Food Friday: Strawberry Green Tea with Mint

It's been hot here... like, really hot. And muggy, too, which is like... weird. Because last time I checked it was not supposed to be muggy here. It's one reason I was glad to leave the South, for crying out loud. And, we even had a thunderstorm here yesterday, complete with lightning and blown down trees and everything. It was kind of nice, though, and it made me miss home a little bit.

Anyway, it's been hot, and I needed a drink. So this week's Food Friday is really a drink. But whatever, you're not that picky, are ya? See, I drink a lot of water. I think a lot of people find it odd, but I figure I don't drink enough water as it is, so if I'm going to drink something it may as well be water. But sometimes you need more, you know? Some flavor or something. Justyn's mom makes "tea juice" which is basically tea brewed in the sunshine with some flavor of juice added. My mom used to make something similar we called "sun tea" and she added frozen orange juice or orange-pineapple or something like that. It was tasty. This is similar, but not the same.

I've already raved about the farmer's markets here, remember? Well, we used to go to the Beaverton market, which is definitely one of the best. But now that's not so convenient anymore, so we looked up the closest one to our new place. It turns out that they just started a new market this year for this area called the King market. Anyway, we decided to check it out. It's waaayy smaller than the Beaverton market, which is kind of a bummer, but I liked it. They still had a pretty good selection of stuff and we can ride our bikes... yay! The only thing I don't like about it is that it's on a Sunday. I like to go on Saturday so I have part of the weekend to cook up some cool stuff. So, we stocked up on tons of stuff, including some yummy looking local strawberries and big bunches of fresh mint, which I love. I'm a big fan of mint.

Justyn suggested making some sun tea / tea juice concoction with what we made, but we didn't have a pitcher to put it in. Well, we did, but it's plastic. And, you have to set it out in the sun for a few hours, so we needed something glass. Plastic + heat + your belly = no good. So, Justyn went on a quest for something and he came back with this:

It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but whatever. It serves its purpose. So we put 10 green tea bags in it with some water and set it outside for a few hours in the sun.

I don't know what I was off doing, but I had already decided in my mind that the mint might not go so well with the strawberries and green tea flavor. But, Justyn apparently had already decided in his mind that he thought it would be great, and wanted to add some lemon in, too, just for good measure. By the time I came back into the kitchen a little while later, this is what he had done:

Looks pretty good, right? This is about 1/2 a small container of strawberries, about 1/2 cup of pulverized mint leaves, juice from 6 lemons, and about 1/3 cup of agave nectar to sweeten it. I wanted to try that instead of sugar just to see what happened, and I thought it was pretty good. You should be able to find it pretty easily at Trader Joe's.

So after the tea had brewed up, we added this strawberry mint lemon agave concoction to it and tried it out. It was pretty good, actually, but I think definitely no mint next time. And more strawberries. And, it was better the 2nd day after all the stuff had time to hang out together, so maybe make it in the morning and let it sit most of the day after you add your fruit. You should totally try out your own version, though... it works well with just tea and juice, so pick your faves and try it out. It's sort of a fun, summery thing to do.

Strawberry Green Tea with Mint

Ingredients:

10 regular green tea bags

1 cup smashed strawberries

1/2 cup crushed mint leaves

1/3 cup agave nectar (or sweeten to taste)

juice from 6 lemons

Directions:
Place the tea bags in a large glass pitcher and set outside in the sun to brew for about 2 hours. In the meantime, mix all the other ingredients together. Add the mixture to the tea, let the flavors mingle, and enjoy! You can also add a little splash of tequila if you're feeling frisky. I'm not saying I did that, but you could if you wanted.