Tag Archives: tea

~thankful thursday~ stoking the gratitude fire

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11/16/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 16

i am thankful for dragons. we have fondly referred to our house as the dragon house since quinn was about 5 years old. all three of us love dragons. like many households in oregon, there is a head on the wall as part of our interior décor, but in our case, it’s a sculpted glittering dragon, not an elk.

a friend commented on my post for days 11-13 about edges, that dragons used to be drawn on the edges of maps by cartographers who had reached the limit of their geographical knowledge. it took me until just now to put that together with my dragon loving husband who likes to drive off the edges of maps for fun (which i mentioned on day 9).

my friend also mentioned how dragons traditionally guard treasures of rare and unsurpassed value, and i think that in retrospect, this makes them a very fitting guardian of our household. dragons also stood guard over our wedding!

quinn knows that all the best stories contain dragons. he had a dragon theme for his 8th birthday party, and is often to be found playing video games that involve dragons, reading the wings of fire series about dragons, or creating characters and landscapes for dungeons and, yep, you guessed it, dragons.

there is so much to love. their mystery, their magical capabilities, their indomitable spirit. their ability to wield fire.

fire dragons can be protectors, exhibiting strength and courage. i also think of them having enthusiasm and energy, ready to overcome obstacles in the path.

water dragons might be more concerned with connection, depth, transformation, peace, compassion, healing. but that doesn’t mean they lack courage and passion.

my relationship with fire has been long and not always peaceful. i loved helping my dad “fix the fire” in our cellar wood-burning furnace when i was little, shoving sticks into its bright orange mouth. and of course nothing was better than summer campfires at fish creek campground. however, when our heifer barn burned down, i was only four, and i think a touch of irrational fear of fire stuck with me after that. as a person who tends to feel chilly, i do love wood stove heat in the house, and the handsome fellow who fixes that fire for me daily, and seems to be able to handle flaming hunks of wood bare-handed, is a welding fire building fiery guy. all that hotness is hard to live with, but i manage somehow. (on my tour of the manifold pictured in last night’s post, so he could show me the rainbows, i hung on his every word about how “you have to get the heat right to get the color.” did you know colorful welds are strongest? just as i would have suspected.)

but i digress. about my husband. as usual.

anyway, we’re keeping the gratitude fire stoked at the dragon house.

11/17/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 17

jumping for joy and full of gratitude to have my dragon boy home at the dragon house.

11/18/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 18

i am thankful for my great aunt margie. i attempted to write how i feel about her in a post a few weeks after she passed away, and just a few weeks before rich and i got married this summer. today a small memorial was held for her, and many of her loved ones were not included in that, but in a way, i can hear her saying, “i don’t want a fuss.” i don’t know the story behind why it was kept small and all but secret, but i decided instead to focus on my own grieving of her death/celebrating of her life right here, and it’s easy to feel immense gratitude for the unparalleled impact she had on my life. of course, tied up in that is incredible sadness and a gaping hole in my heart. exhausted from selling organic brussels sprouts and cauliflower and butternut squashes all day, i laid down for a while and read back through that post, and shed some more tears. after that, there was only one thing to do. so i got up and made nachos for dinner.

11/19/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 19

i am thankful for my dog ruby. i don’t actually have my own dog, but at the same time, ruby and i both know we are human-dog soul mates. she’s only the second dog in the world i have felt that way about. i am far from a dog person, and certainly don’t love all dogs across the board. some of them are smelly and some of them are scary, and a little one bit me one time for no reason. but ruby is my doggy love. i am her fairy dog mother when her real family goes out of town or especially when they go camping. she favors comfy chairs over campgrounds. one of our favorite times to be together is for thanksgiving. her family is vegetarian, and the week she spends here while i’m cooking turkey, ham, sausage, and lots of gravy, her mom says is like a dog spa retreat. she is asleep on my lap as i type this. she may eschew camping, but she does love long walks on the beach, just one more reason we are meant to be together, once in a while, which is all i can handle of the responsibility for a canine life. quinn is thrilled to have her for the week, they also have a special bond, and to give our kitties their usual sleeping space with us, ruby gets to sleep in quinn’s room, and he loves the company. borrowing ruby is the perfect arrangement, everyone wins, especially me.

11/20/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 20

i am grateful that although i would pretty much rather gouge out my eyeballs than play the game risk, the folks at hasbro at least made it rainbow-rific to look at. also, i am thankful my son wants me to play games with him, and thankful for the tip from my friend to serve honeybush tea with honey and heavy cream at bedtime. thankful for drinking in sweetness as the theme of this gratitude-enriched season. and also for parsnips.

11/21 and 11/22/17

~30 days of gratitude~ days 21 and 22

i am thankful for today, the penultimate dorkaversary before we celebrate six years together! rich and i have now been married for 4 months, and celebrate like goofballs when we realize any given day is a significant one (namely, the 22nd of any month), or when it’s not and we’re just happy to see each other after a long day of work. looking around on a day like this, prepping for a big feast, it’s easy to feel gratitude for all the abundance surrounding us. the food is bountiful and fresh, the boy cranking the apple slicer has grown into a competent helper, loved ones are close at hand, and a kitty is in the empty ham box. the borrowed pup is sprawled on her blanket on the couch, nose pointed towards the wood stove in worship. tomorrow the man i love will shut off the alarm and we won’t get out of bed any earlier than we want to, and we’ll be so grateful for the extra sleep.

