A winter’s day (advent tea 2: mint refresh)

It’s going to be a weird winter. Like it was a weird spring and a weird summer. Covid is changing everything.

My brother is a doctor in the ICU. He texted today to the family app:

Covid-19 is rising again in H** Stay sharp!

H** being the town where my parents live. My brother is responsible for so many of the Covid cases and working, well, not so much the front line because that is us suckers keeping our distance and wearing our masks. But he is definitely like the field medics in a war, patching up the fallen en trying to keep them alive. (Like Hawkeye Pierce but with less booze and fewer sexy nurses – I think?) And so we have no big family Christmas, no debate who is making which course of our Christmas dinner like we always do, no decision where to celebrate. Nope: Christmas is going to be a pyjama affair this year. Snuggle up on the couch and watch Star Wars! Life could be far, far worse – let’s be honest. But we need the warmth and to feel safe and comforted.

Day 2: mint refresh

Which is why I don’t really understand the description of tea no. 2 on my advent calendar:

Cool mint and delicate rose. Perfect partners for a winter’s day.

Nah, Pukka. Mint and rose are not perfect partners because mint will bully rose into submission. And don’t these flavours belong in summer when we need a bit of freshness and lightly scents?

I could be wrong. It happens.

So I made the tea after I got home from biking my minion home from school and we were cold. And was it nice? Yes! It was quite nice. The rose is bullied by the mint though, and it takes some effort to detect it in the onslaught of minty freshness but it is there – faintly. This is helped of course by the other ingredients; apart from mint (50%!), this infusion contains licorice root, fennel seeds, hibiscus flower and coriander seed. Rose is the fifth ingredient, with 5% of the contents. Mint is the main event and dominates this tea. The mint is, however, actually surprisingly nice on a chilly winter’s day and more warming than I thought it would be.

So I was wrong. It happens.

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PS In the featured image you see a few crumbs in the tea. That’s the tea loaf I made with the recipe from The Tea Chest. 🙂