally make 2 pitchers at a time. And no I didn't go steal a pitcher from a bar. I bought these at a Good Will store up by Chicago for $3 each.

I go out to my lemon balm patch.

I cut a handful for each pitcher I am making.

Or I might get some lemon grass. Both of these herbs have some powerful antioxidants going on. I use the lemon balm for canker sores and lemon grass is known for it's ability to aide in the shrinking of tumors. Sorry I don't have enough of these marvelous herbs to share. I am working on that for next year.

If I'm using lemon grass. I cut 5 or 6 blades for each pitcher. I decided to use both for this blog post.

I rinse them off in the sink.

Then I get out 7 tea bags for each pitcher. I'm not known for my delicate palate, but I think Aldi's has some pretty good black tea and I'm cheap so that's what I get!

I wrap the tea bags around the herbs.

And place them in the pitchers.

Then I add some hot water to each pitcher and let it steep for about 5 minutes, longer if I get distracted. I've been told that tea gets bitter if you let it steep for more than 5 minutes, but I've never noticed mine doing that unless I'm not using filtered water. 

After it steeps, I fill the pitchers with cool water from the filter and fish out the tea and herbs. I put them in my "compost bucket", which is actually a little bucket that I put kitchen scraps in for the chickens. They love tea leaves! If it is getting near tomato planting time, I will leave them out to dry so I can put a bundle under my tomato plants along with crumbled egg shells. The tomatoes love them too!

Then I pour it into my Grama ba-ba (as Grampa Tom calls it) and sip on it all day long. Hey! I spill it enough with a lid on! 

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue