Summer Drinks: Sun Tea

The bottle with the white cap is green mint and the black cap is rhubarb oolong.

There are a variety of blogs that I read and Design Sponge is one of my favorites. It’s all about various takes on design from refurbishing old furniture, to home design to (my favorite) food and drinks. After all, good food is designed well.

One of segments that I enjoy is called Small Measures with Ashley. A few weeks ago Ashley posted about Herbal Sun Teas and Simple Syrups. I hadn’t heard of sun tea prior to an unfortunate episode of 30 Rock, thankfully real sun tea is quite delicious. In addition to the herbal sun teas that are described in Design Sponge the more traditional way is to use actual tea. Poking around at the farmer’s market today I coudn’t find any fresh herbs for sale, so I went with actual tea because the sun was shining, and herbs or not, I wanted to try out sun tea.

We couldn't resist trying some of the mint tea before taking pictures.

Andy wanted some mint tea and our mint plant hasn’t quite recovered from the Kentucky Derby and mint juleps. So we got Northwest Minty Green tea from Whole Foods, it has peppermint and spearmint in addition to the green tea. In addition to that, I had purchased some Rhubarb Oolong from Franklin Tea last night and thought it’d be great as a sun tea.

The concept of sun tea is that you use the warmth of the sun to steep the tea or herbs instead of using boiling water. Since temperatures brushed up to 100 today not spending time in the kitchen with a hot oven sounded like a good idea. Ideally, you want the tea to steep for 5-8 hours in a bright sunny spot, for some reason it decided to rain today so my tea only steeped for 2 hours. I used ½ gallon jugs and about 4 tea bags (or teaspoons) per jug. Since my Rhubarb Oolong tea is loose leaf I fashioned tea bags from coffee filters and string. I was quite proud that my make-shift tea bags leaked fewer leaves than the commercial made bags.

Despite the lack of steeping time my sun teas turned out delicious! I can only imagine what kinds of flavor would come out with more time in the sun. This is a great summertime drink because it’s cool, refreshing and doesn’t take much effort. Let me know if you make sun tea, I’m curious to hear about what other teas and herbs you use. Enjoy!

Herbs, Medicines, and a New Hobby

With the weather getting better every day, my husband and I have been out in the garden more and more. Andy suggested splitting up our gardening duties to ensure we both take responsibility for the gardening and then we can be held accountable for our areas. I thought it was a great idea because sometimes we can forget to harvest, or weed, or water. So now we each have an area to care for, which is helpful because we keep adding garden to our garden. Andy is in charge in of vegetables and I’m in charge of herbs and flowers.

Parsley and Cilantro

Additionally (since we’re not weird enough) Andy requested a medicinal herb garden. At first I wasn’t too into this request. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Lotions? Teas? Brews of eye of newt and children? I didn’t know where to start with a medicinal garden, which herbs to grow and how to make them into medicines. Later on Andy specified that he wants to have an herbal remedy for headaches so he doesn’t take so much ibuprofen, and the medicinal garden is an idea he got from a tour of the Hermitage. So that sounded legitimate, less backwoods hippie-ish and potential illegal, and gave me a starting point to look into which herbs would be best to grow.

I quickly back-tracked into the backwoods hippie-ish and potential illegal frame of mind when I was found Sunday afternoon browsing in the Wicca section at the bookstore. Thankfully I didn’t find anything there and instead found a fantastic book called Grow your own Drugs by James Wong (still sounds a bit potentially illegal doesn’t it?) in the crafts section. This book is great because it spells out in plain language how to make tinctures, decoctions, and poultices. My other herbalist book just says to make a tincture or a salve with such and such ingredients, but doesn’t explain how to do any of it. Already from Mr. Wong I’ve learned what a tincture is (like tea but with alcohol), how do I make it? (chop herbs and steep in vodka), and how long does it keep? (up to 5 years).

I don't have a lot of pictures of herbs yet, so here's one of our potato plants.

Mr. Wong gives his top 10 herbs to grow if you don’t have a 5 acre lot and I was happy to discover that I already had 5 of the 10 herbs prior to his sage advice: German Chamomile, lemon balm, rosemary, marigolds (not sure if they’re the right kind though), and peppermint. Pretty good for a novice eh? You can also forage for ingredients, such as horse chestnuts, and I think that sounds fun. It’ll give purpose to some of my walks with my husband. It’s best to be careful when foraging, you don’t want to eat something that looks similar to what you want but is actually toxic. I’ll be playing it very safe when foraging. But that’s just such a fun word, forage, and it’s like treasure hunting so how can I resist?

