Sunday, January 10, 2010

10/365 - Birch Tea

A tea mug containing birch twigs.
Click the photo to see it on Flickr.

Here's a very different kind of photo (for me, at least). This is my tea mug -- I make tea almost every morning. Normally I have some sort of loose-leaf tea from the local tea room, but today I made something different: birch tea. Birch tea has a pleasant minty sweet flavor. It also has a bit of salisylic acid, which is the main ingredient in aspirin.

This tea was made from yellow birch (sweet birch also works). I steeped a few twigs in hot water -- not boiling, because that destroys the flavor. As always: be careful! This was made from yellow birch (and others should work), but be sure you know what you're eating, before you eat it.

1 comment:

Summer said...

Cool perspective. I didn't know that about birch; willow has similar properties, I think. But I doubt willow makes good tea;)