My Fairy Gardenmother taught me how to make this tea. Everyone should have an FGM... She is wiser and spirited and listens to the earth. She's like a mother, sister, dear friend and mentor rolled into gorgeous package.
My FGM is a talented artist with a serious passion for chickens, heirloom roses, her family and cooking. She fed us, (me and my rope-pulling partner-in-crime sister creature -- another story!), this tea when we visited a few times and mentioned its calming effects when we were all going through particularly stressful times in our lives. She did not, however, mention to me that there was another secret to the tea we were drinking, a magical, residual effect.
How did you make it I ask? She was vague and spoke with her hands in-between grabbing large handfuls of herbs. Simply gather bunches of fresh herbs from your garden, boil a large pot of of water, pour it over the cut herbs and let it steep overnight in the fridge. On the next day, strain the herbs. That was my instructions and well, they worked!
I will add that, then you pour a cup of your tea into a glass and look at its color. If it's quite dark, you may wish to add some water to the mixture. If you want it sweetened or with ice, add stevia, coconut sugar, cane sugar, etc, to your taste. I'm keeping it simple because that's how it was told to me and that's how it works. I find that extraordinarily freeing.
If you do not grow these herbs, go to your local farmers' market to buy them, or ask if any friend's have extra in their gardens as they both grow like weeds! I usually 4-5 stalks of lemon verbena and a big handful of mint (I use several varieties of mint), and use a huge pot of water. My mixture is often quite dark and I add about 1/3 of extra filtered water to it before I serve. I keep a cauldron or pitcher of it in my fridge and drink it each evening, or whenever I need uplifting or calming.
The herbs in this photo, I picked from my garden. They are lemon verbena, pineapple mint, and a hint of chocolate mint. Before you mix them, taste them raw in the garden, imagine that flavor concentrated and decide if you think they will blend well or not.
Lemon verbena is calming and relaxes your nervous system, it's like drinking up a big, fulfilling sigh. :) Mint can be calming too, but is also uplifting, refreshing, lightening for your mood and great for your digestion. This combination is Heaven!
"The hidden secret though, what was "that" about??", you ask. Well? There are two really, Firstly, this tea helps calm your belly before sleeping so if I'd eaten anything questionable, this helped my belly feel settled. But the SECRET is that after making this tea at home and drinking it for several evenings in a row, I started to notice a new twist... Whenever I drank it before bedtime, I had wonderful, vivid dreams that I could remember. "That" effect, is to me, just as delicious as the tea!
