Homemade Mint Iced Tea

I am a horrible food stylist. It seems to be a talent that many food bloggers have. They spend lots of time shopping for the perfect plates, utensils, and tableware in order to take gorgeous photos. I have to admit I hate shopping for photo props. While I love the second hand store, I don't like shopping for vintage tableware, or linens just to make my photos pop. Plus, with overly propped photos I never know if I am supposed to be looking at the food. I get distracted by the beautiful colors, tableware, plates etc. and more often than not the food becomes the prop instead of the focal point of the recipe that it is supposed to be representing. Honestly I am also a little bit jealous. I wish that I had the patience, time, and follow through to be able to spend hours putting together my photos. Most days I am lucky if the food gets on the plate and the photo taken. One thing I do love is angles. I spend more time finding the right angle for my photos than the worrying about the props. After preping, cooking, and plating my food I just want the angle of the photo to represent my food in the best light and hope that maybe no one will notice that I didn't spend hours finding the perfect vintage table linen for my shot.

Today's recipe is an example of my less than stellar food styling abilities. When I had time to take the photo the mint had all been used and I had no leaves left for photo props. So I am sad to admit that my mint iced tea photos have no actual mint in the picture. Oh well, without further ado here is the breakdown of the recipe I tried today from the Food Network for Mint Iced Tea.

This recipe has 6 ingredients. It takes 2 hours and 20 minutes of total time, 10 minutes of which is active, and makes 4 servings. I only made a few small changes to the original recipe. First, I doubled the recipe to use the large amount of fresh mint that has exploded in my garden the last couple of day. Second, I used half sugar and half stevia. Whenever possible I try to reduce the amount of sugar in drink recipes since my kids are hyper enough without a ton of extra sugar added to their diet.

My youngest son fell in love with this recipe. He drank half of the pitcher this afternoon and insisted on drinking it with a sliced lemon on his glass, it was pretty cute. If you aren't a huge fan of mint you can take out the mint after a couple of hours and the tea will be more lemony than mint tasting. On the flip side if you are like my family and love mint, let the mint steep in the fridge for most of the day and the tea will have a nice crisp flavor.

For the recipe go to Mint Iced Tea.

Melting in the Summer Heat? Try Lemon Balm Iced Tea

Lemon Balm Iced Tea

It has been raining for what seems like months. When it's not raining the temperature has been in the 90's and humid. I think we have had enough rain for the entire year just since May. While this would normally be a minor annoyance, my plants are really less than happy. I found mushrooms growing in my basil pot and the lower leaves are turning yellow. There has just been way too much rain, even with great drainage etc they just aren't happy right now. Since the rain is wrecking havoc on my potted plants I have been making an attempt to use as many of my herbs as I can while they are still doing decent. This week I came up with a new recipe for Lemon Balm Iced Tea.

• 2 cups lemon balm leaves
• 4 black tea bags
• 1 sliced lemon

Wash and hand crush the lemon balm leaves. Add the lemon balm to 8 cups of water. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 5 minutes. Take off of heat, add the tea bags and sliced lemon. Place a lid on the pot and let sit for 10 minutes. Strain the tea and add to a gallon pitcher. Add cold water to fill and let sit in the fridge until cool. Serve over ice.

That's it, a very easy recipe that is refreshing on a hot summer day. My two boys really loved the lemon flavor of this tea and drank the majority of the pitcher. It really is a great way to use lemon balm!