Citrus Mint Iced Tea

Iced Tea for Two

Recipe adapted from The Tea Companion

It’s summer and it’s hot! Temperatures are sizzling throughout the US. Even the weather map looks sunburned, all zones pink to dark red, with no blue, green, or even yellow zones in sight. Pretty much the same story throughout the northern hemisphere. We need to chill out, even as we brainstorm solutions to global warming. A tall glass of orange-lemon, minty tea with a caffeine lift couldn’t hurt. I adapted the recipe from The Tea Companion, a classic guide to different teas from around the world, as well as clear, succinct descriptions of how different teas are grown and processed. The Companion also demonstrates how to make great tea. 

Fresh Mint Tea

Recipe by Robin

Here in the Santa Cruz Mountains, semi-wild mint pops up with the first winter rains. Planted in some nearby herb garden years ago, it has spread by runners to form a thick mat of leafy stems throughout our back yard. As delicate as the leaves seem, they don’t mind the cold at all. Some sturdy spearmint variety, these leaves are famously stirred into mint juleps and muddled into mojitos. But in winter they make a refreshing and warming tea that soothes body and spirit.
The super-easy recipe is uplifting and thirst-quenching, whether you are sick or well, by yourself or with a friend.

Sweet Potato and Pomegranate Tagine with Ras el Hanout

Mid-Winter Lift

Recipe adapted from Vegetarian Times

I can’t imagine a better pairing than winter and tagines. These highly spiced North African stews perk up both body and spirit. Though traditionally tagines are curried meat dishes, vegetables respond equally well to the combination of spices. Sweet cinnamon and ginger, hot peppers, bitter turmeric, exotic cardamom and saffron, and other spices combine to make the heady blend called ras el hanout—which means “head of the shop” or roughly “top rated” in Arabic. In this recipe you’ll make your own spice blend, creating a supply for other tagine experiments this winter.

Spring Peas with Mint

Fresh Green Spring Ingredients

Recipe Adapted from The Secret Garden Cookbook

Peas are the quintessential springtime crop. One of the earliest harvests of the year, springtime peas are particularly favored in snowy climates. Where few fresh veggies are available in winter, people particularly appreciate signs of spring. In Victorian England, before large-scale transportation of foods, peas were even more popular to grow and eat. According to The Secret Garden Cookbook, the pea plant was dubbed “prince of the vegetable garden,” and Victorian recipes called for up to 4 cups of peas per serving.  This delightful recipe pairs peas with perky mint, another favorite springtime flavor from the garden.

Mint Sauce

Classic Lamb Chop Accompaniment

Recipe by Robin

Mint is growing again like crazy in shady spots. I’m always amazed at how it can freeze down to nothing in winter, but regenerate tall as ever in spring. With the Persian mint that Lynn (of Strawberry Mojito fame) gave me from her yard, and all the spearmint growing in our yard, mint jelly for our first (lamb) BBQ seemed like a natural.

Strawberry Mojito or Nojito

Mojito and Nojito

Recipe adapted from Lynn

My friend Lynn is the queen of entertaining. Not only is she gracious and charming, she’s a natural planner, organizing and synthesizing details for all manner of theme parties in a way that seems effortless. She is ever calm, never rushed. When attending to last minute preparations as early guests arrive, she engages the guests as she goes about her work, inviting comment on placement of food and drink, or offering self-guided tours of the garden.

So leave it to Lynn to know the perfect drinks to serve to her husband’s college friend and his wife, even though she hadn’t met them yet. Not knowing whether they’d prefer refreshment of the alcoholic or nonalcoholic variety, she muddled up mint from her yard, lime, and local in-season strawberries, making a mixture that could go either way. This mojito-nojito strategy could also work well at parent-with-young-kid parties, or with other mixed groups.

Carciofi alla Romana: Italian Artichokes with Mint & Parsley

Just a Few Simple, Fresh Ingredients

Recipe by Elizabeth Minchilli

Is there ever a point in reinventing the wheel, in recreating what already works? That depends on how much you might improve it and in how much time. Often in the recipe realm we can add interest or healthfulness by changing things up. But sometimes the original recipe is so authentic that we don’t want to mess with it. This recipe, for example.

Chillin' with Meyer Lemonade

Refreshments!

Recipe by Robin and Bruce

What’s your to-do list like? Hopefully it’s shorter and less complicated than mine! Preparing to sell a 1988 “special needs” car (cheap!), major planting projects in the garden, paying the usual monthly bills, and some minor surgery that caused me to lose my appetite have slowed me down blog-wise, particularly in the area of creating recipes. My apologies! The creative (recipe) process can be unforgiving.

Mostly I’ve been stuck on fresh fava beans and strawberries, which present opposite challenges. Favas are so odd, it is hard to know what to do with them. My proposed Oven Roasted Fava Bean Appetizer, based upon a similar Roasted Chickpea Appetizer, failed. The favas didn’t get crispy like the chickpeas, perhaps because of their greater surface area in contact with the cookie sheet. They were slightly caramelized, and “interesting” at best. You don’t want to know. Next recipe up: hummus made with favas. This is bound to work out better.

Balsamic Strawberries with Mint

Quick & Easy Balsamic Strawberries

Recipe from Bon Appetit and Live Earth Farm

It’s that time of the season when we’ve grown accustomed to getting strawberries every week in our CSA share, and eating just a basket of strawberries for dessert doesn’t have the appeal that it did back in early May. Here’s a simple recipe for jaded palates featuring the goodness of strawberries. The idea of strawberries and balsamic vinegar seemed strange to me, but in combination with the sugar, the balsamic sauce takes on a strawberry flavor, along with a sweet sophistication.