Herbal Tea - Storing and Drinking

Life has been chaotic for me lately. Not very busy, just turbulent. So I have spent my time online with relaxing things like netflix, fanfiction and polyvore... But I'll try to get out that second post about herbal teas now. Summer and herbal tea harvest season is over here, but maybe where you are summer is still in full swing and you can have some use for this post. Otherwise I guess there is always next year! ;)

Read part one about harvesting and drying herbs here. This second post will largely be photos of tea and a bit of information about what plants are good for tea. But first a bit about storing your dried herbs.

Here is most of my harvest. Each herb in its own jar. I use both ordinary glass jars and metal tea jars, with various types of lids. Air tight lids are supposedly best, but I use whatever I can find. It might be tempting to store the pretty herbs in glass jars where they are visible, but they stay good for longer if stored in darkness. The herbs should not be crushed to pieces. They retain much more flavor if stored whole. I write the name of the herb as well as the year of harvest on the lid so that I can be sure how old that particular herb is.

White clover flowers.

Rose petals.

Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium), leaves and flowers.

Yarrow, leaves and flowers.

Pansies and violets.

I have made a few herbal blends but I prefer to store each herb on its own. This doesn't stop me from drinking blends. I usually choose a blend of several different herbs (whole) to put in my cup before adding hot water and a bit of honey. Here are some pictures of pretty and tasty herbal teas!

White clover flower tea. This is a herbal tea for the beginner! The taste is very sweet and almost a bit honey like even without sweetener. The flowers even look very pretty!

Lady's mantle leaf tea (Alchemilla Vulgaris). I really like these leaves, they taste quite sweet and look very pretty.

Rowan leaf tea. Not quite as sweet as white clover or lady's mantle but still a pleasant mild herbal tea.

Fireweed leaves and flowers.

Fireweed tea (leaves and flowers). This is one of the prettiest of herbal teas! The milky color is just gorgeous and the flowers turn from dark purple-blue to sheer and delicate white in the hot water! Tastes very good too. fresher and greener than white clover or lady's mantle.

Hibiscus flower tea. Rather cool purple color isn't it? Doesn't taste very much or very good though. 

Meadowsweet flowers and leaves (Filipendula ulmaria).

Meadowsweet flower and leaf tea. I have always loved the sweet, almond like, scent of this plant and that scent translates into taste too! The taste is sweet with an almond undertone, absolutely delicious! And don't they look pretty!

Pansy flower and yarrow leaf.

Pansy flower and yarrow leaf tea. These yellow pansy flowers give the tea an intense yellow color but the taste is quite subtle and frankly not very interesting. I am more fond of the stong herbal taste of yarrow but yarrow tea isn't very pretty... So the combination of pansy and yarrow gives both mouth and eyes pleasure.

Orange pansy and raspberry leaf tea. This orange pansy is also rather pretty, but it doesn't give the tea as intense a color. Raspberry leaves are a classic herbal tea, they taste sweet and lovely and are supposed to have medicinal effects (though I haven't noticed any).

Linnaea flower and leaf tea. I really like how these tiny flowers look in my tea cup, but unfortunately the taste is a bit too subtle for me. Just a hint of sweetness and not much more. I will have to use these in combination with something of stronger taste or when I'm in the mood for something subtle.

Finally a picture of my favorite tea. Labrador tea! I love the strong herbal taste and scent of this one! I store this tea in the freezer rather than dried as I have found thet the taste isn't really preserved well in the dried plant.

Other plants that I have harvested:

• Rose petals - Give a subtle scent and taste of rose.
• Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) - Are pretty and blue but not much else.
• Red clover flower - Not as sweet and not as pretty as it's white sibling.
• Veronica (esp. Veronica chamaedrys) - Traditional tea plant, tastes nice and sweet.
• Blueberry leaf - Tastes wonderful, quite fresh and green!
• Lingonberry leaf - Tastes virtually nothing. Said to be a cood treatment for urinary infection though.
• Strawberry leaf - Sweet and tasty, quite similar to raspberry or lady's mantle.
• Violet flowers - Look pretty and have a subtle sweet taste.
• Mint and peppermint - I love to blend these strong flavored herbs with something pretty but boring!
• Hops - Really interesting, rather beer like, taste. Supposedly good as a sleep-inducing evening tea.
• Black currant leaves - Really strong and unique flavor! I love blending with blander but prettier herbs.

