It's time to gather tea for the winter

Right now is a great time to gather plants for tea  (tisanes, actually) from your garden, yard or wild areas to use this winter.

You probably have a few plants (aka, weeds) available that make good tea and right now, they're free for the taking. Free is frugal, right?

So what can you make tea from?

Dandelions (leaves and roots)
Berry leaves (strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, etc.)
Rose hips (a little later in the season; don't forget them)
Mint (any kind, including catmint, horehound, lemon balm and so on)
Flowers like clover, chamomile, goldenrod, meadowsweet and yarrow
Some trees have bark that make tea, like cherry

Make sure you can positively identify any plant that you gather. Most plants are best when gathered early in the morning. Don't pick too many leaves from a plant or you will damage it. You can pick over a few days to minimize damage.

Dehydrate the plant material by putting it in a single layer on a food safe screen or cloth in a warm, not hot, place. Don't dry in the sun, as delicate flavors may be damaged.

Some leaves will be dry and ready to store in a day's time; others will take two days. They are ready when they're crunchy with no trace of moisture left. Store in a glass jar with an airtight lid. As much as you might want to show off your teas, don't store them on the counter. Put them in a cabinet or pantry where it will be dark most of the time.

This winter when the cold winds blow and you want something comforting, put a heaping teaspoon or two of your free tea in a cup and add boiling water. Let it steep at least five minutes or more, depending on the tea.

You will soon learn how much you need and next year, you'll know how much to harvest.

The TIme of Year for Digging Dandelions

It's time to dig dandelion roots again! I wrote about it here: Dandelion Coffee fourteen years ago! Since then, it's become
The Annual Dandelion Coffee Dig. 

With the price of dandelion root coffee or tea, whatever you want to call it, I figure I've saved quite a bit. It's around $5 for 20 teabags. I can dig, clean and roast enough to make probably 200 teabags in one afternoon.

If my math is right, that's about $50 worth of dandelion tea. Maybe not killer wages but not too bad, either, and I don't have to worry about what else is in the dandelion root.

I don't poison or use artificial fertilizer on my backyard, so the dandelion roots there are safe.  We had a mild summer with quite a bit of rain, so I'm looking forward to a big harvest this year.

If you've never tried it, give it a chance. The two links above explain the process.

Hot Days Ahead! Cool and Frugal Drinks to the Rescue

Cold drinks are so welcome during the heat of summer! It can be expensive to try to keep up with the demand, but don't whip out the credit card just yet. There are some things you can do to quench thirst without that.

Plain old fashioned powdered fruit ade drinks are still inexpensive. Add your own sugar to save money. You can sometimes find packets of lemonade or other flavors on sale; stock up if you can because it also makes excellent snowcone types of treats. To do that, mix it with half the water it calls for and all the sugar. Crush ice or, if you have a powerful blender, make snowcone consistency, then pour the ade over the ice.

Real lemonade is not expensive, if you start with fresh lemons. Heat them, then roll them against the counter while they are still hot and you will get the maximum amount of juice. Pick out the seeds if there are any, and add water and sweetener to taste. A little lemon juice will go a long way, so don't overdo it. A couple of lemons will make several glasses of lemonade.

Tea is always a good choice, but if you don't want the caffeine, buy decaffeinated tea. Loose leaf tea makes the best iced tea, but it's hard to find so make it with teabags made for hot tea. You can buy a box of 48 teabags for around $3.00 and that's pretty frugal.

It will take one teabag per glass. Heat a cup or two of water to boiling and pour over the teabags in a cup or other heat safe container, let it steep for at least five minutes, then remove the teabags and add water to equal as many cups as there were teabags. Add sweetener if you want it and pour over ice.

If you still want sodas, think about getting a Sodastream. No, it's not frugal, by the time you buy their syrups, but there are ways around that. Those inexpensive packets of fruit ade come in a great variety of flavors. If you make a syrup and add the flavors to it, you can use that to make a carbonated beverage with a SodaStream. After the initial cost, you can get some pretty cheap sodas.

Even if you buy the syrups to make special flavors like root beer and cola, it can be cheaper. Use it to make root beer floats or "coke floats." Remember those? They cost a pretty penny now, but you can have those treats a lot cheaper.

How to Make Apple Tea

If you eat apples in any form, you have probably thrown away some apple peel. Even if you eat the peeling, as you should, there is a little left over at the top and bottom of the core, and if you make apple pie from fresh apples, well... there are the peelings.

Keep them. Put them in a plastic bag in the freezer until you have enough, then make apple tea.

How much is "enough"? About a cup of apple peel will make a cup of tea.

Why should you go to the trouble of making tea from apple peeling? It's detoxifying and it tastes really good. You can drink it iced or hot, it's safe for kids, it's all around healthy for anyone, and it's free.

