Whatever I choose, there are a few staples I always plant because they are integral to my summer green tea sipping experience.

There are three plants that always make it into a sunny spot in my garden.  They are Mint, Lavender and Pineapple Sage.

A couple fresh leaves muddled into a glass of iced green tea adds instant natural flavor to any glass. Lets take a look at each of these flavor enhancers.

Mint (Mentha)

Mint is a perennial all-star of iced tea flavors.  It is bold and easy to grow.  Some say too easy in fact.  Mint can get very aggressive, spreading by underground runners and before you know it, mint can take over a garden.  I suggest planting it in a large plastic container above ground or sinking the container into the ground so that an inch or so remains uncovered.  You will still want to watch for branches that try to escape the confinement, but this method will limit the aggressive nature of most mint species.

I often plant three varieties: Apple Mint, which like the name states has an underlying apple flavor that compliments the mint and teat flavors, Lemon Mint, which combines the two all time popular flavors added to iced tea, and Spearmint, the juggernaut of mint leaves.  Kentucky Colonel is a large variety of spearmint with strong robust flavor.

Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans)

Unless you are lucky enough to live in an area where you can grow your own pineapples, this sage may just be the next best thing for flavoring your iced green tea.  It has a distinct flavor of pineapple to its leaves and best of all, you do not have to peel it like you do a large pineapple to get the flavors into your iced tea.  A few leaves will give your iced tea a unique pineapple flavor.

Pineapple sage is a shrub so it should be planted in a sunny spot about 18 inches apart and not in front of anything you want to be able to see as it will get over three (3) feet tall.

Lavender (Lavandula)

Lavender is the herb of romance and makes a great enhancer to iced green tea.  Lavender is a hardy plant that is drought resistant.  In fact the thing that kills more Lavender plants than anything is wet roots, not cold or drought.  Plant it in well drained soil and to enhance the flavor of the Lavender oils try to find and Alkaline and chalky soil.  It is Hardy to Zone 5 but thrives in warmer climates.

With these three herbs you can have a endless supply of fresh and natural flavor enhancers for your iced green tea.  You can put a few leaves into a freshly brewed container and let them sit or you can put a few leaves in each glass as you enjoy your iced green tea.  To release more flavor, muddle the leaves a bit before introducing the tea to release the oils.

Also try mixing it up a little bit.  How does a pineapple apple mint iced Green tea sound?

So how do I add fruit flavors to my tea?  I use a Prodyne Fruit Infusion 93-Ounce Natural Fruit Flavor Pitcher to infuse my green tea with all sorts of fruit flavors.

A fruit infusion pitcher is a pitcher (duh!) with a removable cylinder inside the middle of it.  The cylinder has lots of holes in it.  You fill the cylinder up with the fruit of your choice, and insert it into the pitcher after you fill the pitcher with iced tea.  Note: use cooled iced tea unless you want to cook your fruit.

You then let the pitcher sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours while the natural flavors of the fruit infuse into the green tea.  What you have after 24 hours is a pitcher full of no calorie fruit flavored green tea.  Done this way, the fruit flavor is not overpowering, which is important when working with delicate flavors like green tea.  After 24 hours and up to a week or so, you can choose to remove the cylinder to stop the infusion.  If the flavor is not strong enough after 24 hours, wait a day and try again.  Once you have reached the level of flavor you prefer, simply remove the cylinder to stop the infusion process.  What you will have is about 85 ounces of great iced green tea.

You can use any combination of ingredients.  Try kiwi raspberry fruit infused iced green tea, it is one of my favorites.  Of course, you could opt for nothing but lemons.  The point is the possibilities and combinations are endless and the resulting iced green tea is delicious and healthy.

You can find the Prodyne Fruit Infusion Pitcher on Amazon.com by clicking here
.

What can I do to incorporate green tea into my diet if i do not like the taste of green tea?

Fortunately there are a number of methods to consume green tea without actually tasting the green tea.  I will outline two solutions below.

1) Make regular (or black) iced tea at a ratio of five to 1

If you do not like the taste of iced green tea, hopefully you do like black iced tea.  Black iced tea is the standard iced tea most people are familiar with.  It is a strong flavor, much stronger than green tea.

