LEMON BASIL TEA ala My Year on the Grill

Greetings from the tropics! All you east coasters, I see that you are getting a late winter surge of the white stuff. 6 inches to a foot. Ah yes, I used to worry about the next surge of weather. But, I only have one reaction to the news...

Ha Ha...

Hee Hee...

(insert snort where i try to be gracious and stifle the giggle)

... But

...

To no avail

...

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Ho ho

You see, I finally made the move. As of Saturday of this week, Jackie and I are residents of the US VIRGIN ISLANDS! The above shot is a view out our balcony overlooking the harbor town of Charlotte Amalie (the Island capital). I feel terribly guilty about the giggling, but in fairness, Jackie had the same reaction when we watched MSNBC this morning.

If you would like to follow along, I have started 2 NEW sister blogs that will be exclusively about my island adventures. One is my foodie experiences, called, "A Kansas Foodie in the Virgin Islands". The other is more of a visual scrapbook of what I see and do. No food details there, just little slices of my new life. I figure when we get shipped back to Kansas in 6 months (just in time for tornado season, so you can save the laughs for when I deserve em), "Daily Photos in St Thomas" will be a great souvenir.

Here is a photo of Jackie shopping at a local farmer's market. I already did a post on the experience at the Kansas Foodie site. Lots of new and interesting items to look over. I am not quite brave enough to jump in on the new veggies I see yet, but soon.

HOWEVER, we did buy some "Lemon Basil". I have seen flavored basil in my local farmer's market. I never did buy any, but I figured this would be a good chance to get my feet wet so to speak with more local ingredient cooking.

At the same table, they offered "Lavender Basil". The salespeople were very gracious, allowing us to sample a bit. Both kinds were so full of flavors, matching what you would expect. We were told that often you can see this growing wild on the roads and they will take a leaf and suck on it to sweeten their breath and encourage saliva (it is hot, and not having a dry mouth is not always easy).

BUT, what interested me was the idea of making tea with the leaves. We got some very handy instructions (it's not difficult) from one of the locals. I figured if it worked, this is a skill I can take back home with me when I shop at the local KC Farmer's market.

And maybe it is something you might want to try...

It is not at all difficult. I have limited cooking supplies. So, I used a coffee pot as my steeping pot. For each pot full, I used 1/2 cup of the leaves (washed). just dump them in and get the water slowly simmering.

Here's a collage of what happened over the next 10 minutes... notice the darkening of the water.

Almost looks like tea!

And the verdict is that it tastes like tea. Actually, it tastes like green tea. It has a lemon taste thanks to the lemon basil. Jackie happens to be a fan of green tea. She gave it a big thumbs up, and fills a water bottle of it every day to start on her way to work. I drank one cup while it was hot. I added a bit of locally made honey to sweeten it and it was indeed... TEA!