On May 12, Joe and Brandice will be trying two homemade teas: dandelion tea and sassafras tea. Here are the directions for making your own if you’d like to try it with them:

Dandelion tea

(Note: This is how we did it for the show, sure there are probably other ways to go about it.)

Go out and pick a handful of young dandelion leaves, preferably leaves from plants that don’t yet have flowers and that have not been exposed to herbicides or pesticides. The older and larger the leaves, the more bitter they will be. And as far as avoiding herbicides and pesticides, well that just makes sense.

Wash and dry the leaves. Joe and Amy used a commercially available veggie wash with water and then placed the leaves between two paper towels to dry. Once the leaves are no longer wet, to finish drying them, place the sandwiched leaves and paper towels in the microwave. Run the microwave for about 8 seconds (depending on microwave strength), making sure not too scorch the leaves. If you hear anything pop or sizzle, stop the microwave immediately. The leaves should now be dried and crispy, the paper towel having absorbed moisture from the leaves. If not fully dried, flip the leaves over and run the microwave again.

Use 1-2 heaping teaspoons per cup of water, treating it like a white tea, steeping it in boiling water for 7 minutes.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to do it yourself, there are tea companies that sell dandelion tea (eg. Dragonwater)

A health benefit of dandelion leaf tea: It lowers cholesterol.

Sassafras tea

(Note: Again, this is how we did it, but there are alternate ways of preparing sassafras tea)

Find a young sassafras tree, about 4 feet tall. Pull up the tree and cut off a portion of the thick roots. Wash the root and cut it into 2-3 inch pieces. Let the root dry for about a week in a cool dry place (the cool dry place in essential to avoid mold growth). Strip the bark off of the root, keeping the bark and discarding the inside part of the root. Chop up the bark into small sections. (A little involved, we know.)

Use 1 teaspoon of root bark per cup of water. Steep in boiling water for 5 minutes.

There have been concerns that sassafras tea is not healthy because it contains safrole which has been found to be carcinogenic in mice/rats, but it has also been shown that an occasionally cup of sassafras tea is not harmful, just don’t drink it every day.

Some trivia about sassafras:

• In the 1800’s sassafras was a main ingredient in the original “root beer”.
• Native Americans sometimes used it to help bring down a fever.
• The tea has been used as a “blood purifier” and will promote perspiration and urination. It has been used to treat gout and arthritis.
• Modern herbalists claim that sassafras tea is a good liver detoxer and general stimulant.
General, Tips, Upcoming