The strength of the flavor of black iced tea makes it perfect to slip a little green tea into without being able to taste the green tea.

Here is a recipe.  In a 3 quart pot, heat water to just before boiling,or bring it to a boil and turn off the heat till it stops boiling.  Take five small Lipton black tea bags and one small green tea bag and steep the bags in the water for four minutes.  The result is a regular iced tea with green tea benefits without the taste.

Black tea has health benefits as well, so your drink will be an overall healthy one.  If so inclined, the next time you make iced tea with this method, use two bags of green tea and see if the taste offends you.  Keep experimenting till you find the right ratio of black to green tea while striving to use as many green tea bags in your iced green tea hybrid.

2) Eat green tea

Yes you can eat green tea.  I recommend finding a source of food quality powdered green tea.  You can check out EatGreenTea.com for quality food grade edible green tea.

Once you have a source of organic edible green tea, go nuts.  You can add it to a lot of things that will mask the flavor of the green tea.

Examples include: tomato sauce, smoothies, soups (creamy ones mask the taste better), mashed potatoes, cereal, oatmeal, and yogurt.

These are just examples, the possibilities are endless.  If you are worried about the green tea flavoring the food think about this.  One teaspoon of edible powdered green tea has as many health benefits as 30 cups of green tea.  So a couple dashes probably equals a couple cups of brewed tea.  the point is you do not need to eat a lot of green tea leaves to get the benefits, and by not having to add too much to your food you have less of a chance of effecting the flavor of almost any food.

If you are planning to eat green tea, do yourself a favor, and look for an organic edible green tea.  Eating pesticides or fertilizer may offset the health benefits of green tea.

A properly brewed cup of green tea will give many health benefits.

There are two things that you can do to increase those health benefits slightly, and if done over time, increase the overall benefit greatly.

The first has to do with how you brew or steep your green tea.  Studies have shown, that if the green tea leaves are agitated during steeping they tend to release more good stuff into the water.  I don’t think we are talking about mixing, shaking or whisking the leaves here, rather a gentle stir or movement of the tea leaves should be enough to get the added benefit of agitating your tea leaves.

I always lift and stir my tea leaves while brewing.  I do this more for an added depth of flavor, but i am glad to know that i am also getting added health benefits of green tea.

The second thing that you can do is add a little lemon to your green tea once it is steeped.  Green tea flavonoids can and will oxidize over time.  This makes the health benefits of green tea decrease with the oxidation.  Adding a little lemon juice to the tea will hasten the oxidation process of the flavonoids.

Again, I do this already.  Iced tea and lemon juice go hand in hand for me.  There is no doubt in my mind that a little lemon juice adds flavor and refreshment, and now it apparently may prolong the life of the health promoting benefits of green tea.

The purpose of this post is to tell you how I sweeten my iced green tea because i think I have found a easy, calorie reduced and economical way to do it.

The most difficult thing about sweetening iced tea is that it is cold.  Whatever you put in it does not dissolve easily without sometimes herculean effort.  A spoonful of sugar can take minutes of stirring before it is dissolved.

What I do is make a jar of simple syrup and add a spoonful to my glass of iced tea.

What is simple syrup?  It is a fancy word for sugar water.  To make simple syrup, you take one cup of sugar and one cup of water, heat the water to a boil and dissolve the sugar in the water.  Let it cool and now you have simple syrup.

A spoonful of this mixes immediately with any cold drink it is added to.  Ironically, I saw a bottle of this for sale at my local Giant food store this past week.  It was 4 or 5 dollars for a sixteen ounce bottle.  You can make many times that amount with one bag of sugar and some tap water.

One tablespoon of simple syrup is enough to sweeten 16 ounces of green tea to a pretty good level of sweetness.  Of course if you are used to drinking southern sweet tea you might need more.

One tablespoon of traditionally made simple syrup has around 20-25 calories.  This is not a lot of calories to pay for a perfectly sweetened glass of iced green tea, but it is too much for me.  There are other options if you want to reduce or avoid the calories all together.

You could always use an artificial sweetener like Splenda, but some people don’t like the taste and I don’t like the chemicals.

