Lemon Balm Tea

Lemon balm (Melissa oficinalis) is one of those magic herbs with many medicinal properties. Among other things, lemon balm tea can settle upset stomachs, calm colic, and help you sleep better. So I’ve been drying the lemon balm that comes out of my garden, and I stole my mother’s as well when she cut her garden down for the winter.

For several days my house was full of minty-smelling bundles. It doesn’t take very long to dry, which is awesome.

Then I pulled the leaves and flowers off all the stems. A handful of the loose leaves makes a delightful pot of tea.

You can sweeten it with honey if you like, or even chill it for a refreshing beverage in the summer.

Loose leaves aren’t all that practical for me, though, because I wanted to give some of this marvelous tea to people as gifts.  I ordered 200 tea bags off Amazon. They took forever to get here from Hong Kong but were so cheap I didn’t have to pay tax or shipping to get them.

I got the large size as with dried larger leaves like this you tend to need to use quite a few to make a whole pot of tea.

Then I stuffed all the bags and tied them off.

I ended up with 96 bags of tea. That’s a lot of tea.

I made little tea tags for my tea. I used a circle punch and a hole punch to create the tag itself from cardstock.

Then I carved a giant T out of a rubber stamp blank.

Stampy stampy stampy.

I tied the tags to the bags and stuffed them into wooden boxes I picked up from Dollarama for three bucks, together with a little blurb about the tea itself.

Fun gift, eh?