I have a vague memory of reading that during the first century or two of tea's introduction to the West, it wasn't unknown for people to take steeped-out tea leaves and eat them like any other boiled vegetable, seasoned with salt and butter. (Apparently fresh tea leaves were sometimes consumed as a vegetable back in China, so the categorization wasn't completely without precedent.)
This morning, I decided to make some green-tea concentrate; I couldn't get the pantry to cough up the spices I'd had in mind for green tea chai, so limited the extra flavor agents to a few lightly pestled pods of black cardamom and rather a lot of rose-flavored raisins which I hadn't been able to think of much else to do with. Afterward, I had a strainer full of the usual dead tea leaves and less usual bloated raisins, and remembered the above anecdote. Hmmm, I thought. I may not want to eat tea leaves straight, but at the least they've got to have some useful digestive fiber.( Read more... )
This morning, I decided to make some green-tea concentrate; I couldn't get the pantry to cough up the spices I'd had in mind for green tea chai, so limited the extra flavor agents to a few lightly pestled pods of black cardamom and rather a lot of rose-flavored raisins which I hadn't been able to think of much else to do with. Afterward, I had a strainer full of the usual dead tea leaves and less usual bloated raisins, and remembered the above anecdote. Hmmm, I thought. I may not want to eat tea leaves straight, but at the least they've got to have some useful digestive fiber.( Read more... )