Here is my recipe for a reduced calories natural simple syrup:

• One half (1/2) cup Truvia Baking Blend Natural Sweetener
• One cup of water
• Boil the water and dissolve the Truvia Baking Blend

The secret here is the first ingredient.  Truvia Baking Blend is a mix of Truvia natural sweetener and sugar.  It has  75% less calories than regular sugar and acts like regular sugar when using it in cooking.

Now a tablespoon of my simple syrup in my iced tea costs me only about 5-8 calories and I don’t have to worry about dissolving the sugar before I drink it.

This is truly a great way to sweeten your iced tea and as an aside, simple syrup is great in other things like Mojitos or Old Fashioned cocktails, but that is for another post on a different blog.

I have two of these and to illustrate the usefulness let me tell you what I do with one of them every work day.

In the morning around 8:00 a.m. I fill it with five or six ice cubes and iced green tea.  I take it on my 30 minute commute to work and drink about half.  I leave it in my car and re-visit it at 5:00 p.m. for my ride home.  After all that time in my car, the ice is still there and the green tea is still cold.

In addition to its ability to keep iced green tea cold for many hours, it is super easy to use.  The top has a push button that opens a spring loaded top revealing a drinking spout.  One hand operation is very easy and comes in handy when driving.  For transporting this thermos hydration bottle, there is a metal locking mechanism that prevents the top from opening if the button is pushed accidentally.  This lock can be removed with one hand as well.

This thing is amazing.  It keeps your iced tea cold for many hours without a noticeable ice melt. It does not leak and the operation is smooth and convenient. Honestly, I can not say enough good things about this Thermos.

Don’t just take my word for it.  Check out the reviews on Amazon!.

A lot of research has been done on the benefits of drinking green tea.  Generally most articles recommend three to five cups a day to reap not only the health benefits of green tea but also the weight loss benefits.

So the question is, if drinking green tea is good for you is it better to eat green tea?

The process of steeping green tea in water releases the catechins from the leaves.  It does not however release them all.  If you re-steep each leaf three time, you will likely get most out but not all.  So common sense would tell you that if you eat green tea you will get all of the catechins that are in each leaf.

If you subscribe to this logic, and I tend to lean that way, the next question is, how do you eat green tea leaves.

There are many recipes out there that help you eat green tea leaves.  You can sprinkle chopped leaves on your mashed potatoes, roast potatoes with green tea leaves or add Matcha green tea to ice cream or smoothies.  The possibilities are endless.  There is a great book called Cooking with Green Tea: Delicious dishes enhanced by the miraculous healing powers of green tea that gives you a lot of different ways to eat green tea.

If you choose to eat green tea leaves then you should look for an organic food grade tea.  The folks at EatGreenTea.com sell some high quality food grade tea. Check it out.

While I will continue to get my daily dose of green tea from my iced green tea, I have ordered the cookbook and will be buying some food grade organic green tea to get even more health benefits out of natures perfect leaf.

Use the coupon below at EatGreenTea.com for 10% off your order.

I make my half and half with two ingredients.  I use Yamamotoyama Sencha Green Tea bags to brew the green tea and Crystal Light Pure Lemonade mix for the lemonade portion of my half and half.

My half and half has evolved over the years and it is not truly half and half, in fact it is more like 3/4 iced green tea and 1/4 lemonade.

Here is what I do.

1. Fill a 3 quart contained with filtered water.
2. Pour about 1/4 of the container into another container/glass/bowl.
3. Heat the remaining water on the stove to a temperature of 175 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. While it is heating take 2 packets of Crystal Light Pure Lemonade and mix it in the water you poured off in step 2.
5. Once the water is heated steep six bags of Yamamotoyama Green Tea in the heated water for 3 minutes.
6. Once steeped, return the tea and the lemonade to the 3 quart container.
7. I then add a little lemon juice for added  flavor.

Now you have a great iced green tea half and half.

I use Crystal Light Pure Lemonade because it is made with sugar and Truvia and only has 15 calories per packet and since I use two, there are only 30 calories in my three quarts of iced green tea half and half.

I use Yamamotoyama Green Tea bags because they are individually foil wrapped and have a strong, but not overpowering green tea flavor.

