Peppermint tea

My munchkins have come down with headcolds and croupy coughs. Upon doing some research into what sorts of things might help loosen up their coughs, I came upon a site recommending peppermint tea. Peppermint has a high menthol content, which helps to soothe inflamed nasal passages and throats. Plus it instantly eases stomach aches. There's lots more that it does, but that was the primary reason I was interested in it.

This is my peppermint bush. It started out as a small pot of half-dead peppermint I discovered thrown behind a bush in our apartment complex. I planted it, and it's turned into a shrub. There's plenty to make into tea.

This is my tea ball, packed with peppermint leaves.

There's lots of ways to make tea, but I'm going for the "southern iced tea" method, which is to boil water, take it off the heat, chuck in the tea bags and let it steep. With regular tea, you then dilute it with water and sugar, but I only have one tea ball, so mine isn't quite that strong.

Boiling hot water, removed from heat.

When you steep tea like this, make sure you keep a lid on it. With peppermint, the essential oils will evaporate right out.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, check out your tea:

It's a lovely greenish amber color. It tastes like mint-flavored water. It's wonderful with honey, but my munchkins don't like honey, so they've been getting it plain. It loosens up croupy coughs so fast, though, that they don't complain a bit. They've been sucking it down as fast as I can make it, especially at night when they wake up coughing.

We've been watching a lot of videos these last couple of days. Netflix Instant doesn't seem to have any Disney anything. And you know, with no Disney movies or cartoons anywhere in the roster, family entertainment is a sad, sad place.