Recipe: Gunpowder Mint Tea

Our landlord's mother is always dipping into our herb garden and cooks up these massive pots of tea.. Since I'm not a big fan of basil or oregano tea (yuk!), I decided to try out some of our spearmint that I havent yet tasted but has been making our garden so fragrant!

I dug out the intense Chinese Gunpowder green tea that we bought in Chinatown Vancouver earlier this year and got to harvesting our mint :-)

I used both stems and leaves for maximum flavor

One teaspoon only of this particular green tea because it can get extremely bitter if too much is used

As for the mint, about 5 leaves does the trick for one cup

Tea is always made best with really hot, but not boiling water

Drop ingredients into pot and let steep for about 10 mins

The result? Tea as black as coffee but super delicious! 

I should make this more often... and surprisingly it has more of a kick than a shot of espresso, whilst the mint leaves a nice, cooling aftertaste.

Experiment: Gooseberry Icecream

Most of my island friends know how much i LOOOOOVE Armstrongs gooseberry icecream...and since its a seasonal flavor, what will I ever do once they run out? So, my last batch of gooseberry icecream I devoured, I saved the seeds from it and decided I will try to grow my own gooseberry bush.. then all we need is an icecream maker (is anyone looking to get rid of one by chance?!?!) and I will have gooseberry icecream ALL YEAR ROUND!!!!

So I planted these little seeds, and watched patiently every day for 3 weeks...nothing. Feeling defeated, I forgot about my little pot of dirt with dried gooseberry seeds buried in it until.... I took a close look yesterday and look what I saw!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh - and the end result? Should look something like this:

New Beginnings...

We had to remove a lot of our dying plants after all the storms, and have now planted some new ones... 

-Mint

- Grape Tomatoes

- Purple Basil

- Birdseye Chilli (Thai Chilli)

The last pic is of a baby eggplant..I love to see how they develop from a beautiful purple flower to an eggplant in just a couple of days!

Success!

Our first home-grown watermelon turned out to be a success! It was super seedy, but very juicy, I'm looking forward to the next few that are already growing. Unfortunatly we had another that was ripe - and surprisingly YELLOW inside, but our landlord got it with the weed whacker. :-( 

More Garden Splendors..

I'm thinking a Caprese salad for lunch today, with fresh mozzarella and homegrown tomato and basil....delizioso!

Peppers, peppers everywhere!

Our peppers are taking off like crazy after this weeks worth of rain! We've been sprouting bell peppers lately, but we were very suprised to see the habanero plant had grown two little peppers during the week!

So what to do with these hot little things now? Chorizo and cream cheese stuffed chicken breasts, wrapped in bacon and served with pasta in a tomato-pepper-habenero sauce....delicious!

If anyone would like the recipe, please email or Facebook me - I can assure you that you wont be let down!

Garden Splendors..

Alpie :-)
Watermelon - our first one!(Also our first) bananas!!

Bell peppers

Todays harvest... the tomatoes need some more sun though
Bok choy
Getting our next lot ready for planting
Corn on the cob...mmm..
I've found a way to make the pics work (for now!) Its longer and complicated, but we get there in the end.. enjoy viewing our latest crop!