Maples Garden Lemon Mint Tea

At the Maples Discovery Gardens Co-op Annual General Meeting, Leo made some wonderful lemon balm mint iced tea using herbs from the garden.  He was kind enough to share the recipe with me.  It's super easy, super good, healthy, and cheap!

Ingredients:

1 big bunch of lemon balm (stems removed)

1 bunch of mint (stems removed)

16 cups of water, boiled

1 lemon, sliced

1 Tbsp. coconut palm sugar (or other sweetener such as stevia, raw sugar, etc., to taste)

Start off with a bunch of lemon balm and a bunch of mint (both of which have some great health benefits - you can use Google to look them up). 

You can pick these from the side of the driveway at the Garden.  The lemon balm is quite easy to identify - it's growing rampant and by rubbing the leaves and smelling your fingers, you will know when you've found the correct plant.  The mint is slightly more difficult to find, but it's there.  It looks like some has just been propagated (it's near the lemon balm at the greenhouse end of the driveway) and, since mint grows like a weed (perhaps even worse than buttercups), I'm sure will be flourishing in no time.


Remove the leaves from the stems and give them a good wash to remove any dirt, bugs, and bird...ummm...blessings.  Meanwhile, boil a big pot of water (I used 16 cups, you could use more or less, depending on how strong you'd like your tea).

Remove pot of boiling water from heat, add the lemon balm and mint leaves and let steep.  (If you need to relax, this would be a great opportunity to lean over the pot, throw a towel over your head, and breath deep) I let mine steep 2.5 hours - you could let this steep a whole day or two, if you have the time.

Pour the contents of the pot through a strainer into a drink dispenser or juice jug.  If serving right away, add ice to the jug.

Slice a washed lemon and add to the jug. 

Use raw sugar, coconut sugar, stevia, or the sweetener of your choice, to sweeten to taste (it's great even without any sweetener at all).  I used coconut palm sugar (which gave the tea a darker color).

Enjoy!

Here are some possible variations on this tea:
- adding green tea bags to steep with the lemon balm and mint
- adding lavender (also available to pick at the Garden)
- increasing the mint and decreasing the lemon balm to get more of a mint than lemon taste
- in addition to the lemon slices, add the juice of one or two lemons