11/23/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

happy thanksgiving! it’s been a great big gratitude day here at the dragon house, stuffed with goodness and topped with gravy. i’m feeling thankful for amazon prime getting my new oven element to me on tuesday, because when it gave out on the friday before thanksgiving, it could have presented a minor source of stress (if, you know, there wanted to be anything baked for said holiday). i am thankful for a relaxing morning after a busy night of making pies, and time to play skip-bo with quinn and listen to him read to me about the ice cow goddess audhumla of norse mythology from whose udder flowed four rivers of milk, and about the rainbow bridge bifrost connecting asgard to middle earth, all from one of his library books. i am thankful for how my son’s pursuits inspire me to learn new things; i have so many questions about this cow! i am very thankful for cows, i know i mentioned growing up on a dairy farm during last year’s gratitude posts, and riding around in the passenger seat next to rich, he is used to me mooing out the windows whenever i see a pasture full of cows. i had no idea, until today, that such a cow featured in creation mythology, and i’m thoroughly intrigued. cows are the quintessence of birthing energy in my experience, which includes years of observational and participatory cow midwifery, and this choice of motherly cow likeness licking the father of norse gods (buri) into being, brings me joy. and then we can talk about rainbows some more! you can imagine my delight at having these things brought to my attention through the voice of the son i birthed into being while channeling all of my inner cow mojo over ten years ago. i am thankful for this family i am blessed to be a part of, the wonderful surprises life brings, pie crust confidence, libraries, friends, rainbows, and cows today.

zero landfill cup of tea

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it can be paralyzing to think of the damage our daily actions do to mother earth, and instead of motivating us to change, it can numb us into inaction. in order to move forward, taking one small step at a time is the best way to make real, lasting change. i find sites like one small change and sustainable baby steps to be very inspiring, sparking ideas of tiny little positive changes i can make, that when added up over days, weeks, months, years, actually make a dent in my impact on mother earth.

my latest change towards reducing my footprint involves transitioning away from drinking packaged tea. babiest of baby steps, to be sure! i have always kept some loose leaf tea on hand, but i didn’t have the right equipment to make this kind of cup of tea as enjoyable as one made with a teabag. i also have favorite tea flavors not sold in the leaf, such as tazo passion, which i drank every morning with breakfast. that meant at least one teabag (filter paper, string, paper tab, metal staple) went into the compost every day, and one plastic-coated paper wrapper went into the landfill every day… and having reduced my purchasing of disposable packaging in other areas so much, the tea bag packaging actually stood out to me.

i started by branching out on tea varieties. i got some loose leaf organic rooibos and honey bush teas, and also wild crafted several types of tea leaves by drying nettle leaf, thimbleberry and skullcap, and my own garden provided small amounts of lavender, mint, lemon balm and chamomile.

then i added to my equipment collection a little screeny-ball thingie that opens on a spring handle (here’s a picture because i have no idea what they’re called!) i also sewed some small reusable cloth tea bags from cheesecloth (butter muslin is a good weight/weave). the bags work better for some of the smaller-ground leaves like honeybush and lemongrass.

while i was at the serger, i also made a coffee filter out of the cheesecloth, and began using that instead of the unbleached paper ones. while i had been composting the grounds and filters, it still felt too disposable for my liking, and it will be a cost savings, albeit a small one. (small changes add up…)

finally, i tackled the task making my own blend of passion tea (i think i’ll call it “inspiration” :)). it was actually a process that took a few months of tinkering. i had been saving citrus peels since last winter, when i decided i was only going to buy organic clementines and not conventional ones- steep price hike, but i knew i could feel better about the tripled cost if i was using the whole fruit, including peel. often i throw a teaspoon of the dried, ground peel into berry muffins, or other baked yummy things, but we weren’t going through it very quickly. i gave it a try as tea, adding in various other ingredients (citrus peel and chamomile is amazingly tasty!) and then i realized that orange peel is a major ingredient in tazo’s passion.

the ingredients in passion are “hibiscus flowers, natural tropical flavors, citric acid, licorice root, orange peel, cinnamon, rose hips, lemongrass, and fruit juice extract (color)”. i dropped the “natural” flavors and colors (doh! those are almost always code for something less than desirable for our bodies) and my blend looks more like this: clementine peel, rose hips, hibiscus flowers, lemongrass, licorice root, cinnamon, and citric acid. i’ve also thrown in some nettle and thimbleberry leaves for added nutrition- it’s a high vitamin C beverage, so why not absorb some iron while we’re at it? (iron and vitamin C go hand in hand.) i kept the citric acid, but reduced it to a minor character- it does give it that tangy zing, so i felt it was worthwhile. the hibiscus flowers are delicious and colorful (they make it red, so that part of the passion experience is still there) but they are also far from a local ingredient, so i reduced their prevalence and deferred to the rose hips that can be obtained locally (and some of mine were ones i’d dried myself). we have lemongrass growing in the living room, so that moved up the list- if you can buy it fresh from your local asian market, you can try soaking the stalk and then sticking it in some soil- we had incredible success with this method. licorice and cinnamon are flavors i appreciate in tea in only very small quantities, so i went light on them. our food coop has every single one of these ingredients in bulk, so i was able to supplement what i hadn’t grown/peeled/dried myself. the cost comes way down, as i’ve made it in quart jar quantities for about the same or lower cost than a box of 20 tea bags. one cup takes about 2 teaspoons, so one quart holds enough tea for 96 cups!

what’s your favorite tea? can you make it a zero landfill cup? some of my favorite simple mixes are:

chamomile and clementine peel

chamomile and lavender flowers

rooibos and lavender flowers

nettle leaf and spearmint leaf

spearmint leaf all by itself 🙂

earth mama’s post today resonated so much for me, and the permaculture link within her post is where i snagged the “permaculture cup of tea” image- such a timely find, as a last minute illustration for my tea ramble- go and see the “industrial cup of tea” version for comparison, a great visual intro if you’ve been wondering “what the heck is permaculture anyway?”