Those are the plants I have harvested and tried as tea! I have tried a lot of different blends too but I suggest that you experiement and find your personal favorites. Feel free to ask questions, I am sure that I have forgotten something...

Herbal Tea - Harvesting and Drying

I will finally write that promised blog post about my herbal teas. It will actually be two blog posts I think. This first part will focus on harvesting and drying while the next part will focus on the actual herbs and teas as well as storage.

I have no actual pictures of the harvesting, but you can all imagine me walking around with my basket collecting this and that, whatever is not poisonous according to my books. Always consult literature if you are unsure! Flowers are seldom poisonous but it's always safest to check. If a herb is pronounced non-poisonous in the books but you don't know if it makes good tea then just try it! In my next post I will show you some of the herbs that I harvest, but what herbs are available depends very much on your location in the world. I mostly wild harvest, but if you feel uncomfortable or unsure about that and you have a herb garden you can of course use those herbs for tea as well! Some of the common culinary herbs make really spendid herbal tea as well.

There are a few general rules regarding harvesting: 

• First, leaves should be hervested before a plant flowers, so generally harvesting time is spring and early summer. Flowers can of course be harvested whenever. 
• Second, choose a cloudy or not too warm day to harvest. You want the plants to be healthy and not dried up and wilting. If you live in a hot climate you should harvest in early morning. 
• Third, you should always harvest only healthy leafs and flowers. Choose quality over quantity, it might take more time when you are choosy, but the result will look better and taste better. Choose the freshest and greenest leaves and the best looking flowers.
• Fourth, don't gather herbs near roads or on/near land where weed-killers or pesticides have been used.

I usually gather only the parts of the herb that I intend to use for tea, for example I gather the leaves or the flowers but not the whole plant. If you inted to dry your herbs by hanging them up rather than flat drying it may be necessary to harvest the whole plant. You'll see what I mean as I move on to the next part of this post, the drying process!

This part of my herbal tea making has been extensively documented. I have a huge number of photos of it but I'll spare you and only show you a selection! 

In the pictures you can see the different methods of drying that I mentioned. With one herb, that has ridiculously small leaves, I have chosen to dry the whole plant in a hanging position. The rest I dry flat on whatever plate or chopping board that I could find. There is even a woven bowl. I'd prefer using such woven containers for drying, because of the air flow they allow, but as it is I have used any plane wooden tray that I could find. You can use any ordinary plate or tray too, it doesn't have to be made of wood. As you can see in one picture, I used a china plate too and I noticed no difference in quality. I would stay away from plastic though... or maybe I'm just paranoid. 

In my experience flat drying means that the plant dries faster, while bundling takes more time. I noticed no difference in flavor retention, but of course I didn't try the two different methods with the same plant. Flat drying takes up a lot of space but the faster drying times means that you can harvest in smaller doses but more often. I harvested about once a week and by that time most of the previous harvest was ready for storage.

You can also find pictures of various herb drying racks as well as DIY tutorials online. I haven't ever used one but if you plan on drying a lot of herbs and have limited space available, a drying rack might be useful!

There are a some rules about drying too:

• First, choose a dry, dark (out of direct sunlight) and not too cold/drafty spot to dry your herbs in.
• Second, shake the freshly picked herbs to get rid of insects befor laying them out to dry. Don't wash the herbs before drying, if they are picked in clean locations washing is not necessary. Wet plants mold easily.
• Third, if the plants are wet when you bring them in, give them extra "breathing room", don't place them too close to each other. Otherwise use your common sense and/or experience when it comes to how much space a plant needs. As long as there is no mold, it's fine! If your climate is humid you may need to keep a close eye on your herbs and flip them over now and then to prevent mold.
• Fourth, drying time depends on the plant, let the leaves/flowers dry until they can be crumbled between your fingers.

I think that's all for now. I have probably forgotten some details, but that's the gist of it! Any questions so far?

A Spring-Summer Recap

Just to get into blogging again I have decided to do a post with mostly pictures. I have a whole heap of outfit pictures from spring and early summer that I need to post now or never... I especially love my eclectic spring outfits but I was too busy to write blog posts this spring so this here will be a recap.

I love this red jacket! It is one of my favorites for spring! I'll have to stay slim if I want to wear it for all eternity though, it's a thight one! This jacket is a vintage find from Beyond Retro (my favorite place for shopping strange vintage clothing!).

Sorry for the picture quality here. I can't even blame the dusty mirror for this one. This outfit was the one I wore when I had just turned in my paper and wanted to celebrate that milestone! Both the jacket and the dress here are actually from H&M!

