Green Tea Recipes

We've all read about the benefits of green tea: it's reported to be an antitoxin, cancer preventative, and can help you lose weight. It's good for your heart and your breath, and is even supposed to help fight cavities. It's also good to drink if you have arthritis.

It's easy to find green tea already made in the supermarket. Certainly many companies have jumped on the bandwagon to bottle it up for us. A few of these bottled green teas are 'all natural' too, without all the added chemicals and preservatives that would negate any good things you get from it.

For a while, I drank Arizona green tea in the gallon jugs, since it seemed to me like it was the purest I could find. But my family was drinking so much of it, it was getting too expensive, so I decided to try brewing it myself to save some money.

Green tea tends to be bitter when brewed at home. That was the reason many people I knew did not want to drink it. I decided to experiment with different teas blends to see if I could finally brew green tea that tasted good.

I grow a lot of mint in my garden, so that's what I used to experiment with. I soon found that there were quite a few different mints I could use to mask the bitterness of the green tea. My favorite recipe is to put several tea bags in my big gallon jar, and then I pack sprigs of peppermint in with it. I put in three or four little packets of Splenda or some honey, and pour boiling water over the whole thing and let it steep. Sometimes, rather than the boiling water, I just sit the jar in the sunniest window and let the sun slowly make the tea. My children enjoy watching this, and it encourages them to drink it, too. Once it cools a bit, I pour it over ice. It's very good on a really hot day, or if your stomach is bothering you at all. Peppermint is known to help your digestive system.

I also like to add catnip mint. That gives it a calming influence. Sometimes I put in lemon balm along with the green tea bags and catnip. I've bought pomegranate tea bags, because those are also supposed to be good for your health.

Try adding home brewed green tea to your diet. It's really good for you!