Winter tea blend

I made this tea blend as part of the care package I gave to my family to conclude Christmas diner. The blend consists of black tea, dried orange peel, dried rose petals and crushed cinnamon sticks. Instead of searching for ready dried orange peel I made my own from organic navel oranges. It costs a few days before you can use the dried peel but it is so worth doing. The orange smell is intoxicating...yum! Especially when the peels are drying. The oranges themselves were the best I've eaten in years. I have a sort of love-hate relationship with oranges. I love pretty much anything orange flavoured, I can even say it's my favourite flavour but when it comes to eating oranges I'm very hesitant. As long as I can remember oranges have been disappointing many times. They usually turn out either dry, not sour enough, not fragrant enough or with seeds (I hate that). After many disappointing oranges I sort of stopped eating them a long time ago. When I was very nauseaus whilst pregnant with my oldest son I tried eating oranges. We lived in Tel Aviv so the only oranges you could buy were locally grown and they were fantastic! Maybe they tasted even better because I didn't like eating anything besides yoghurt with banana ;) Well the organic oranges tasted as good as the ones I ate back then. So whenever I buy oranges in the future in the Netherlands I will buy organic. They were so much better than regular ones. Probably because they were picked at the right stage of ripeness.
I'm degressing, I was talking about tea...so you dry your own orange peel. Chop them up and add them to the black tea, crushed cinnamon and rose petals.
The first blend I made didn't have enough rose and orange taste so I added more. Unfortunately the tea didn't taste very rose-y but I already doubled the amount and didn't feel like buying more. Visually it does look very rose-y though. Maybe a different type of rose petals would have worked better but these were the only ones I could find.
The smell of this blend is so very good that you could just use it as a potpourri (if you are a potpourri kind of person) I couldn't stop sniffing it and loved opening the cupboard my private little stash was in.



Dried orange peel

makes about 35 g (1 ¼ oz)

about 4 organic oranges

Cut of the peel, try cutting off the oranges part only (a little white pith is ok though). Let the peel dry on a cooling rack until dry. Can take up to a few days.

Winter tea

makes a lot ;)

500 g (1 lb) black tea
50 g (1 ¾ oz) dried rose petals
35 g (1 ¼ oz) dried orange peel, finely chopped
15 g (½ oz) cinnamon stick, crushed

Mix everything together and keep in an airtight container.
Steep the tea for about 5 minutes to get the best taste.