This dress is another Beyond retro find! I absolutely adore the dark teal color of it but that color is absolutely impossible to capture on camera, even in natural light... The mirror is extremely dusty here so I guess you can't really see the dress anyway. Trust me, it is dark teal velvet and gorgeous!

On my birthday I visited Stockholm one last time before my big move. I went on a big perfume sniffing spree and to a couple of Second Hand stores. I fell in love with Les Nombred d'Or Cuir by Mona di Orio and at Beyond Retro I bought this dress. I never thought that I would ever fall for floral clothing, but I did! It is the perfect summer dress, a thin, machine washable cotton with a lace up back!

This is an outfit for colder days. The tunic is one of my favorite pieces, wide sleeves, lace, tight around the wrists... All this AND machine washable! Just perfect!! I bought it at H&M a number of years ago and it remains one of the most unique pieces in my wardrobe!

Here is another of my favorite pieces from my wardrobe, my black velvet dress, previously seen in at least one other outfit. I love how versatile it is, it can be dressed up or down, made morbid or romantic...I bought it at Weekday a couple of years ago. Here it is paired with my dark floral tights.

And now we get to my absolute favorite outfit of all time.I just had to include more than one picture of this outfit! I wear it again and again and I never tire of it! All of these pieces just fell together one day and became this outfit without any premeditation on my part! My black velvet dress is the base, together with my golden party skirt. The skirt was bought second hand, the absolutely gorgeous jacket is from H&M, the necklace is from LeBoudoirNoir and the slippers were a gift from a friend.

Hope you have enjoyed this little exposé. It will unfortunately be my last outfit post for a while... I don't have a full lenght mirror here yet. I didn't bring the old narrow (and perpetually dusty) one back to Finland with me and I have no idea where to find the wall space for a wider one in my room, not to mention the money to buy one...

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In other news, from real life, my summer job has ended. Since Midsummer I have worked as a library assistant in a small local library. I have had that little library all to myself for a whole month! I LOVED it! Working there full time is my dream for the future, but I guess I'll have to wait...

My room is also taking shape. All of my books have by some miracle managed to fit in my book shelves and all of my clothes in my wardrobe. I had doubts about both! There is even some space for more books (this is the real miracle, I have been cramming for years)!! Now I only have a few more boxes of assorted nick-nacks to unpack.

My post about my herbal teas will be up sooner or later, whenever I can find the inspiration to write a long text... I have soo many photos of herbal tea now that I'm thinking that I might have to split the post up into several parts... We'll see...

I also have A LOT of new perfumes in my life! An Alkemia haul or two, some giveaway packages, some full sizes from Darling Clandestine, some samples from Wild Hybrid and even my first real niche purchase,a small bottle of above mentioned Les Nombres d'Or Cuir from Mona di Orio. I smell good!!

The Commune - Our Humongous Tea Collection

Just recently Rachel, of Brightest Star Of All, and I got to talking about our "tea collections". Yesterday she wrote a blog post about her teas and now here is the tea cabinet in my commune. In my commune, we drink a LOT of tea! So we have a lot of tea! It is rather a ridiculous amount of tea, is it not? Wonder how long it takes for three people to drink this much tea? 

About one third of the tea in this cabinet is black, one third is green and one third is red, white, herbal or just plain weird. As you must realize I can´t write about all the tea in this cabinet so I´ve selected a few teas that I have  either bought myself or that I like very much. We all mostly buy loose tea from various tea shops so I generally don´t know what brand they are, if they even have a brand...

Hare is a selection of black tea. The on on the left is called Fina Augustina and is a creamy coconut and fruit blend. The bottom one is a blend with chocolate and piri piri. I really like this one because I love really spicy tea! The last of these three is a wonderfully weird blend with flower petals and pieces of salmiak. That´s a kind of tea that you can probably only find in the salmiak obsessed Finland!

Here is a selection of green teas. The top one is a Japanese rice tea. Bottom left is a minty one and bottom right a green chai. I´m not particularily fond of green tea anymore, but the rice tea is tasty, the green chai is wonderfully spicy and the minty one is very refreshing!

These teas are a bit stranger. The left one is a green and black blend with ginger and other spices. The top one is a herbal spice blend with fennel, anise, cumin and nettles and the bottom one is a white tea with, believe it or not, dried spirulina algae and exotic fruits.

