The Joy of Nettles: Green Nettle Tea

Stinging nettles.  Nearly everyone in the Northwest has a story from growing up about an encounter with this particularly painful forest herb. 

Walking down a nice green trail and brushing your hand against the innocent looking greenery only to feel the sharp sting from the miniature hypodermic needles covering the leaves and stem of this plant.

Reaching for those ripe berries and getting thwarted by the welt delivering plant hidden among the vines.

Putting on a glove, pulling up some nettles, and trying to slap them across your brothers neck (my brother started it!).

Only recently have I discovered that there are even more uses for this smarting plant other than the joy of getting back at your brother for countless Nuremberg level crimes.

Green nettle tea is simple and easy to make, as follows:

Pick (carefully!) a half dozen green nettle tops.  Preferably the young tender shoots, either in the early spring, or coming up later from plants cut earlier in the year.  Pick the top 6-8 inches that have not yet developed the woody inner fiber.

Wash (still wearing gloves) any dust or whatnot off of the leaves and stems.

Place in a pot with 4-5 cups of water, boil for 5 minutes.

Pick out the leaves and stems, save for other applications (will post these later).

Pour water into coffe mug.

Drink.

If too strong for you, add a drop of honey.

If you want to serve to other people, add honey and a dash of lemon juice, at least the first time.

It makes a strong, herbal type tea that I find invigorating.  I always think, the sting has gone out of all the leaves and stems at this point, so it has gotta be in the tea right?  Maybe that is what makes it invigorating!

Enjoy!

Red Huckleberry

Red huckleberries are the lesser known of the huckleberry plants.  Bright red, they look too good to be true on the tall bushes that they grow on - some are tarter than others depending on the bush location and level of ripeness, but all are delicious! 



Red Huckleberry Bush

We have a 1/2 dozen large red huckleberry bushes growing across our property.  We started getting ripe berries around July 4th and most berries will be ripe by the end of July.  The berries are very bright and look like salmon eggs, it would be interesting to try fishing with them to see if they worked as bait. 

My boys and I collected a about two cups full from one large bush that ripened before all the others, and that was after eating more that 1/2 of the berries as we picked. 



Red Huckleberries

Not enough berries for Jam, so we made a red huckleberry crisp with what we did not eat:

Recipe:

2 cups of berries
1/2 cup of white sugar
1 1/2 cup of flour
1 cup of brown sugar
1 stick of butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix berries and white sugar, put on bottom of pan.

Mix flour, brown sugar and blend in the stick of butter until you get a crumbly type texture.  Crumble on top of the berries

Cook in oven for 20-30 minutes until the berries are bubbling through the crumble mix.

Enjoy! 




Red Huckleberry Crisp