How do you make it? I thought you'd never ask.

Put the cup (or however much you want to make) of apple peel in a jar or glass pitcher and add one cup of water. Put the container in the oven and heat it to the lowest temperature, around 150 - 175. You can also just set it in the sun for awhile if it's not freezing outside - any way to warm it. Stir it once or twice while it's warming, then after it's warmed completely, set it on the counter and let it cool. Strain the peels out and add a few (very few) grains of salt to help bring out the flavor. Add sweetener at this point if you want it, then all you have to do is decide whether to add ice or heat it up to drink.

(Frugal note: Make apple peel tea when you're baking and take advantage of your stove's oven vent, usually a back burner. You might want to use a stainless steel container, just in case, if you put it on a burner.)

image source morguefile.com

Make Your Own Iced Tea

By request:

It's so easy to make iced tea that I can't see spending money on another appliance just to do that, or even worse, buying it already made. People have made iced tea for years (probably centuries) without the aid of a plug in contraption that eats electricity and counter space.

Anyway, here's how, and it's a lot easier and faster to do than it is to tell about it.


First, if you can find it, buy loose leaf tea. It's much better for iced tea. It has a fuller flavor, and it keeps better in the refrigerator.


You'll need a small pan to boil water, a strainer of some kind - cheese cloth or a handled fine mesh strainer will work. You'll also need some tea, sugar if you like it sweet, water, a jar or glass pitcher and a long handled spoon.


Put a cup or so of water on to boil and meanwhile get your jar ready. If you're going to use sugar, put it in the jar now. For sweet tea, southern style, use about a cup of sugar for a gallon of tea, but adjust it to your own taste.


Put some cold water into this, a couple of cup's worth, and mix the sugar into it. Use the cold water even if you don't use sugar, to keep the hot water from cracking the jar.


When the water boils, remove the pan from the stove. For each quart of tea, add a scant tablespoon of looseleaf tea (four per gallon). Cover the pan and let the tea steep for 10 - 15 minutes.


Strain the tea into the jar or pitcher, add cold water to fill, and stir.


This is the best and most frugal tea you'll ever drink.

Dandelion Coffee

Last fall I had pretended to clean up the dandelions from the lawn, but I saved the roots and looked up the instructions for making dandelion coffee. Those roots, roasted and ground, sat in my pantry for most of the winter before I decided to try them. They smelled good and actually a little like coffee, so I made a cup - and what can I say? I'm a believer now!

No kidding, it's a good drink with a little sweetener added. Free is frugal, right? And it's healthy, too.

So Saturday I started out to turn the soil in the two raised beds we made last year, but I got side tracked.

Halfway out to the garden area, under a sand cherry bush, was a large dandelion plant that I'd watched last year, just getting a good start on this year's growth. I had harvested some leaves and buds from it, but otherwise let it grow. (I know, but I LIKE weeds.)

Anyway, the ground was nice and loose from snowmelt over the last few weeks and just ripe for digging, so I dug up the dandelion and cleaned off the large taproot. I found another one nearby and dug it up, too, then I spent the time to clean, slice and roast them.

Then, of course, I had to have a cup of dandelion coffee. It was well worth the effort but I never did make it to the garden.

If you want to try it, make sure you have your other work done first. :)

[Warning: All parts of dandelions are diuretic. Don't drink this if you're already taking a diuretic for any reason, or if you have other health problems that would be affected by a diuretic.]

Be sure to not get it from an area that's been chemically treated in any way. My back yard is off limits to any chemicals, as I grow several "weeds" there.

Look for a healthy plant, dig around it at least a shovel's depth, then lift it out of the ground. You'll break the taproot getting it out; that's fine. It will grow back from what's left. Cut the crown from the taproot and replace it in the soil if you want to encourage even more dandelion plants to grow. Take the root and wash it well, trim off the hair roots and any very small side roots, then scrub well with a vegetable brush or a piece of plastic net.

When you're satisfied that it's clean, cut it into more or less uniform pieces and place it on a baking sheet. Heat the oven to 250 degrees and let it roast over the next few hours. Check it now and then, and if some pieces are brittle, remove them; they're done.

When they're all brittle, cool and store in an airtight container.

To make dandelion coffee, grind the roots in a coffee grinder or break them up with a mortar and pestle - not too finely because they don't settle as well as coffee grounds and you may have to strain the liquid.

Make the coffee like you would camping coffee: Add the ground root to cold water and boil it for a few minutes. It takes about a teaspoon per cup, more or less depending on your taste.

Side note: Frugally, I intended to use the crown for a vegetable, but it was so small and tight, that when I saw a pill bug in the water, I decide it wasn't worth it to look through it that closely.