Peppermint & Nettle Digestive Tea

Cut peppermint leaf, cold and bright even dried, is blended here with dried stinging nettle for a mineral, slightly green depth beneath the mint's usual snap. Both are grown and dried in Europe, the nettle harvested with gloves before its sting is cooked out of it by drying, then cut coarse rather than ground fine so the tin keeps its color and its leaf shape. Peppermint has long been the household answer to a heavy meal, traditionally used to settle a full stomach and ease the sluggishness that follows a large dinner or a rich course. Nettle, meanwhile, has served as a spring tonic across northern Europe for generations, gathered young each year as the first green thing after a long winter, when little else in the garden had come up yet. Steep one teaspoon per cup for five minutes, covered if you want to keep the volatile oils in the cup rather than the kitchen air. Best drunk after eating, though it holds up through an afternoon just as well as a plain, unhurried cup. This tea is traditionally used to support digestion; it does not treat or cure any digestive complaint and is not a substitute for medical advice.