Here are some more rather strange ones. At the top is a classic yogi blend of spices like clove, cinnamon, cardamom and ginger. The right one is a herbal blend with rose hips, chamomille, lemon grass, orange peel and so on... Now, the bottom one is the really strange one! It is lapacho, a south american bark tea that is supposedly good for you... but it doesn´t taste very nice, and it certainly looks weird!

And finally some tea bags from my favorite brands. Pukka and Yogi Tea are brands that make herbal spice blends. They are ridiculously expensive, but also so delicious!! 

Pukka Three Ginger is a blend of ginger, galangal and tumeric. Pukka Green Chai has a green tea base with ginger, cardamom, star anise, cinnamon and licorice root. Pukka After Dinner contains fennel, anise, chicory and cardamom. 

Other Pukka favorites are: Revitalise and Licorice & Cinnamon.

Yogi Tea Classic is a powerful cinnamon blend with cardamom, ginger and clove. Yogi Tea Throat Comfort is a licorice root tea with lots of other spices.

Other Yogi Tea favorites are: Licorice Egyptian Spice, Sweet Chai and Sweet Chili Mexican Spice.

And last but not least my poor little pack of English Toffee Dessert Tea from Celestial Seasonings that is, o horror of horrors, discontinued *black cloud of depression*! Three bags left, after that I´ll miss it forever... Among the discontinued teas I also found Canadian Vanilla Maple and Vanilla Hazelnut Dessert Tea. :¨( All three of my Celestial Seasonings favorites discontinued. *Sigh* I´m out of luck! I´d love to try Honey Vanilla Chai or Nutcracker Sweet though, but I dont think they can replace the delicious descontinued teas... 

So there is my tea collection! What kinds of tea do you like? What is you favorite tea? Do you prefer loose tea or tea bags? Or are you one of Those That Drink Coffee (Heathens!)?

Perfume Review - Wing of Bat and Ardorem 21

These are the two scents out of my haul from Alkemia that disappointed me. Not really because they are bad scents, but because they are not at all what I expected.

The name Wing of Bat really enchanted me, together with the description, containing notes of oakmoss, green patchouli, fern, dirt, ambergris, leather. I really expected something dark and earthy. In the vial Wing of Bat smells green and herbal with hints of citrus. On wet it is a very sharp and clean kind of scent, very green but not very herbal anymore. This is the kind of sharpness that I associate with cheap men´s cologne and that just gives me a headache and no enjoyment. As this dries it becomes less sharp, but  I still get only lots of green with a vague chypre background. I get no leather, no moss, definitely no dirt, even the slight patchouli I can smell here is not very earthy, it is indeed very green. I guess this isn´t a bad sort of scent... It is made like a classic and old fashioned men's cologne, I´m quite sure I have smelled some commercial scent that is very much like it. As long as you don´t expect anything else it is fine, after the sharp green note in the beginning it is not bad. But if you expect another unique and exciting Alkemia creation this is a disappointment. This one is going on my swaps list, if anyone is still interested in it after this review... ;)

Ardorem 21 is sorted under the category "Musk Spices Suede" in the Alkemia shop and the notes are as follows. "Coriander, Mandarin, Amber, Nutmeg, Saffron, Bourbon Geranium, Blue Lotus, Tobacco, Musk, Clove, Sandalwood, Vetiver, Kashmiri Tea, Cardamom, Black Pepper, and Japanese incense." Lots of spices in that description and I am a huge fan of spicy perfumes, I thought that perhaps the geranium and the lotus won´t be so noticable and a little bit of mandarin can´t drown out all those lovely spices and darker notes. But in the bottle Ardorem 21 smells of mandarin most of all. But it was a spicy mandarin, so I had high hopes still. On wet there is a wonderful flash of spices at first, black pepper, cloves, cardamon, coriander, hints of musk, the mandarin is prominent too, but the spices are more dominant... But then comes the bourbon florals and take over. It is not an awful floral by any means, it is sweet and pretty together with amber and some faint hints of musk and spices. The floral fades with time, and the final drydown is sweet and creamy, quite complex, with tea, musk, amber and a hint of tobacco... I like this one better than Wing of Bat, I can enjoy it and the drydown is lovely... I was just expecting something full of spices, and this isn´t it... This one goes on the swap list too.


Neither of these oils have much of a sillage, Ardorem 21 slightly more than Wing of Bat, and neither lasts very long on my skin, Wing of Bat lasts just a few hours and Ardorem 21 perhaps an hour more.