Anyway, it is only Day 4, no 5, ack! of NaNoWriMo and after a good start on Day 1, I'm already WAY behind, trembling behind a teetering wall of writer's blocks. Really, I think I'm still a bit timid of my story and just feeling the whole thing up too much- when basically I should just relax and let it flow. Quantity vs quality is the motto... While I work up the courage to do that, I thought I'd at least sit down and write something, anything, so why not procrastinate with a blog post?
My first attempt was to do a simple infusion by putting about 3 teaspoons of the herb in a mason jar and then pouring 8 oz of boiling water over it. I let it sit about 10 minutes and then strained it into another glass to drink. First impression was similar to what I'd seen someone else say online, that it had a "mild sweet grassy taste" or simply, it tasted like it looked, greenish brown. To my surprise, it didn't taste like the sips of nasty Lipton tea or super sweet stuff I'd reluctantly tried before. I actually liked the mild grassy taste. Plus, hey I knew it was good for me, so that might have helped. Or maybe after drinking coffee and wine my palate is no longer delicate, who knows.
Let's talk about tea. I've never in my life been a tea drinker. Probably because no one in my family drank a lot of tea? Oh wait, I do remember mom putting a big jug of sun tea out to brew on top of the cistern during childhood summers in Iowa. I guess Dad drank that, because I sure didn't. Yuck. Tea? Are you crazy, dirt water? My friend Chris always had iced tea in her fridge when I hung out over there, her mom's habit passed onto to her daughter? My next tea experience might be trying out hot tea at Szechwan Chinese Restaurant in Council Bluffs with Cathy, probably late 80s, after getting her hair permed and highlighted. It wasn't bad, but I drank it more for the novelty of it. After that I guess it shoots forward to meeting Stew and getting to know his mom, who drank "sweet tea." What the hell was that? Iced tea with a shit load of sugar in it. And he drank it too? Wait a minute, I got engaged to this guy? Sweet tea is definitely a southern thing and I soon learned that when traveling, you know you're in the south when sweet tea is on the drink menu alongside the ambiguous "coke" -oh, and when you start seeing Bojangles restaurants everywhere. By the way, are the Hardee's anywhere else in the world advertising/selling "Fried Bologna Biscuit Sandwiches"? I mean, really.
Needless to say, once married, I didn't keep a jug of sweet tea in the fridge for Stew. If he wanted it, he had to wait until he could order it at restaurants. And if not dining down south, if he asked nicely, I'd pass him 4 packets of Splenda. I'd never even considered brewing myself tea. Coffee please, straight up. And really my coffee habit didn't start until I was working full-time after college. The Germans and other Europeans in that office sure liked their coffee, several times a day. But that is another story. Like I was saying, me = not a tea drinker. Until about a month or so ago.
Late this summer I got an email from my fellow stay-at-home BFF in which she mentioned reading on the internet about "oatstraw tea and how it is supposed to be as relaxing as taking a Xanax." This piqued my interest. I've never taken Xanax, but don't tempt me. So hey, a tea? Really? Enter my friend google, who says, yep, look at all these links I can show you! To summarize, first I learned that the Latin name for oat straw is "Avena sativa" (well that is what they the called just plain oats). Wait, like the oats my dad usually grew a few acres of each year? That after the combine went through, eventually got baled and stacked in our barn? Yes, probably. Oat straw harvested as an "herb" is typically made up of the green stalks, leaves AND sometimes the grain itself is included.
Okay, so how does one make tea out of it, and why?
Starting with the WHY first, I'll list some of the nutrients found in oat straw: calcium; magnesium; B-complex vitamins; silicia; calcium; flavones; saponins; and Vitamin A. Never one to really know/care too much about nutrition stuff other than how to read a label, I let the internet inform me how the combo of all these was good for a person. First off, the calcium is pretty cool- about 300 mg per cup. That is a big bonus for those of us who only drink milk if it is brown or at the bottom of a cereal bowl. Next, and I suppose this is where the whole Xanax thing comes in, is that oat straw tea is a nervine, meaning that it "acts therapeutically upon the nerves, particularly in the sense of a sedative that serves to calm ruffled nerves." A few of the online articles even tout the tea as a libido enhancer and a boost to the immune system. Christ, can it do no wrong? Apparently not, as I haven't seen anything negative come up on it. It IS a diuretic, but so is beer.
One thing to keep in mind however, is that all these wonderful things don't happen instantaneously. Like, drink one steaming mug of it and then KAPOW! Strong bones! Calm nerves! Hot & horny! No, slow down partner. Almost all of the info I found said that it needs to be enjoyed regularly on a daily basis (one said 3 cups maximum, but another said as much as you wanted) and that it could take several weeks to reap the benefits, said to be long lasting.
Okay, so how do you make it? Well, after reading all those links, I also became an amateur expert on how one makes loose leaf tea, since most included a brief "how to" bit at the end. Which I will provide as well. With pictures!
