Don't you just love a good cup of tea? Steaming hot, flavored with some honey or raw sugar...maybe a dab of milk or cream to color it. Even though I talk about my beloved cappuccino all the time, I really do enjoy a cup of my favorite tea, raspberry, every once in a while. Especially when it is served in one of my pretty tea cups. But, sigh, all the tea cups are still packed away until the kitchen cabinets get installed. So for now, I'll just settle for using a big mug instead.
Recently I bought a book entitled
Homegrown Tea by Cassie Liversidge which describes how you can grow so many different herbs and flowers to create your own tea (tisanes, actually) and I was hooked. It is amazing the variety of plants that our great-grandmothers used to make teas and tisanes. And each and every one of the plants used has a different flavor and some even possess healing qualities. While all true tea is derived from one plant, Camellia sinensis, whether it is green, oolong or black tea, a tisane refers to other plants that can be brewed just like tea leaves.
To that end I installed some plants this Spring into the potager garden in their own section near the herbs specifically to be used for tisanes. I thought it would be fun to experiment with different combinations of the dried plants in my tea cup. So far I've grown lemon verbena, lemon balm, lemon grass, 2 different scented geraniuims(yes, these can actually be used for tisanes!), chamomile, lavender and varying mints. Even the leaves of the strawberry plants can be brewed into a tisane. Who knew?
Over the last few weeks I've been dehydrating my herbs and the plants I plan on using for tisanes.....which has kept the dehydrator running almost 24/7. And next I'll show you how I turn them into a tisane.
One ball jar has a tea sized measuring spoon and tea bags meant to be filled at home. The bags are sealed on 3 sides with one remaining side left open for you to fill. I like using these bags as they are not bleached and no chemicals will leach into the hot water in my cup while letting the contents of the bag steep.
When herbs are dehydrated and stored in a ball jar, it's best not to crush them yet. Crushing them at the time you plan on using them releases the scent and oils that are naturally stored in the herbs and gives you the peak flavor at the time of cooking/brewing. So I took some dehydrated peppermint leaves and placed them into a tea bag until I had it just over half full. Then, it's off to the ironing board. Yup, you heard me right. The ironing board.
The bags will seal shut with just a few seconds under a hot iron and, voila! You have your very own tea bag ready to brew a fresh cup of tea.
Pretty slick, huh? While I have the iron on I usually make up a few bags of different types of tisane and slip them back inside the jar so the next time I want to brew a cup, I have a tea bag all ready to use. Just before putting the bag into the cup I crush the leaves inside the bag, releasing all those heady aromas and oils. Pour water that has just been boiled into the cup and let it steep for several minutes until the liquid has the amount of scent, color and taste you desire. Experiment! It's fun to mix various plants to create your own flavored tisanes.
Ok, so that was your lesson on tea and tisanes. But there is more going on here during this busy harvest season. Joel and I went out every third day the last few weeks and picked more blackberries, brought them into the house and picked thru them to remove debris, and layered them on baking sheets to freeze them. Once frozen they were measured and packed into bags to be vacuum sealed and dated. Then they got popped back into the deep freeze to become pies and cobblers later this winter. I think blackberry season is finally over. Whew! That was a lot of picking....and I still have a few tiny thorns in my hands to prove it.
And this is what my kitchen looks like everyday now. Full of fresh produce from the garden.....you can see our first couple of bowls of yummy tomatoes, and the never ending supply of yellow crookneck squash and zucchini. The carrots are still producing and so are the radishes. And I have beets to get pulled sometime this week and pickle them, too.
Let's not forget the dehydrator. Thank goodness for that baby! After I'm done drying the herbs I'm going to try making sun dried tomatoes in it.....and then they will get packed in virgin olive oil. Yum!
Yup. Nothing like organized chaos. Canning lids, jars and pectin.....all necessities for putting up our bounty. At least we found a way to make this busy season work in my makeshift kitchen. It may not be pretty, but it's functional.
Seeing these beautiful veggies and knowing we grew them makes them taste all the better. Now does anyone out there have a new way to use up zucchini? bah-ha-ha-ha! But seriously, you gotta love how pretty all these veggies are.
Oh, yeah. In the midst of all the veggies I still needed to separate the cream from the raw milk we picked up at the Farmer's Market. Every Friday is "make butter" day. With the help of my Cuisinart, in just minutes we had butter and buttermilk for the next week.
Friday is also "Bar Food Friday" at our house, so I made up some pizza dough and let it rise in the warm kitchen. Making pizzas at dinnertime is a snap after a long day canning and freezing foods.
Well, that's what I did last Friday. This week is going to be all about digging up potatoes and canning them. Last night Joel and I dug up a 3' section which yielded 7-1/2lbs. of beautiful white potatoes. Hmmmmm......we have 2 rows, each 22' long to dig up yet. And then another 1/2 row of Yukon Gold potatoes. I can't even begin to imagine how many pounds of potatoes that is going to yield!
Still at it,
Debbie
