Did You Know?

Did you know that many of the plants used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds?

In fact, many well-known culinary herbs and spices, such as ginger, cinnamon, rosemary, mint, nutmeg, cloves and lemongrass, are used in my tea blends to help with indigestion, cold & flu symptoms and detoxification.

Some other herbs often used for cooking, like peppercorn, oregano, cumin, thyme, bay leaf, sage and orange peel, are also very helpful and relatively gentle herbs that herbalists have recommended for centuries to boost cardiovascular and respiratory health and enhance liver and immune system function.

So, of course, at our house, in addition to drinking a variety of herbal, green and black teas, we also cook with many, many herbs and spices! One of our favorites is to re-use our organic Dragonwell green tea leaves, once they've already been steeped a few times, as an addition to our rice and veggie stirfrys. We also like to make a nice smokey marinade for kidney beans out of a cup of lapsang souchang black tea! Plus make a number of tasty herbal soups, a popular method used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, in addition to spicing up our smoothies and desserts with some fun and flavorful goodness! The possibilities are endless!

So, next time you walk by that dusty spice rack of yours, take a minute to survey and experiment and see what new, flavorful and herbal medicine-infused meals you can make for yourself!