Nutritive Tonic: Daily Mineral Tea

Rich in micronutrients and delicious hot or cold, this nutritive tea blend is medicine for the muscular system.

Photo © Charity Burggraaf, excerpted from Healing Herbal Teas

Virtually all holistic perspectives for health and healing include tried-and-true tonic recipes. In Western herbalism, the term tonic describes a general restorative action of a single herb or blend of herbs. Tonics act as a balancing force on multiple organ systems to increase overall vitality, energy, and equilibrium. Regularly using tonic herbs, in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle, will play a powerful role in keeping your body strong and vibrant.

Nutritive tonic teas will softly nourish your body and restore tissue that are weak or depleted by stress or disease. They carry a rich assortment of vitamins and minerals, increase fluids, and build blood and lymph. Nutritive tonics also nourish the muscular system by providing bioavailable minerals essential for healthy muscular function and recovery.

When blending nutritive teas, remember that many vitamin- and mineral-rich herbs taste sweet and slightly salty. Sweet herbs have a cooling and soothing effect on tissues. During spring and summer, lush, sweet, mineral-rich teas feel perfect on a hot day. Nutritive herbs can feel a bit too cooling during the winter months when our tissues already feel heavy and cold. To balance the cooling effect of these herbs I often add warming spices (fresh ginger, star anise, cinnamon, cayenne, orange zest) or aromatic herbs (such as rosemary, thyme, and sage).

This is one of my favorite vitamin and mineral teas for an active lifestyle — it adds a fantastic amount of micronutrients to your daily diet. Drinking a mineral-rich tea can eliminate the need for a daily mineral supplement, and whole-plant sources of minerals are often absorbed more effectively than store-bought multivitamin pills.

In the winter I drink a strong, hot cup daily, and in the summer I make a strong cold infusion and add a cup to my water bottle when I am out working. You can also make a sun tea from this blend. It can be stored cold in the fridge for a week.


Daily Mineral Tea

Taste: sweet and grassy with a wonderful aroma from the anise and mint

Herbal actions: nutritive, restorative

Systems enhanced: muscular, nervous

Ingredients

  • 3 parts fenugreek seeds
  • 2 parts oat straw
  • 2 parts milky oat tops
  • 2 parts goji berries
  • 2 parts mint
  • 1 part alfalfa
  • 1 part nettle leaf
  • 1 part eleuthero (Siberian ginseng)
  • 1 part anise seeds
  • 0.5 part safflower
  • 0.25 part red clover blossoms

Directions

  1. Hot infusion: Pour 1.5 cups hot water over 2 tablespoons tea. Steep for 10 to 15 minutes.
  2. Cold infusion: Combine 2 cups cold water and 1 to 2 tablespoons tea in a lidded jar. Shake the jar to make sure all the tea is saturated. Place in the refrigerator or a cool place for at least 2 hours.
Text and recipe excerpted from Healing Herbal Teas © Sarah Farr. All rights reserved.

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Sarah Farr

Sarah Farr

About the Author

Sarah Farr is the author of Healing Herbal Teas. She operates two herbal tea businesses in the Pacific Northwest — Harbor Herbalist and Bird’s Eye Tea — where she creates tea blends that are delicious as well as effective. A student of herbalism, Farr grows and wildcrafts most of the herbs she uses in her blends and owns her own farm, Orchard Botanicals.

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