Hermitcraft: Tea Hacks

Tea is an integral part of Zen practice, and, for those of us with old-school British or Japanese roots, life. It can also become an attachment in the negative sense when you can't get any, or the stuff you've got is uninspiring. Over the years I've learned a few tricks to smooth out these bumps, and this week I'm sharing them in the hopes they'll do good for others.

Accidental treasure

I'll start with one I discovered by accident: if you seal a sachet of robust green tea, such as Dragonwell, in the same container with another of lapsang souchong, and leave them there for a while, the green acquires the other's smoky character, resulting in a brew that's good both hot and iced. Doesn't seem to damage the lapsang souchong, either.

Upgrading bad tea

Sometimes you have tea – black or green – but it's not very good. Though Not Very Good Tea can be depressing, you can amend it into Passable Tea (or even Enjoyable Tea) with other herbs.

The list of candidates is inexhaustible, but a few are so useful, and so common, that they deserve special mention.

Mint (Mentha) is common in most parts of the world, typically growing in drainage ditches and near any body of fresh water, to say nothing of residential areas where it's escaped cultivation. Throw in assertive, pleasant flavour, and mint may be the most useful tea-mixing herb there is. I especially prize the endless spectrum of flavours brought out by mint's promiscuous lifestyle. As varieties freely cross-pollinate, no two patches taste the same. Some are peppery, others icy, still others citrusy… the discoveries are endless. And of course, mint anchors a fine herbal mix all by itself if you have no real tea at all.

Several mint relatives are also handy. Catnip (Nepeta) is especially tasty, and frequently found feral. Lemon balm (Melissa), easily identified by its very mint-like appearance but strong Lemon Pledge odour, is too harsh to anchor a mix but welcome in restrained quantities in others. And bee balm (Monarda), a popular garden flower that was used as a tea substitute in colonial times, also mixes well with green or black tea.

Common non-mint tea stocks that

Bee balm (Monarda).

can enliven an uninspired cup include sweet white clover blossoms (Trifolium repens), lemony sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella) or wood sorrel (Oxalis; see photo below), and orange peel or zest. Both of these last tend to be fairly bitter, especially whole peel, so proceed mindfully.

No tea at all

When you're flat out of Camellia sinensis, a few substitutes can put you back in the game.

Blackberry or raspberry (Rubus ssp) leaves, dried and crumbled, are a defensible green tea surrogate. I've found that the red winter leaves of our local native trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus) work best, having a rosy flavour and less tannic bite, but I've had good luck with other species as well. Add amendments, and you have a worthwhile mix

Many people don't think of conifers when preparing food and drink, but at the risk of ripping off Euell Gibbons, many parts are useful.

Black spruce (Picea mariana) is a famous beverage stock, for its comparatively sweet bouquet. (Bearing in mind that all conifers taste like turpentine. They're an acquired taste, but once acquired, nothing else will do.)

The soft new pale-green tips of many others can also be tasty and nutritious. (Loads of Vitamin C, for starters.) Among my favourites are Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga) and Sitka spruce (P. sitchenensis). Hemlock (Tsuga) is another standby, but because it's fairly tannic, I prefer to mix it with weaker herbs to give them a real-tea edge, rather than use it as an anchor.

Roasted rice is another good stop-gap. Just spread a handful of brown rice in the bottom of a dry skillet and toss it over medium heat until the grains become dark brown and smoky. Some may even pop like popcorn.

The toasted grains can be infused as-is, but make a much better beverage if ground first. A mortar and pestle is adequate for this. Grind only as needed to preserve freshness and potency. Useful amendments include milk, baking spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg…), toasted fucus, or orange peel. Some like a few grains of salt in it.

Civilisation in a cup

Tea-mixing is a huge topic, the possible ingredients literally endless. These are some the most easily- and universally-accessible, and all of them support my practice on a regular basis.

Here's hoping they enrich yours as well.

Wood sorrel (Oxalis).

(Top photo courtesy of Kristina Walter and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Drum log

(A hemlock recently fell across the trail and was cleared by someone with a chainsaw. Seeing the sections on the shoulder I felt a distinct uptick in heart rate; my dad taught me to call this a drum log, for the simple reason that you make a drum from it. This is a good one, too: two feet in diameter, well-rotted within and perfectly sound without. You thin this shell out with a chisel and even it up, then lace rawhide heads across both ends, and Bob's your uncle.

The remains of a large yellow jacket nest that occupied the cavity were also strewn about.)

WW: Last winter's done, next winter's begun

Hermitcraft: Busting Dysentery

Oxalis

While on ango last summer, I got a visit from the Dysentery Fairy. I still haven't determined precisely what sort it was; we have a lot of Giardia around here, but it would be a true hail-mary for that to get into a rain barrel. On the other hand, if it was a bacterial infection, the symptoms were pretty giardesque. I'm not even certain it came from my drinking water; hygiene is a constant battle in the outback, where you're surrounded by faeces and wild water.

