March 20, 2018

Citrus Ginger Tea

I feel like this looks like one of those cheap
"disguise glasses" you'd get at joke shops.
People like tea. I mean, empires have clashed and wars have been waged over it. I don't see it myself. I mean, tea is pretty good, I'm just not prepared to die for it. Then again, I've never been a colonial American or a 17th century Portuguese sailor. Both of those things sound kind of horrible, so maybe tea was all they really had going for them. Fortunately, these days we all have pretty easy access to tea, and hardly anybody has to die at all. Which is one of the many reasons I never even contemplated the idea of making it myself until a demon plague which knows no end infested my body and caused me to start coughing with disconcerting frequency and never ever stop unless I can find someone else to transfer the curse to. The point is, with the level of tea consumption I've got going on, mitigating costs and maximizing flavor becomes more of a concern. The fact that it forces ginger, citrus, and other important internet health fads into my system is just a...bonus I guess?

Ingredients:

1 Orange
1 Lemon
1 Ginger (Ginger grows in weird misshapen clumps that easily break off into smaller clumps. People at grocery stores often take advantage of this. Just get a clump that's roughly the size of a travel shampoo bottle)
1 Star Anise Pod
Water
Honey

The first thing you may have noticed about this tea is that it lacks some of the main ingredients people associate with tea, such as tea. Personally, I don't actually consume caffeine because I'm what medical professionals refer to as "crazypants," so this doesn't have any tea leaves in it. But if you want to add some jolt to it, green tea should go pretty well with these flavors. So the first thing you're going to do is cut the peels off of your orange and lemon in large strips. Next, cut your ginger in slices, about a 1/4 of an inch thick. Now, if you want tea once, this is the vast majority of the work you need to do. If you want reasonably shelf-stable tea for the foreseeable future, there are a couple of extra steps. If you want to dry your citrus and ginger for later, throw them on a sheet pan and put them in a 200 degree oven for about an hour and a half. Feel free to double or triple the amount so that you've got more dried goodness in the end. Chop them up, throw them in a sealable jar, and break out your mix every time that your throat starts to feel a little rough, or you start coughing. So every couple minutes if you're me, assuming I haven't sacrificed a fatted calf on a hilltop to get rid of this curse yet.
No one has ever been able to adequately explain to me why
honey comes out of a plastic bear. But as you can see, I'm
having none of that nonsense.

Regardless of whether you're using your ginger and citrus fresh or dried, when it's time for you to make your tea you've got the option of wrapping everything in cheesecloth so that it stays together and is easy to take out, or just tossing it all in there and straining it out later. If you're using the dried stuff then toss in about a tablespoon of it. If you're using the fresh stuff, about 3 slices of ginger, and the peel from half of an orange and lemon. Either way you're adding in your anise, and tossing it into a pot with 2.5 cups of water in it. Bring that all to a boil, then cover it and reduce the heat down to low. Let it cook for about 5 minutes, then turn the heat off and let it steep for another 5. Now all that's left is for you to pour that nonsense in to a cup, add in honey and juice from your naked lemon to your liking, consume, and tax the crap out of it until somebody revolts.

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