First, where did I get it? Again the internet came through for me, and I ended up buying it online. One of the main reasons for this is that I wanted to use some of my PayPal virtual pocket money AND because really, when was I going to have time to go out looking for a hippie herbal store? They don't stock oat straw at WalMart people. So I ended up buying from an eBay store, "Our 4 Corners," which I selected because they had tons of good feedback, a huge selection of nicely priced bulk herbs and reasonable shipping/handling fees. I bought their 1 lb loose Oat Straw CUT/Sifted-Green-Organic. By the way, I went with loose variety because of the recipes I'd seen for preparing it. Plus there seemed to be only a few places that sold it in tea bags, and the price had been marked up a LOT.
I was pleasantly surprised when only 4 business days later, my bagged & boxed 1 lb bag arrived via Priority Mail, with Ames, Iowa listed as the return address! The eBay store "Our 4 Corners" is based out of Michigan, but apparently buys in bulk and sometimes ships directly from AmeriHerb Inc., based out of in Ames.
Upon opening the heavy duty blue bag, the scent that wafted out immediately brought back childhood memories of... well, here is how I described it when I tweeted later that day, "brewed Oat Straw tea for first time today; smelled like farmgirl hay chores; looked like the ruffage that fell out of our socks after."
My first attempt was to do a simple infusion by putting about 3 teaspoons of the herb in a mason jar and then pouring 8 oz of boiling water over it. I let it sit about 10 minutes and then strained it into another glass to drink. First impression was similar to what I'd seen someone else say online, that it had a "mild sweet grassy taste" or simply, it tasted like it looked, greenish brown. To my surprise, it didn't taste like the sips of nasty Lipton tea or super sweet stuff I'd reluctantly tried before. I actually liked the mild grassy taste. Plus, hey I knew it was good for me, so that might have helped. Or maybe after drinking coffee and wine my palate is no longer delicate, who knows. That evening I was excited to get an overnight infusion started. After some rough calculations, I scooped a heaping cup (about 1 oz?) of the herb into a 1.5 liter sealable canister and filled it with boiling water. The next morning I strained it into a quart container and then poured myself another mug which I heated up for about 1 min in the microwave. I stored the quart container in the fridge for later. The color was darker than my first mug infusion, but it still tasted okay to me, maybe a bit more full flavored? The reheated tea was good, and yes somewhat calming... the comfort of it could almost pass as a substitute for my morning coffee. I'm still working on weaning myself off caffeine, so usually I'll have about one mug of coffee and now instead of pouring a second, I'll heat up some tea.
I started making it every night, and eventually one afternoon I tried it as "iced tea" which was good too, especially with a squirt of lemon juice in it. Further modifications I made were to my process... I'd been boiling the water in a sauce pan and straining with the same flat strainer tool I use when making Mac 'n Cheese. Enter a new teapot, a tea strainer, a 2 quart container, and now I was officially a tea drinker.
And wouldn't you know it, Stew started drinking it too, giving me shit about how we finally had tea in the fridge now. I didn't mind sharing, but started planning ahead. The overnight infusions usually lasted about a day. So with two of us drinking it, I started letting some sit out "infusing" during the day as well, i.e. making a double batch every other day or so. One pound at that kind of usage lasted about two weeks.
When it came time to reorder, we did some more calculations, figuring in the price of the bulk herb and the shipping/handling. The actual cost per cup was pretty cheap, like under 50¢! So when I made the next order, I bought 5 lb. I used "Our 4 Corners" again, but this time ordered through their direct web store. I had initially tried to contact AmeriHerb Inc. about ordering directly from them, but my call and email were not returned. I could have followed up, but decided I'd stick with "Our 4 Corners" who had answered two of my email questions fairly quickly and pleasantly. Our 5 lb arrived super fast, like within the same week, and so far has lasted two months, with 1 lb remaining.
I slacked off drinking it for a while, which one site even recommends you do, like take a 5 day break, but mine was more like an unintentional two weeks. Now looking back, it seems like once I slacked off I soon had trouble fighting off an onslaught of cold symptoms. This past week I started drinking it throughout the day again (it is especially nice to drink if you are stuffed up or have a scratchy cough), and I'm now finally starting to feel better. Maybe it really does boost your immune system.
So I heartily recommend trying it out. Is it like Xanax? Well, I wouldn't know, but yes I think it does sort of chill a person out and even if that is a placebo effect, I'll take it. And we'll keep the libido discoveries to ourselves, thank you. ;) Now I'm even thinking of ordering a pound of some other herb to mix in with it. I'm not sure which one yet, I need to do some more research. Any (legal) recommendations? Also I'm wondering what could be done with the leaves after the infusion. I suppose if we composted we could throw in with that.
FYI - This post, up to this point, contained 1717 words, which is about 100 more than the daily goal for NaNoWriMo. See, that wasn't that hard was it? Actually it was- I started writing this the night of the 4th, and had to sit down to work on it twice throughout the day on the 5th. Finally getting it pretty much completed after 1.5 hrs of mostly uninterrupted time, while Milo was napping and the older two were playing "fort." Then I had to make dinner, do dishes, referee homework and read stories... and now I'm finally ready to post, after close to another hour used of precious bedtime quiet. How do all you writers who also blog and/or have kids, do it?
PS - Since time and future posts may be slim, and really it isn't worth a post in itself, I want to share one other creative outlet I've been utilizing lately... here is a photo sampling of doodled napkins I've sent in Wiley's lunches so far this school year. Have a good day y'all, Happy Friday, and do your best!
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