Sunday, April 26, 2009

Wild Violet Tea

Did you know that wild violets are a great source of Vitamins A, C and calcium? The leaves and flowers are edible and have a very delicate taste. We love our lawn violets around here and gather them to crystalize, for teas and salads.

We gathered violets yesterday to make a wild violet sun tea. To make the tea you need to gather leaves and blossoms (preferably after the morning dew dries off the plants), then put them through a delicate wash. We bruised them up a bit and filled our sun tea bottle with the blossoms, leaves and filtered water. Then we placed the bottle in the sun to steep for the entire late morning and afternoon.


While the sun was doing its magic Fauna made a sugar syrup for our violet tea. We got the recipe from our new treasure of a book called "Cooking Fun," by Rae Grant. When our violet infusion was ready we strained out the greens and kept them to make a violet salad for lunch.




The violet tea was a very clear color. We added a bit of Fauna's sugar syrup to sweeten it up a bit.



The girls garnished their cups of tea with a violet blossom.


The ladies thought is would taste like water due to it's clear color, but it had a delicate earthy taste to it. Very refreshing and yummy on this very warm day!


Visit candied flowers to learn how to crystalize your violet blossoms.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

How lovely! I'm planning to harvest ours for Strawberry Soup garnish on Beltane. And the rest I'll save for seed so I can take a part of the path to Angeliki's house to our new home :-)

Erin said...

Really nice post ... We have lots of lawn violets here and enjoy their many healthy blessings too.
Peace.

Anet said...

Voilets are such a sweet flower, prefect for your sweet girls!

Noah loves to pick me violets from the yard. Next time he does, I'm going to pop one in my mouth and watch the expression on his face:)

Sara said...

Just lovely. xx

dongdong said...

I think J picked some violets today. I like how you make tea, using the hot sun. :)

Beth said...

oh, i loved making su ntea when i was younger! My mom always just gave us tea bags though.. I will have to try it will some fresh herbs!

dawn klinge said...

I'd love to try this! Thanks for sharing how to do this. The violets look so pretty as a garnish to the tea as well.

Amber said...

Oh you and your girls are so beutiful, what magic days full of love...xx

Unknown said...

How lovely :) My girls love tea too.

nettlejuice said...

Sun tea, duh. I think I'll make some today. Maybe bee balm.

Tara said...

Wild violet tea.... I am learning so much on my visits here!

I believe in the restorative powers of a good cuppa tea.... and to have a sweet blossom floating on the top- perfect.

Sarah said...

How sweet! We have lots of violets here but I've never known you could use them this way! My daughters will be thrilled.

Have you seen Rae's craft book? It's pretty cool. I have her cooking one on my wish list. It might be time to get it!

Thanks for visiting my blog. You're one of the blogs that I can always count on for a smile, so it was a great compliment to have you visit mine. Thank you.

Jenna said...

Yum!! When can we come over for tea, LOL!!
We do tea on the weekends and that sounds like a perfect hot weather Spring tea for us to try. Thanks for another great post!
<3

Lisa said...

I love this tea! Can't wait to make some with Goose and Binky. Brings back memories of sun tea steeping in the backyard all summer.

MamaWestWind said...

Looks tasty! Great idea, wish we had more wild violets around here.

I posted some pics of the felt mobile & wall hanging I made for the baby. Thanks so much for the inspiration! It was so fun.
B

Toni said...

violet tea sounds so sweet, like a doll tea party, sounds wonderful.

a violet greens salad sounds interesting too, how did you make that.

we have lots of wild violets too this would be so lovely to do with them.

Anonymous said...

Mmm, that sounds wonderful!

Kelly said...

Just perfect. Goodness, how I love this sort of thing! Would love our families to meet up and have a forage about and make up a whole 'wild' meal!

slim pickins said...

oh this will be perfect for may day. we're planning on trying your candied violets as well...
just tried nettle tea with fresh nettles - loved that taste as well.
thank you!
debbie

Cloudberry said...

I never knew one could make tea with these cute, little flowers! I love spotting them on the ground when we hike in the forest :)

Stephanie said...

Hi, Lisa!
I'm gonna link from Growing Naturally!

Dandelion Tea said...

Wonderful wild violet sun tea! Thanks! You can make delicious dandelion sun tea the same way... see www.dandeliontea.org. --Ruth