Tea Time!

I embarked on a new adventure today: making my own herbal tea! As some of you know, I like to drink a lot of red raspberry leaf tea toward the end of my pregnancies. It's very beneficial in many ways, and though I have no way to prove it, I really believe that it's helped me have two quick and easy birth experiences so far. I was inspired by Tammy's post about making her own pregnancy tea, and Jim gave me the go-ahead to order some herbs to make my own brew. We did a little figuring and discovered that buying herbs in bulk would be a good bit cheaper than buying a bunch of boxed teabags, which is what I've always done before. Anyway, I ordered a half-pound each of 3 different herbs: red raspberry leaf, nettle, and alfalfa, from the Bulk Herb Store. The herbs arrived yesterday and today I mixed up a batch of tea.

Following the proportions for "Mama's Red Raspberry Brew" given on the Bulk Herb Store website (only leaving out the peppermint), I mixed the herbs in a bowl.
Jim and my mom both suggested using coffee filters to make my own "teabags." I measured out 15 teaspoons of the herb blend into each coffee filter . . .
. . . and tied it up with cotton string. Voila! My own tea, all ready for brewing.
My plan was to make iced tea and to make up a large batch at a time, so that's why I made such big teabags. :) One teabag will do for 12 cups (3 qts) of boiling water. I steeped it for quite a while, then added some sugar and lemon juice, and refrigerated it. I'm going to play around with the proportions of sugar a bit because I think I made it a little too sweet. But it wasn't bad for a first attempt! I hope to drink about a quart of tea and a quart of water daily, until I have the baby. We'll see how it goes!

Oh, and as a point of reference: So far I've made up 12 of these teabags, enough to make 36 qts. of tea. I haven't even used up half the herbs yet! The total cost of the herbs (including shipping) was $17.10. So 36 qts. of tea have cost less than $8. In comparison, to buy 6 boxes of Traditional Medicinals red raspberry leaf tea from Amazon (which if I figured correctly, is enough to make 24 qts.) would cost more than $25. It was pretty cool to see how much I saved by buying in bulk!