Peppermint & Nettle Tea.

The plates are cleared, the kettle is on, and the evening slows. This is the cup for that moment: peppermint's cool snap over the mineral, slightly green depth of nettle.

Cut peppermint leaf, cold and bright even dried, is blended with dried stinging nettle. Both are grown and dried in Europe. The nettle is harvested with gloves and loses its sting in the drying, and both are cut coarse rather than ground fine, so the leaf keeps its color and shape in the tin.

Peppermint has long been the household cup after a heavy meal. Nettle, in northern European folk tradition, was a spring tonic for generations, gathered young each year as the first green thing after a long winter, when little else in the garden had come up.

Details

• Ingredients: cut peppermint leaf, dried stinging nettle
• Grown and dried: Europe
• Caffeine: none

How to use

Steep one teaspoon per cup for five minutes, covered if you want the volatile oils to stay in the cup rather than the kitchen air. It is best after eating, though it holds up just as well through an afternoon. This tea makes no medical claim and is no substitute for medical advice.

A plain, unhurried cup for the end of the meal.