Last Updated on June 20, 2024 by Michelle
Mint Lilac Tea–which I can totally grow, harvest, dry, and make at home–gives me great joy for very little effort. Now you can’t say that about many things in life. So I figured it was about time that I tell you about this tea.
Growing mint
If you grow your own mint, you’re half way there. If you’re buying a bunch of mint at the store, you can actually use that mint to start growing your own! Just be sure to place your leftover mint in water. Use your bottom leaves for making your tea (so the stems are stripped at the bottom). Then simply fill a jar about 2 in. with water, and place your mint in light sun until it takes root . Then plant your mint and you’ll have it forever. (If only it was so easy to have more honey!)
Enjoying an invasive deliciousness
When you plant mint, by the way, keep in mind that it is very invasive. I pulled up a few pieces to show you. Just look at how it sends out roots and then sends little shoots right up through the ground, all along those roots.
Mint will take over a bed or garden in no time.
So we keep our mint, along with most of our other herbs, each in their own containers. I harvested all our mint before taking a picture, but I thought to snag a picture of the chives before harvesting those.
Drying mint
Once I harvest it, I dry my mint in a pretty interesting way that works wonderfully for me. Check out this post for my super-easy, no-mess technique for drying any herb in a paper bag. Yep. Don’t knock it. It really works.
Once it’s dry (that part does require patience. often month’s worth of patience), I simply remove the leaves and store them in a mason jar. I love using a flip-top lid like this one for all my herbs.
Sweetening my mint tea
While I personally enjoy a cup of hot tea made straight up from mint leaves and water, for a special treat lately I’ve enjoyed adding a teaspoon of my lilac-infused honey. It was super easy to make and man-oh-man is it delicious! I explain more about it in the fb live video you can view at the end of this post.
But, alas, I didn’t think I’d be very successful at infusing my honey with lilac, so I only made a tiny, half-pint jar’s worth. So after just a few mere cups of mint tea, I’m gonna need to switch my sweetener. Mind you, mint tea is very good without any sugar at all, but when I’m sitting down to a cup of tea in place of dessert in the evening I love to make it a luxurious tea.
After this decadent lilac honey I need another luxury, so I ordered top-of-the-line tupelo honey from Florida and wow is this amazingly delicious. I recently learned some fascinating facts about this wonderful honey. I’ll have to share the details with you in an upcoming post. But for now, trust me, this tupelo honey is crazy yummy. I’ve gotten to know the husband-and-wife team who run Bee Wild Raw Honey–Bradley and Deanna–and they’re truly awesome. (Bonus, if you call to ask them a honey question, not only are they experts, but they’ll give you the answer in the friendliest southern drawl you’ve ever heard.)
Plus this honey is the best I’ve ever tasted. No joke. In fact, I never joke about all-natural sweetener. But y’all know that.
Not to mention that when I find a company I love that makes a product I can’t live without, well, I gotta share it with you all.
So if you’re in the market for the best honey I’ve ever tasted, look no further than this tupelo honey from a family-run business in Florida.
If you’d like to one-up the deliciousness of this tea, you will LOVE this video about how to make your honey lilac-infused. –>
Another favorite homemade tea
I recently discovered how to make my new favorite caffeine free delicious cup of tea. The crazy thing is that it tastes like coffee. Add a little maple syrup and my morning is instantly perfect. Okay, maybe not perfect, but very delicious. Go here to see how amazingly easy it is to make your own caffeine-free, herbal, coffee-replacing tea.
And if you want a little encouragement about just how good tea can be for you, you’ll love this article and the podcast episode there as well.
Buzzing around the farm
In addition to our exciting new addition on the homestead, we have lemons starting to grow (although they look like limes right now), some aMAAYYzing maple kombucha brewing (I think I’ve almost figured this out!), and cucumbers growing out of our ears…
But wait. If you’re not following on instagram or facebook, I guess you don’t know what I’m talking about when I mentioned our new addition. They’re my new source of crazy elation… and sweet honey of our very own.
We brought home 3 hives last weekend! We still have so very much to learn, but can’t wait to do so while watching these wonderful ladies pollinate our crops and make us some amazingly yummy, all-natural, liquid sugar. My deep, secret dream is to some day not have to buy any refined sugar. Now how sweet would THAT be?
See our instastories of OperationBeeRehoming here. Just scroll back a few until you see a few crazy people and some bee hives in the back of a pick up truck. (yep.)
And listen in to one big problem we had with the location we chose to place the hives here on this fb live video.
And check out this gorgeous tree (affiliate link) at NatureHills.com if you too would love to grow your own lemons!
Some of my favorite tea products? That’s super easy! My most treasured tea-related awesomeness is my Instant hot water tank that sits on my counter, silently and beautifully keeping perfectly boiled water at my beckon call at all times. (And, yes, these are affiliate links.) I’ve had this wonderful hot water heater for 6 years and can’t imagine boiling water any other way.
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Click on the video link here to see just how easy it is to make mint lilac tea and find out when it’s NOT good to compost your tea–>
Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine (or mint lilac tea) with a joyful heart. Ecclesiastes 9:7
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Good Morning, Michelle. I LOVE mint and lilacs, so I thought this would be THE tea for me. Unfortunately, when I click on the video link, I receive the message, “Page not found”. Boo-hoo! Anyhoo, you have a beautiful blog and I enjoy your posts. God bless.
Well, that’s no good!! Hmmmmm, try this link: https://www.facebook.com/soulyrested/videos/229819167723294/