Danielle Charles, of The Teacup Chronicles, is hosting this months Herbarium Blog Party. She chose the topic of Herbal Thirst Quenchers for the Dog Days. Well it certainly is the dog days around Comfrey Cottages! It is scorching and extremely dangerous heat index in this neck of the woods! Luckily, we still have a few lemon balm popsicles left in the freezer
I do not have a precise recipe, as I am a “by taste” kind of cook, but I will try to give you a rough guideline of how I make ours.
After harvesting, and sorting through lemon balm from the gardens, I chop up enough to fill about half way, a gallon or 3.78 liter glass jug of some sort. I use my sun tea pitcher. Just loosely fill it with the chopped leaves, don’t mash it down. Then fill it with fresh, hopefully non -chlorinated water, and place in the sun, just like you would any other sun tea:)
For this batch I just brought the tea pitcher back inside, strained out the leaves, tasted it, and decided to add some fresh lemon juice to it to give it even more of a lemony taste. Now if you decide to add sweetener, this is up to you. I did by adding some sugar infused with lemon balm and some lemon balm infused honey. I just took some of the lemon balm infusion and gently warmed it on the stove, adding some of the honey and some of the sugar until dissolved and then adding back to the pitcher. I have made these before with just the honey, (about 1/2 cup or 125 ml. per jar , but I had made the lemon balm infused sugar and just felt like adding a bit:) The added lemon juice is to your taste also, and is optional.
Then just pour or ladle into cups and then put into freezer. When they are a bit frozen insert the popsicle sticks and let freeze until firm. Putting the cups into the deep sided baking pan helps keep the whole thing easily transferable from counter to freezer:)
Now I like to make this same lemon balm sun tea type infusion then for each cup or 250 ml, add about a teaspoon or 5 ml lemon juice, same of honey and a little pinch of sea salt. Electrolytes can be made and retained with honey, acid in the form of lemon or vinegar and sea salt, combined, so the presence of all three in this drink, is very beneficial if one is going to be out working, playing or exercising in the heat.
Thank you for visiting Comfrey Cottages xx
oh! you ask how Peppermint and the kittens, also Max and Ruby and the ducklings are? Well….
