From Plant to Tea

Today we took our time to go from plant to tea! Here's how we did it.

Know Your Plant

Our friend brought us something he called a "funny mint" from his garden. Ma made sure we identified it correctly by matching the plant to the picture and description in our big book of herbs. We identified ours as Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis). We looked for more information on the internet, too. Here's a fact sheet from the state extension office about herbs that grow well in Florida, they even mention Lemon Balm. Then we tried, and wow! It tasted like lemon and mint!

Prep and Dry

Next we washed our plants, and picked off the leaves. We lined a baking pan with parchment paper, the placed our leaves on top. We baked them in the oven at the lowest temperature we could (175°F). After a few minutes they were dry and crispy! We took them out of the oven, took our paper with and leaves off the hot pan, and then the kids crushed the leaves on the paper. We took a clean, dry jar and used our paper to funnel the crushed leaves into our jar. 

We learned this part from our friend Ashley who runs  The Panicked Foodie. She gave us very clear instructions about how to safely dry our herbs. Here's a link to her YouTube video where she dries parsley: https://youtu.be/kMgMjx760io 

Time for Tea!

We took our extra leaves and placed them in a tea bag. We filled our kettle with water and brought it to boiling on the stove. The kids put their tea bag in their pitcher and Ma filled it with boiling water. We left it to steep while we prepared our table with teacups and saucers for our tea time. When it was done steeping, we took our teabag out of the water and Ma poured it into our fun teapot. At our table, everyone poured our own lemon balm tea into our teacups. We added a little scoop of raw sugar to our cups and stirred it to cool it off before sipping. We loved our lemon balm tea!

Here is a photo of our teapot, sugar bowl, teacup, and saucer. 

Did you know that we have a Facebook group called PositiviTea? Join us there!