A cup of soothing tea.....

A while back, I wrote about picking persimmon leaves. This was in an attempt to make my own herbal tea since I had read about all of the wonderful attributes of persimmon leaf tea. I had picked and washed the leaves but had not idea how I was going to dry them. I needed a drying rack of some sort and a hot, well-ventilated place. I pondered the fact for a bit and decided that stringing the leaves on some metal skewers would be the first step. After filling all eighteen skewers with the leaves, I still needed some type of rack. That is when a brilliant idea hit me! The folding clothes rack would be perfect! My dad had gotten me this rack years and years ago before I had a dryer. I pulled out the folding rack and set it up in the spare bedroom. It was definitely hot in there! I opened all of the windows and let the Bay breeze waft through the room. The skewered leaves were laid across the top of the rack and left to dry. I checked every day and on the third day..they were quite crunchy! I pulled all of the skewers back into the kitchen and proceeded to strip the leaf off of the stems, dropping the pieces into a flat cake pan. Oh, my goodness! These leaves smelled so delightfully fresh when I was working with them! After the stems were all removed, I still had to crush the leaves. I was a tad worried just how I was to "grind" them but this was needless! I merely started "crunching" them with my hands and the result was beyond expectations! With just the use of my hands, the leaves were pulverized to the perfect size! I could hardly wait to try my first cup of persimmon leaf tea!

To make the tea, I simply put two teaspoons of the crushed leaves in a tea ball, heated a cup of water, dropped the tea ball in and let it steep until it was cool enough to drink. I did add one teaspoon of honey as a sweetener but only because I love honey! (For those who do not drink tea..a tea ball is a small round strainer that is used as an infuser. It allows the flavor of the leaves to mix with the water while keeping all of the leaves themselves contained.) Now the time was set for me to try my homemade, herbal, persimmon leaf tea! I took a sip not knowing what to expect. Would this taste like the "store-bought" persimmon leaf tea or would it be something that I should fling out the back door?! I sipped again..this is good..quite the delightful tea! Success!

Since then, I have picked three more times and now have close to a half-gallon of herbal tea leaves! The drying rack seems to work extremely well so it has encouraged me to try creating other "teas". I did pick some of the blackberry leaves and they dried well, too. There is just one problem with that, though, those leaves have thorns! Picking them was bad enough..but never try to crush them by hand! Owwww! Son had the brilliant idea of running them through our antique castiron meat grinder and that solved the situation. Tomorrow, I will don some gloves and head to the berry patch again, picking enough for at least one full rack. After several base types of leaves are processed, I plan on experimenting with blends! Maybe adding a few spices to each or some dried, ground fruit! Perhaps stirring it with a cinnamon stick! Yum!