Tea from my backyard

Warning... this is not the usual herbal tea and some might be shocked at its content!



i sometime feel the urge to do something drastic in my quest for a bit more energy. ok, a LOT MORE energy. my philosophy is, the closer to nature as possible and it should be readily available in the region too. not just some far exotic plants, fruits or what not.

so i eventualy discovered that the one single plant or "weed" we work the hardest at trying to eradicate from our green lawn is a gold mine for the health. medicinaly and nutritionwise too. altho i'd avoid the one in high trafic, the one snow have been piled on all winter and from lawn where they use pesticide and herbicides... yes. Dendelion, very valuable... some even make wine with it... i wouldn't go that far, then again, our yard is big enough that i'm sure i could gater more then enough for that hehe

now you know one ingredient in what i'm drinking right now, are you sure you want to know the rest?

ok, ok, i'll get with it... a few bunches of pine needles with the branches. it's loaded with vitamin C and other good stuff. saved Jaques Cartier and his ship crew from scurvy along with spruce and probably other conetrees. watch out for hemlock and yew, those are toxic. i yet have to gather some spruce needle and make spruce beer. i'm a bit nostalgic of the spruce beer non alcoholic soda we used to drink as kids in Montreal. some gives it quite a list of benefits

the other ingredients i added are more for flavor. i know that dendelion by itself can be bitter and cinnamon stick help a lot to make it pallatable, i never tried it in combination with pine needles before but i thought the cinnamon couldn't hurt. and also a stick of licorice root... also tonic, good taste and very much used in chinese medecine.

i guess time will tell what kind of results i'm going to pull out of it. i didn't think it was all that exciting to make a whole post out of it but since it was a special request, i tried to make an effort. and as you can see, it's not green, it's brown... probably not a whole log of vitamin C left in it as it simmered a bit too long... started boiling as i was captive by the bedtime routine with the kids.

Chantal the walking green lab (as in laboratory, not the dog breed :p)