Something to Enjoy

I figured I'd go a little bit off the radar and discuss something I really, truly love: Tea.

I have a little bit of an iron deficiency, so I get cold pretty easily, even in the summer I can be a pain to be around when I'm wrapped in a blanket and it's 86 degrees out. Fairly often, you can see me clutching a mug of tea that is hotter than life, which is how I like it...call it an addiction. 

So you should've seen my face when my friend noticed the butterfly bush in my backyard and told me you could make tea from the flowers! It ended up being SO delicious that I had to share the experience. This can be made hot or cold.

Butterfly Bushes, also known as Buddlejas, have sweet flowers that attract both butterflies and hummingbirds with all the nectar the plant produces. We gathered about 10-12 fresh flower panicles (the term for flower clusters that are branched together), using the ones that were the least dried out.

We also added some fresh sage from my garden, flowers et al, to the mix, about the same amount of sprigs as the Butterfly Bush.The Sage adds an herby kick to the floral and sweet flavor of the Butterfly Bush flowers. It's one of my favorite herbs for tea especially because it calms inflammation, calms achey pains and is really invigorating. 

The rest is pretty simple, I just arranged the Butterfly Bush and Sage flowers together with some individual Sage leaves. 

I then just bound the leaves together with some thread and...

Voilá! Fresh, organic tea to pour hot water over!

This tastes perfect unsweetened, but I found it tasted best with a syrupy-sweet flavor from brown sugar or honey.

There are other common garden flowers you can use to make really delicious tea like Clover, Chrysanthemums, Cornflower, Dandelions (if picked young, mature ones are kinda bitter), lavender (AMAZING for headaches, my room mate Jenny turned me on to it), Impatiens and Roses. There's something so great about just throwing some herbs and flowers into a pot and brewing something so homey, healing and comforting. Maybe I'm just obsessive. And yes, no worries, using fresh flowers totally works. I suggest investing in a gorgy glass tea infuser pot like this one so you can see how awesome your tea is coming along.

Hope everyone's week has been beautiful so far! Happy weekend!