Herbal Tea.

My wonderful friend Linda, Over at Hello, It's Me, posted a great tutorial on making herbal iced tea. I'd been thinking that I needed to make tea, since it had hovered in the 90s for most of June. July isn't looking any better. For sun tea, I have a one gallon glass pickle jar with a lid. So, I got it out and went to work.

Linda is using lemon balm, primarily. We don't grow the same things and you and I probably don't, either. That doesn't really matter. Last week, I did a brew of lemon thyme, lavender and licorice mint, with fennel seed. I steeped it for 20 minutes, strained it into the big jar, threw in a couple of those big iced tea bags and set it out in the sun. I was a little rusty and underestimated. I think tea for icing should be made especially strong, to hold up to the melting ice.

So, for today's batch, I cut (L to R) lemon mint, Thai basil and lemon thyme. I added about a tablespoon of fennel to the mix. I considered adding some cracked black pepper, but, added a bit of whole cardamom, instead. I don't know if that was a great choice, we will see. This all got steeped in a quart of boiling water for twenty minutes. I pulled out all of the vegetation when I transferred the brew to the big jar, but left the seeds in. I threw in three large black tea bags, this time. It's sitting out in the sun on the patio, right now.

Speaking of the patio: it got a serious weeding and cleaning, yesterday. More photos are here.