Making Green Tea

We make iced green tea by the half-gallon, and here's how we do it.

We start with a 16-oz steeping teapot from Amazon (link in the picture):

Then we throw in one heaping scoop each of green tea and dried stevia leaves.  Each heaping scoop is just over half of a 1/4 cup measure:

We get our loose tea and dried stevia leaves from San Francisco Herb Co.  Link here for tea, and link here for stevia .

We heat up some filtered water until it's boiling:

After the water has stopped boiling, we pout it over the tea and stevia, and set the timer for nine minutes:

Meanwhile, we add two or three inches of filtered water to a half-gallon pitcher.  When the timer goes off, we hold the teapot over the pitcher of water, and press up one side of the bottom, which lets the tea escape:

My husband makes his tea first and adds more filtered water until his pitcher is 3/4 full.  He also adds some ice.  Then he heats up more water, fills the teapot again, re-using the tea, and sets the timer for 13 minutes.  When the timer goes off, I prepare my tea in the same way, filling my pitcher about 2/3 full.  We leave our pitchers out on the counter until the tea has cooled a bit before storing in the refrigerator.

Different types of tea turn out with different colors.  It took us a while to figure out how we like it.  My husband likes his tea strong and sweet, while I like mine weaker and not as sweet.

Do you make more than one cup of green tea at a time?

Busy in the Garden

We got a good start to pulling dead leaves from the tomato plants, and we pulled out the old lettuce, radish, and onion plants.  Then we filled in the garden with four bags of new dirt and layered in a bag of cow manure and some hydrated lime.  As you can see, the back yard needs to be mowed - again! - because it's actually been raining here almost every day:

Under the shade canopy, you can see that three pepper plants and a stevia plant survived the clean-up:


Here are two sweet potato vines that we transplanted from water cups over the kitchen sink:

We have cooked sweet potato leaves in a stir-fry, and they get gummy like okra, although they are supposed to be very nutritious.  I suppose we will have to try that again if these vines grow well in our garden.

I have a friend who has started some seeds from a loquat tree.  Once we figure out where to put one in our yard, we will adopt one of her plants.  I prefer to grow plants that can be eaten.  I'm all for Free Food!

About Sweeteners

One company is changing the name of its sweetener. I guess they think we're stupid ... ? Click HERE to read about it.

One major aspect of our "Real Food" diet is avoidance of chemicals and man-made ingredients. We do not use "food" containing ingredients with chemical roots, and that includes sweeteners.

Instead of sweeteners, we use dates and other fruits, and stevia. We use stevia leaves when we make our tea. We have a stevia plant growing in our front garden, but one plant is not enough for us. We buy dried stevia leaves by the pound (to supplement our meager supply) from San Francisco Herb Co. at a reasonable price.

We also order packets of stevia extract from iherb. Each packet, which is the size of other sweetener packets, is up to four servings of sweetness. It's not a sweetener, though - it's just an herb that happens to be sweet.

When you order from iherb, save $5.00 on your first order with this discount code: WIL394

From Misc

Diabetes-friendly Smoothie

I just made a smoothie for tomorrow's lunch, and I shared the extra with DH, who has diabetes II. Here's what's in it:

• 1 large apple
• 1/2 head romaine lettuce (shh, don't tell him)
• 8 frozen strawberries
• lots of powdered cinnamon
• a little bit of stevia powder

It's pretty good. I'm going to experiment more with herbs in my smoothies.