So what can I use my herbs for already? Here is a bit of information from Grow your own Drugs.

Dill: Good for easing digestive disorders and cramping, expelling gas, treating colic, toning down bad breath.
Lemon Balm: Soothe nervous tension, relieve anxiety, promote sleep, inhibit cold sores.
Parsley: Use for a diuretic, antiseptic, helps anemia, sweetens breath.
Peppermint: Soothe digestive problems, relieve pain and tension headaches, reduce muscle spasms, relieve nasal congestion.
Rosemary: Improves memory and concentration, relaxes digestive muscles, helps mild depression, also sweetens breath.
Thyme: Is an antiseptic, expectorant, soothes sore muscles and rheumatism.
Chamomile: Helps with indigestion, colic, inflamed skin, anxiety and poor sleep. This is common in tea and can ease gout, cause relaxation. It also helps with teething pain, for all of my infant readers.
Marigold: Use as an antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, and to speed up healing, soothe sunburn and minor burns.

Here are some random healing plants that I think are fun, also from Grow your own Drugs.

Elderberry: Can be anti-inflammatory for coughs, sore throats, and bronchial infections, loosens sinuses, antiviral, also use stems for creation of wand of destiny.
Hops: Not just for beer anymore! Used as a mild sedative, calms and reduces anxiety and helps with menopause.
Chili/Cayenne Pepper: Acts as a antiseptic, stimulant, skin soother by increasing circulation and desensitizing pain, protects against gastrointestinal infections.
Marshmallow: I was pretty excited to use marshmallows for a remedy, but then I found out that in this case marshmallow is a root, not a sweet, poofy treat. Soothes and reduces inflammation, expectorant and cough preventive, also can soothe and soften skin.

Playing in the (Indoor) Dirt

As it’s currently snowing in Nashville (and creating the expected chaos) it seems a little early to be planting a garden. And it is. We should probably wait a week or two before sowing more seeds indoors. However, the hubby starts to get cabin fever this time of year and planning the garden gets his mind off the cloudy days and bursts of snow. Plus we have much-needed greenery to cheer the both of us up.

New thyme sprouts! They start so little...

Last year for Christmas Andy gave me a grow light and seed starting kits to grow a little herb garden. We started with Basil, Cilantro, Thyme and Parsley. They grew so well that we realized that we could start a lot of our garden inside and move the seedlings outside when they are ready. Since we didn’t need more herbs, we couldn’t resist starting a tomato. This year Andy and I were careful to select tomato plants that would do well in this climate. Last year’s single tomato disappointment shall not be repeated.

Of the two varieties of tomato seeds we have, we have started a pink variety called Oaxacan Pink. The other tomato seed we have is another pink variety, Arkansas Traveler. I hope to use these tomatoes for fresh eating as well as canning, for tomato sauce and salsa. Day dreaming of the future garden makes the time until we move into our new place tolerable (2 days!).

In addition to the aforementioned herbs and tomatoes, we already have a number of seeds to start. Awaiting propagation are Spinach, French Breakfast Radishes, Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce and Catnip (for the cats and experimental herbal tea). Additionally, we’d like to do carrots, beans (bush and/or pole), onions, potatoes (red and/or sweet), cucumbers and bell peppers. I’m also planting some Cleome Spider Flowers, these are for me specifically as Andy disdains “purposeless” flowers. But flowers bring bees, butterflies and smiles, so I think they’re purposeful enough.

Hello World!

To keep organized and on track for planting, I purchased a kitchen garden planner. This way we can remember which varieties worked well and which would good to not try again. We can write tips and ways to improve the garden for the next year. It’s been good so far to give ideas of what to plant and tips on ways to care for the garden. Part of the purpose of the planner is to help figure out how to rotate crops so that we can continually harvest. Andy has been reading up on square foot gardening and that’s the strategy we’ll start with this year. Thus far the plan is for 36 square feet of gardening space. Which seems like a lot, and makes the garden both exciting and slightly terrifying.

Deliciousness in waiting.

Our goal is to go to the grocery store as little as possible. We can depend on the farmer’s market for meat, cheese and extra veggies. Then stock up on long-lasting staples such as flour and sugar at the Turnip Truck. I’m most happy when I can make meals of food we grow ourselves. Never mind local. There’s nothing like completely ignoring the 5 second rule as you pull a carrot out of the ground for tonight’s dinner.