The resulting iced green tea half and half has a hint of vegetative green tea flavor, a subtle lemon flavor and the right amount of sweetness.  It is light and refreshing and after years of experimenting, it is my favorite cold green tea half and half.

Green tea leaves are more delicate than black tea leaves.  Though they are the same leaf, black tea undergoes more oxidation making them hardier.  Green tea is not subjected to as much oxidation and is a much more delicate leaf retaining all the antioxidants and catechins.

Because of the nature of green tea leaves,brewing temperature is very important.  Too low of a temperature will give you a very weak green colored tea water.  This is not specific to green tea, tea leaves need heat too steep and it does not mater what tea is is.

Too hot of a temperature and you will find the green tea to be bitter and undrinkable.  Additionally, there is evidence that too much heat destroys many of the health benefits of green tea.

What is the proper temperature?  It depends on the tea.  Delicate new leaves may need a lower temperature than older growth leaves.  But generally, the correct temperature to steep green tea is between 165 and 175 degrees.  More or less will produce a less than ideal cup of tea.  As for time, one and a half to three minutes will work best and if your water is closer to 175, you will likely be better off on the short end of the steep time.

So how do you get the correct temperature.  Some people will boil water and then let it sit for a minute or two to cool.  Since water boils at 212 degrees at sea level, this method will likely give you a temperature above the recommended steeping temperature or at the least at the very high end of it.  Other methods include listening for the rolling of water, which some say occurs soon before water begins to boil.  they say you can actually hear the water rumble.

If you are like me and have spent some real money of a fine green tea, you might consider a nore scientific means of determining the temperature of your water.

I use the Taylor Connoissuer Tea Thermometer and Timer. Not only does it tell me the temperature of the water but it has a convenient timer to count down the steep time.

You can get even more fancy and exact by using the Breville BKE820XL Variable-Temperature 1.8-Liter Kettle. It heats your water to the correct temperature for any type of tea you are steeping.

Whatever method you use, make sure to do it right. Using the correct temperature for the steep time you choose will ensure your next cup of green tea is a good one.

Since I keep some K-Cup green tea handy and since I have tried many, here is a review of one of my favorites.  Favorite green tea K-Cups I should point out, since on the whole, I do not love green tea from a K-Cup and my list of all time favorite green teas does not have a single K-Cup on it.

With that said, on to the review of the Twinnings K-Cup Green Tea for the Keurig brewer.

I am going to start the review with the positives.  K-cups in general are convenient and prep is very quick with no clean up required.  The resulting brewed tea has a green tea flavor.

On to the negatives.

Lets start with a picture that sums up much of the issues I have with the Twinnings green tea K-Cups.

On the right is a freshly brewed glass of twinnings K-Cup green tea.  On the left is one of my favorite bagged green teas, the Kirkland Green Tea made by Ito En. Read my review of the Kirkland green tea here.

As you can see the Twinnings tea is not nearly as”green” as the Kirkland.  This sums up the flavor as well.  The Twinnings K Cup green tea has elements of a good green tea.  There is a slight grassy flavor with a slight hint of earthy sweetness.  Overall though, the flavor is too muted and bland for my taste.  However, it might appeal more to mainstream green tea drinkers who are not appreciative of the grassy vegetative green tea flavors.

I could blame this on the tea itself.  When I opened up a new K-Cup and compared it to the tea from a Kirkland bag, the color was more brown than the Kirkland tea. But I will not.

I think that I will blame it more on the concept of the K-Cup.  I am not convinced that you can get a good rich green tea flavor when the water only comes into contact with the tea leaves for seconds.

We are taught to steep green tea for up to two minutes.  I just do not see how you can get enough flavor out of a tea that spends so little time in contact with water.

Frankly, I was surprised when I opened up the Twinnings K-Cup, that the leaves were not ground more fine.  They might have been a little more finely ground than the Kirkland but not much.  A finer grind would make up for some of the problems with the little amount of time the leaves spend steeping with the K-Cup setup.

Twinnings makes a fine tea.  I am just not sure that K-Cups are the best method for brewing something that usually takes minutes of steeping to produce.  I still love my Keurig for coffee.

With this said, of the K-Cups I have tried, Twinnings takes the lead and do not get me wrong.  It is a pleasant and drinkable green tea, just no where near one of my favorites.