Anyway, I suffered an anxious week or two, dodging into the dark forest at 0300 and fearing the thing would drive me off the mountain. In the end I kicked its butt, thanks to the support of friends and family and, I believe, the tea I'm passing on in this post.

It's terrifying to find yourself sick and alone; once it's happened (and this wasn't the first time for me), you'll never trivialise someone else's misfortune. In this case, I spent about a day trying to hide from it.

Then I got mad. Fact is, a lifetime of relevant experience prepared me to confront this problem. Hell, I wrote a freakin' book on wild herbs, for Christ's sake!

I decided that if I was going to be forced off the mountain, I was really going to be forced. Surrender would only become an option when every last gun had been fired.

And I had several. To begin with, the Acres, where I lived, was busting with herbs in their best season. And my cache contained other possibles. So I got off my backside and raked together a tea calculated to firm things up and rain displeasure on my uninvited guests.

I put myself on a regimen of 3 rice bowls (twice the size of tea bowls) of this per day; most days I drank more. I gulped down each, then sucked, chewed, and spit out the leaves.

The tea itself actually tasted OK, but the cud-chewing was abominable. Still, I got better. Quickly.

Hemlock

The Recipe

Put a double measure of strong green tea leaves in the bottom of a rice bowl.

Add:

oxalis and/or sheep sorrel
New Douglas fir tips (see note below)
Blackberry rhizome
Blackberry leaf

Chop all ingredients well; I used a pair of scissors.

Fill the bowl with boiling water, cover, and steep for fifteen minutes, minimum.

Drink and enjoy.

The green tea provides tannins, which tighten up your bowels, and is acidic, which gut-bugs hate. Blackberry leaves bring more tannin, are scientifically proven to fight dysentery, and taste alright; the rhizomes bring nuclear amounts of tannin and taste unspeakably awful when chewed, but as an ingredient in a diverse tea mix like this one, are palatable. Tart components (oxalis or sorrel; cider vinegar or lemon if you've got it) contribute more acid while tasting good, which encourages you to drink more. Young Douglas fir needles are pleasant too, though the older ones are quite strong, and are effective against diarrhœa. Other conifers will also work if you don't have Pseudotsuga; I've used spruce and hemlock to good effect. Finally, I also just plain ate oxalis and Douglas fir, often, during those days.

Later, a friend and fellow hermit came out to check on me, and he suggested I add Prunella to my dose. Did it help? It didn't hurt. It's dreadful stuff all the same, but once again the oxalis and Douglas fir got it past my tongue. Similarly, I held willow in reserve, should tougher measures be necessary. Willow bark is the origin of aspirin and an excellent medicinal, as well as highly acidic. It's also the most God-awful revolting bile on the planet; like chewing an aspirin tablet. (Bit of a toss-up between this and blackberry rhizome.)

Fortunately, I never needed it that summer.

This concoction put a decisive end to the pyrotechnic dumps and secured me those all-important restful nights. Of course, it wasn't the only measure I took; I also went in for draconian hygiene, fastidious handling of water, mindful hydration habits, and careful monitoring of the quality and quantity of everything that came out of me. I also imposed a few dietary adjustments: chiefly, a well-curried bowl, boiled up with bullion (for the salt), and served with a sadistic squirt of sriracha. Intestinal microbes trend to Caucasian tastes, so I made sure things got nice and "ethnic" on the old beaver fever.

Whatever the reason, and whatever it was in the first place, the disease eventually pulled up stakes and left. (You might say, it just didn't have the guts.) Whether I beat it, or it just wasn't that scary to begin with, I'll never know. But the tea worked. One day I had dramatic digestion; then I drank the tea, and it was significantly gone the next. Then about a week later I stopped drinking it (thinking I was "cured"; yes, I knew well better than to do this) and the trouble came right back. So I drank the tea again, and it went away again.

Therefore I offer the recipe, in loving support of anyone else who might also fall into that pit. Brother, sister: drop this on your trouble.

And smile while you drink it.

For if you listen closely, you can hear the little bastards scream.



(Adapted from 100 Days on the Mountain,copyright RK Henderson.)

Update: Ferns, Sticks, Trinity Tar

Here's some breaking news on subjects I've broached in the past, of no particular internal relevance and in no particular order.

Fiddleheads

In Hermitcraft: Fiddleheads I discussed the differences between Pteridium (bracken) shoots and those of other ferns, such as those pictured in the article. Here then is a photo of one such Pteridium shoot, for those who want to taste (or avoid) them. (Click to enlarge.) Where they occur, they typically occur en masse; one spring I took a walk during a 10 minute break in a community college course I was teaching, and came back with a mighty fistful of these.

Walking Stick

In A Brief History of the Stick I mentioned that I'd whipped the end of my walking stick and coated the cord with PVC cement. It didn't work, though it probably would have if I'd used urethane varnish. (The glue was an experiment.) I've since stripped off the whipping and replaced it with this brass plumbing fitting from the hardware store. The balance of the stick has changed a bit, but all in all it's working very nicely.