Hi, how are you doing today? My name is Dina, 
and I am the owner of Sicilian Tea Company.
Tonight I'm going to talk to you about
blending teas and spices and herbs.
I don't know about you, but I used to be intimidated by using spices and herbs, 
And I knew that cooking with them would be healthier
It would be good for me, But I kept putting it off,
because I just wasn't raised using lots of herbs and spices in my cooking,
I really got interested in using spices and herbs
when I was diagnosed with breast cancer because I knew
they had a lot of great antioxidants and really great healthy things 
in my diet, and they just weren't there,
So in order to push myself past being intimidated,
I started blending herbs and spices with loose leaf teas
And and when I did that, I realized that I could
play around and not feel like I was tied to anything,
I threw things together, started sipping, started
writing things down, and I realized that it was
fun, So that's why I started blending my own
tea and
spice blending class, So I'm bringing a taste of
that here tonight,
and I've also created a free guide that I give my students,
And if you go to the website that I've posted along
with this video, you can
get that free guide there, It'll have recipes to
get you started, It will have a step by step guide
telling you exactly how to do things, It will
also give you a primer on the different teas, 
it'll also give you some description of herbs and spices
that you may want to try in some of your
tea blending experiments,
So tonight what I wanna do is just walk you
through the recipe that's in the blog,
I actually do a little twist on the recipe that I do in the blog
If you go to the link, you can find [the original recipes] there, We're gonna
walk step by step through a single blend so you
can go back to this video you can take a look at
it and see exactly what's going on,
You can also write any questions that you have in this
video, and I will come back, and I will answer them
for you because it's not something that a lot of
us do, We're gonna need use math, we're
going to need to kind of think
through what is going to taste good with
something else, You also have to have a little bit
of an understanding on how long you can brew things, So for instance, 
if you're new to tea
then black teas are teas that you can brew
just a little bit longer,
They're going to have a richer, more robust flavor, which is a
good thing if you want to create a blend that is
spicy, that is really strong, For instance
that's why chais - the traditional Indian masala
chais - they are blended with things like cinnamon
And cloves, Those kinds of really strong - like ginger root - 
those kinds of really strong robust herbs and spices
are going to pair really well with black
tea, Because you also need to heat those
stronger thicker roots - like licorice root and ginger root -
they're going to need a little bit more heat,
they're going to need a little bit more time to steep, in order to
extract all of their flavor, So they pair really
nicely with the black tea like that,
And then on the other hand you have more delicate
teas like White teas that maybe you don't brew
at such high temperatures,
You want to pair those with herbs and spices that
don't need so much time or so much heat
to extract their flavors,
So tonight we're going to talk about one that's
more on the lighter side, And we can just kind of play around,
The recipes that are in the guide that are
in the link that I talked to you about that are linked with this
post, they're gonna give you all kinds of
different ideas, Caffeinated drinks, caffeine free drinks,
You don't need to use tea in the blends we're going
to talk about tonight, which is a chamomile blend,
It's gonna be a citrus chamomile blend,
You can create your own blends
using Red Rooibos or honey Bush tea and just kind of add
things in, I want you to feel free, I want you
to play, Because there are really no rules, What I'm
giving you tonight are just guidelines
It's important to know the guidelines,
so that way you can play around; as long as you
know what those guidelines are and what you're
doing to deviate
from them, your okay, Alright, so let me talk to you a
little bit first about the tools,
So first,
let's talk about exactly what you're going to
need, You're going to need some herbs & spices, 
You can grab them from your cabinet, you can get them
at your local grocery store,
You're gonna need some loose leaf teas
And you're gonna need some little receptacles to put them in,
And what I like to use for my very first batch
when I'm testing just one tea - one cup of tea - to see
if I even like it, it's just this little cup,
And so I'll put the ingredients in a cup, Then after I've blended
it, then what I'm gonna do is heat the water and
just pour it in and see if I even like it, If I
don't like it, that's okay, I've only put in a little bit of
ingredients, a little bit of time
and I'll move on to the next blend,
So the next thing that you're gonna
wanna make sure that you have is a note card with a
pencil,
And you want to be sure you do this because you're going to be taking notes as you go along,
You want to be sure you do this because you don't want to be in a
position where you find this amazing creation, and you forgot to write it
down, So be sure that you write everything down,
You're going to need a teaspoon,
And let me tell you why,
The recipe that I'm gonna talk to
you about today, and the recipes that I have in
the guide book at the link that I've been talking
about, they all start at one place:
and that is two TOTAL teaspoons per
eight ounces of water,
So for everything that we're talking about is
always gonna come back to: when you have an eight
ounce cup of water, how much tea are you going to need in there?
And when I talk about "tea" I mean the WHOLE tea blend, And I want TWO total,
One teaspoon is going to be my base blend,
And so if I want to make a black tea blend, I'm
gonna use one teaspoon,
If I wanna make a chamomile blend, I'm gonna use one teaspoon,
And then I want to use a TOTAL of one teaspoon
worth of herbs and spices to complement
that one teaspoon base,
So for instance tonight when I'm gonna do is I'm
going to add a total amount 
of ingredients that are gonna
equal one teaspoon, right?
