As I was cleaning my front garden up this week, I noticed my lemon balm made it all winter, and was thriving. Unlike my parsley, which also lives a few years but tends to be tough and more for seed collecting in the second, my lemon balm (a member of the Mint family), was thriving and happy.
I am a bit unstructured in my garden. My grandparents were farmers, but I grew up with horses and ornamental gardens, and I am a painter by hobby. The idea of a straight garden plot is fantastic, and I have a few small raised bed plots in the backyard, but I love incorporating my vegetables and herbs into my surrounding ornamental gardens as well. To me, it is a form of creativity, and it also helps me use the space I have more efficiently.
In my mind, every plant has some sort of purpose, even if it is to be ornamental. Why should I separate my food plants from my roses, etc? While on that note, you can use rose hips, so the whole idea of ornamental and food plants being completely different is not really something I think about when planning (unless, of course, something I plant would be dangerous for people or animals, but I try to make sure I don’t plant anything poisonous anyway, as I have littles and chickens and dogs and kitties running about at any time).
According to my research, lemon balm is anti-viral, is a natural anti-depressant and soothes anxiety, helps with allergies and has several other benefits. That being said, I’m not a doctor, but I figure that with the current atmosphere, some lemon balm seemed like a good idea! You can read more about the benefits here.
I decided that based on what I read I would start infusing some lemon balm into my iced tea. Since lemons are in short supply in the garden (my one and only attempt at raising a Meyer lemon ended in a litany of pests and a tree that begged me to let it die), I thought I would use the lemon balm to infuse just a bit of that lemon taste to our regular iced tea.
I have had a mortar and pestle on hand for years. It’s great when using live herbs, because you can bruise the leaves and wake up the smell and taste of any herb you are using. For this, I first lightly bruised the leaves, then threw them in my tea pot along with my tea of choice (a regular black tea is fine, or spice it up with your favorite tea).
I boiled some water. My British father insists on grabbing the kettle just as the water turns to a boil. Why? Not sure, but he makes wonderful tea and I am not arguing with an expert. I place a tea bag per person, and a tea bag for the pot (again, thanks, Dad). Pour the just boiling water over your tea bags and lemon balm, and leave to steep to your preference. It’s not a rigid guideline. I like weak iced tea with no sugar, so I leave mine 5-8 minutes or so. Keep in mind you will be adding ice and water, so make it a little stronger than you prefer.
Once the tea has steeped well, I put a dash of baking soda in a pitcher along with some ice (about 1/4-1/3 of the pitcher), pour my iced tea in, and I add water and the bruised leaves from the pot to fill it to the top, without making it too weak. Discard the tea bags.
Lastly, I throw it in the refrigerator to chill. It’s pretty tough to mess up, and my whole family runs through it in no time flat. I usually make a pitcher every day or two now, at the same time I’m making our bread. I’ll work on that post next! Here is our loaf from today. Yes, I use a breadmaker, and I will share that model with you as well (I make some breads by hand, as well, but I use the maker for our sandwich bread).
If you have any tips or questions on your family iced tea, let me know. I would love to hear them!
Katie
Jumping Dog Farm 