I just ran across a great post at Get Rich Slowly that talks about making tea out of Raspberry leaves. There’s also a nice list of other edible “weeds” that can be eaten or steeped.
I simply tug up the young raspberry sprouts (under one foot tall) and let them dry between two window screens, laying flat on the sidewalk for a few days in the sun. (I bought my screens at garage sales.)
That’s probably a better way to do it than in the microwave. 
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:
(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.
(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:
I’ve started a discussion over in the Ning forums and thought I’d ask on the blog too.
How do you use tea to stay cool in the summer? What kind of iced tea do you make and how do you make it? Tea ice cream? Tea popsicles?
Thanks to humminbird on Twitter for the idea.
I stumbled on a very interesting and well written article recently that explores two common claims about tea, the first being that you can decaffeinate your tea by doing a quick 30-second rinse, and second, that black tea always has more caffeine than green tea, which has more caffeine than white tea.
The arguments are quite compelling, although I noticed something that many comments to the entry also mentioned, which is that the decaffeinating steep experiment seemed to steep the tea for four minutes and calculate how much caffeine had been removed and backward calculate how much caffeine had been removed at 1, 2, and 3 minutes.
Regardless of that method, at 4 minutes, only 60% of the caffeine has been removed, so you are definitely NOT decaffeinating your tea by a 30-second steep either way. This common myth, often mentioned by Joe and I, seems to be fairly accurately busted.
To read the article, click here.
Jessica over at authoritea recently wrote about an interesting use of Stash’s Iced Green Tea Powder. It seems that mixing the dry powder with vanilla bean ice cream creates a tasty frozen treat.
I may have to round up some of this green tea powder, because this idea sounds a lot like some tasty green tea ice cream I had when I was in Japan five years ago. Plus, if my mid-day caffeine kick also included an equally unhealthy sugar rush, how could I be any happier in life? 
One of my blog readers sent me a link to this very interesting looking toothpaste kit, which currently appears to be on sale for $8.00 at Neiman Marcus. Here’s the description from their site:
Satisfy your taste for the exotic with this unique toothpaste kit that cleans teeth and helps prevent plaque buildup—featuring delicious flavors of tropical pineapple and cinnamon.• Contains Green Tea, Indian Curry, Tropical Pineapple, Darjeeling Tea and Cinnamon flavors.
• Contains Xylitol, a unique additive that effectively prevents plaque buildup and tooth decay.
• Gentle formula has no synthetic agents.
• Unique formula is ideal for electric toothbrushes.
• All in a perfectly portable box.
• Imported.
Pretty interesting! Has anyone tried this crazy assortment of toothpastes? I enjoy Crest’s Cinnamon variety, but have never tried a tea-flavored paste.
Do you like to travel with your tea and also use multiple infusions? This product is neat find that Joe sent my way a couple months ago, and as I’m hoping to dabble in the world of multiple infusions, I’m looking into picking one up:
Chinese Tea Drinking Jars (2nd product listed)
The first product listed is a tea tumbler, which also looks very interesting for the tea enthusiast!
LiveJournal is generally a great place to generate conversation about specific interests, so I am a member of several tea communities. Recently, a new one caught my interest, because it involves the actual exchange of tea with a special tea penpal. From their community description:
This is is a community for tea lovers to share their favorite teas with other members, as well as make friends/penpals! This will work just like any penpal community - post an intro, comment on ones that interest you and exchange info between yourselves. You can work out what you want to send between you. =)
Please only accept penpals/swap partners if you are serious about sending mail. There’s nothing worse than penpals who never write back! =(
Are you interested in finding some tea penpals? If so, hop over to LiveJournal’s Great Tea Exchange and swap some teas.
Check out a tea magazine that has arrived on the scene: The Leaf: Tea Magazine
From their introductory page:
In the true spirit of Cha Dao, we are proud to introduce The Leaf, Tea Magazine, offering steeping after steeping of tea wisdom written by and translated from some of the most famous authors in the tea world; and it’s all completely free! We will feature articles by Zhou Yu, Master Ling Ping Xiang, Chen Zhi Tong, Huang Chan Fang, James Norwood Pratt, Aaron Fisher, Jeffrey McCloud, Scott Wilson, Mary Heiss and so many more…Learning about Chinese tea is difficult for the English speaker, and so much of today’s information is coming from merchants and vendors with financial agendas. Let us instead explore the world of tea together, and pure-heartedly share our knowledge beyond the marketplace to the quiet tea room where the kettle is boiling and only the Leaf awaits us.
The articles here will be viewable in .pdf format for which you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader. Each article will then have a discussion section, in which we can have a moderated dialogue, Q&A and share about the information presented.
As you probably already know, I received a TriniTEA this past Christmas from my fiance, which was by far my best gift of the season. Automated tea is pretty much the coolest thing ever concocted, but that doesn’t mean that this fancy tea maker doesn’t come with its own set of downfalls. The advantages seriously outweigh any criticisms I have of the product, but there are still things that a first time TriniTEA user might like to know.
1. The water reservoir doesn’t seem to hold a whole pot of water. For me, it holds a little over 3 cups. Keep this in mind before hastily dumping in a whole pot of water and flooding your tea maker and your kitchen counter. Start with three cups worth of water and see what your water reservoir will hold.
2. The bottom tea pot, which holds the tea when the tea making is complete, dribbles down the side if you don’t pour correctly. I made many a mess when first using my TriniTEA because of the constant tendency of the spout to dribble water all over the place. The key to avoiding this mishap is to pour VERY slowly at first, to allow a small controlled stream of tea. Since mastering this slow pour, I have had nearly zero mishaps.
3. Tea leaves invariably get jammed in the infuser (little cup you put the tea in), and I mean jammed. This is my biggest pet peeve about the machine, but it has also turned out to be a peeve with any easy fix. When the tea maker has finished making the tea, I take the infuser out and dump out as many of the wet leaves as I can, and then let the infuser sit upside down on a paper towel. Within a few hours, the leaves shrink as they dry and they fall easily from the holes in the infuser. Thanks to Chris for this extremely handy tip!
Hopefully these tips will help new TriniTEA users to best enjoy their fancy new toy without the temporary frustration that I experienced. I also want to assure anyone considering the purchase of a TriniTEA that even with these minor complaints, this tea maker is still definitely worth it, especially considering that two of these complaints are successfully addressed with a simple modification to how I use the product. I would still like a larger water reservoir, but ultimately, I’ve been overwhelmingly happy with my TriniTEA.