So it's going to be
a quarter teaspoon of orange peel 
a quarter teaspoon of lemon peel
and one eighth teaspoon of,,,
tonight it's gonna be grapefruit peel, and one
eighth of a teaspoon of stevia leaf,
So that will equal a total of,,,
let's see that's one half and one quarter teaspoon, so then I wanna add one more
eighth of stevia,
So that is going to equal a total of one teaspoon,
So let's get started,
So I have my receptacle, I put in
my base, which is the one teaspoon of
chamomile, and then I'm gonna put in
a quarter teaspoon of the lemon peel,
And I'm gonna put in another quarter teaspoon
this time of the orange peel
And I've got
the stevia lead, And I've also got
the grapefruit peel, All of that is going to
equal
two teaspoons in my
cup, Then what I would do is I would use my
brew in mug or whatever steeping tool I'm using, and I brew it,
For this particular kind of blend, I wouldn't use boiling water, 
I'd use something that's a little off boiling, and I'd let it sit for a 
few minutes,
The best part about this is you just get to play,
So you can brew it as long as you want, and you
can make it as strong as you want or as delicate as you want, It's up to you,
The important thing is to always come back to
that measurement,
Because you want to be consistent,
If you want to create bigger batches, so you can create a gift, you want to
make sure you're creating something you can duplicate,
So for instance everything that I have written down
for my recipe can be multiplied,
And in this particular case, I want to make ten cups of it,
So how do I do that?
I go through it line by line and I multiply 
everything by ten,
And I know there's a little bit of math involved, but it's really not that bad,
so if I want the 10 whole cups, I'm gonna
use 10 teaspoons of chamomile, right,
so that's my base,
and then I'm gonna take the quarter
teaspoon of the orange peel, and I'm gonna
Multiply that by 10, and it's two and a half
teaspoons, and so on, and so forth, So you're just
gonna keep multiplying down the line, And if you want those exact amounts, just
go to the blog and it lists everything for you,
Okay so it's really simple once you get started
but I wanna talk to you a little bit
about things to think about when you are starting
to get these herbs and spices together
so you can start your blending fun,
So,,,
the way I like to think about herbs & spices is kind of in categories,
I think of them in categories like floral and spicy,
I think of them in citrus, and I think of them in these rich flavors
like vanilla bean or cacao nibs,
So lets start with floral,
When I think of floral you you get all the
typical stuff right you have lavender and chamomile
and rose buds, Those kinds of flowery uh flowery herbs
,,,different flowers, right? Then you get
into your citrus, You have
lemon peels, grapefruit peel, orange peel, all
the different dried peels which give that citrus
essence to anything your'e going to blend,
And then you also get into things that are a
little more spicy, You have cloves, and
allspice, and cinnamon,
Sometimes you can even get some peppermint in there;
I consider that a kind of spicy
kind of flavor but it can also be in a more floral flavor
it just kind of depends on what
you like and how it is that your taste buds
taste things, Because every person will taste something differently,
So something that you like maybe I don't like and
maybe something I like, you won't like,
When I think of things that are rich like the
choclately flavors of a cacao
Nib or the vanilla bean, those are things
that add some really 
delicious layers of flavor,
so once I kinda have an idea of what I like
that's when you can start buying things and maybe
you want to just look and see what they have,
There's also some resources that I put in that
guide that I've been referencing,
so go to the link and get the guide and
there's also some places you can get these things,
Just you can look online you can kinda Google it
and just look at different spices, and you can see what's out there,
There there are a lot of things that are out
there that you may not have even thought of,
Things like hibiscus
petals that have kind of like a bitter taste to
them, and the guide that I've been talking about
goes through a lot of those different herbs and spices,
And gives you a little bit of their flavor profile,
Once you're familiar with these flavor profiles
once you have these
Different areas kind of um
thought-out the floral areas that I've been
talking about,
the citrus areas, then you can start thinking about
okay what would those taste good with?
For me I think the richer flavors like
the chocolately flavors, the vanilla
as tasting really good with black teas,
But that doesn't mean that they won't taste very good with
with a rooibos, That sounds delicious too,
That has a cinnomony (not a real word)
profile to it, So blending those with a rooibos
would also be delicious,
One of the things you're going to want to think about
is how long you're going ot have to steep those richer, harder spices
A cinnamon is going to need more intense heat
is going to need a longer steeping time to extract the flavors
than a rose petal would,
So you've got your black teas with something that's richer,
And let's say you have your white teas that take less time to brew or
or your green teas, or your oolongs even, those types take
less time to brew (at a lower temp), so you wanna pair them with
something that maybe doesn't take as long to brew, Those might go really well with
something like a floral uh like like a lavender, or
rose petals, Those kinds of things,
I would also put them together just like I did here,
I would pair a white tea with the different citrus
Peels that we've been talking about because I
don't think it takes that long to extract the flavors from those citrus peels,
But you gotta play with it maybe you don't taste it
Maybe you feel like it tastes
good enough, so this is your time to play,
What I would like you to do is to go to that
link and find that guide book
because in the guidebook, you're going to get a lot
of instruction - it will take you step by step through
here and give you even more,
If you're brand new to tea, it's also going to give you 
that guide to tea so you can
learn what all the different teas taste like, get an idea of
their flavor profile, how long it takes to brew them,
how hot the water should be when you brew them,
When you kinda have an idea of what those teas taste like
and how long it takes to brew them,
then you can start playing with all the different 
herbs and spices, Once you start doing that, you gonna see
just how much fun it is and just how easy it is,
I've also discovered that once I started learning
these different profiles, playing with them
that I started adding them more to my food so things like all
spice or cloves, I am less nervous to use them because
I understand a little goes a long way.
For instance like a clove, you don't wanna have too
much of that in any tea because too much of it
makes your mouth numb. So you wanna play around with
it with the tea so you're not ruining your food later.
You can always play around with these with
tea, It's much easier, it's much less expensive, and much less time
consuming. I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you so much!
Go to the website get the guide, and click like on this, and
I will see you next week. Bye.
