Everyone at Nerdy Girls Farm loves mint in all of its glorious variations.
The humans enjoy Mint Lemon – a refreshing summer beverage and our featured recipe this month. The Barn Dragons enjoy the catnip (a member of the mint family), rolling around in it throughout the day. We also enjoy the medicinal benefits of Lemon Balm to bring calm to a stormy day, or a sleepless night.
Mint comes in many flavors, the most common are spearmint, peppermint, catnip, pennyroyal, and mountain mint. There are some fancy mints that combine minty flavors with other aromas like chocolate mint, apple mint, pineapple mint, lemon mint, and orange mint. And biologically speaking, the mint family extends even further, including herbs like oregano, sage, and basil; and medicinal herbs like lemon balm, anise hyssop, and bee balm. With this definition, we grow 15 different plants from the mint family! It is that varied and that useful for tea, cooking, baking, and driving cats wild.
Mint (spearmint and peppermint) are extremely useful plants. Of course there is mint tea with either the fresh or dried leaves. Mint also features in Middle Eastern cooking and shows up in recipes of tabouli, fattoush, rice dishes, tzatziki sauce, and meat dishes.
Growing mint is incredibly easy. So easy in fact, that it is difficult to remove the plants if you choose to move them to a different part of the garden. Any small piece of root left in the ground will sprout again! Growing in a container can help some of that, but mint roots are known to find the drainage holes in any pot and head off across your yard or garden for parts unknown. Most of the time we happily advise people to grow their own, but for this reason, we recommend buying rather than planting!
This month’s recipe comes from Jessica’s family, however, there are several similar recipes online that indicate it may be adapted from a traditional middle eastern recipe. Mint-Lemon syrup is a simple syrup that is added to still or sparkling water and served over ice.
Our monthly spice subscription can be found online at https://www.wfm2go.ca/. Delivery is the first wednesday of every month and includes a newsletter with spicy information, a recipe from our kitchen, and a selection of that month’s featured spice.