Sweet and Lemony Mint Iced Tea

Rachel here: Man, these are bad pictures. Between school and M and whatnot I find myself calling a lot of things "good enough"--my blog photos included--and, really, I think I need to work on this. Good enough has a time and a place and I'm definitely not knocking it in general, but I'm also a firm believer in investment, in presence and caring. So, yeah. I'm going to try to write things off as good enough a little less often. Thank you, blog, for bringing my good enough issue to my attention.


The thing is, though, that this tea is more than good enough. In fact, it's downright good! John really liked it and so did I. It's a perfectly simple and summery concoction. The first time I had mint tea made with fresh mint was when I volunteered on a farm in high school and it has stood out in my mind ever since as one of the better things in life. I'd never made it myself, though, and I'm so glad I did.


ingredients
a handful of mint stems, leaves picked off
3 tea bags for making your own tea (these are significantly larger than pre-made tea bags)
1 lemon, halved
honey to taste
water

method
To a large pitcher, first add honey. I made our tea pretty sweet and used roughly 4 T of honey. You can always add more, so start with less, though, depending on how sweet you like your iced tea. Stuff the tea bags with fresh mint leaves and hang over the side of the pitcher (I use rubber bands for this part and it works great. You can see how I do it in the photo above). Fill the pitcher with hot water. Squeeze in juice from one of your lemon halves and slice the other half very thin, adding the slices. Adjust sweetness as needed at this point. Let cool before putting in refrigerator and removing the tea bags. Enjoy!