Sun Tea

All summer long I battle my addiction to juice. Juice: full of sugar, robbed of its fruit fiber...I know I shouldn't drink it but nothing else will quench my taste buds!

If I avoid juice altogether the cravings are much weaker, so I like to substitute tea for a nice compromise between water and juice. Whenever the mint gets out of hand (pops up in the lawn or the bean patch...) I just pick whole sprigs, rinse them, stick them in a clean mason jar of water and sit it in the sun for 3-6 hours. It is said that letting the sun gently warm the tea avoids releasing bitter tannins from the leaves (goes for any tisanes), the way boiling water would.



I'm still experimenting with varying quantities of mint and stevia leaves, as well as the odd dash of lemon juice to finish things off. (Stevia is a natural sweetener that's caught on in grocery stores in recent years, I like to keep a plant growing, because it's fun to eat a leaf straight off the plant for dessert! I learnt that at the Montreal botanical gardens, where I ate a stevia leaf and a chocolate mint leaf together - a delicious way to satisfy that sweet tooth without many calories!)