Ideal for EatingEating ethically while eating great!

I love the taste of good coffee. It's a taste I developed later in life than most other coffee lovers, it seems. While I drank a little coffee (General Foods International blends!) in 11th grade of high school for medicinal reasons (to keep me awake during the day so I could stay up late doing homework, blah), I didn't really start liking it until my late twenties. I take that back. I could have drunk a daily demitasse of strong French coffee with a canard (not a duck, but a single cube of sugar dipped into the coffee and left on the spoon to melt -- yum!). But I didn't live in France, so that really wasn't an option. Good coffee shops weren't quite ubiquitous yet. So getting a really good cup of coffee was still a rare treat for me then. 

And I viewed coffee as a treat, not as a necessary part of my morning. Honestly, I didn't want to hooked on coffee. My now-ex-husband was so hooked on his morning coffee that he was a raging beast until he drank that first cup. I did not want that to be me. Not that I wake up in chipper mood every day. I just didn't want my mood dependent on something I ate or drank.

But I did like the idea of drinking something that had a positive effect on my mood -- a drink with benefits, if you will.

When I was a vegan the first time, in my early twenties, I was looking for nutritional, homeopathic and herbal ways to alleviate my frequent migraines. One thing that helped was drinking certain herbal teas. I often focused on herbs with known circulatory and/or neurological effects.

One of my favorites is rosemary tea. Nobody seems to make a real rosemary tea (i.e., in tea bags), so I just buy dried rosemary and make my own -- technically, an infusion.

Rosemary has several beneficial medicinal properties:

- It can improve memory

- It has been shown to help prevent cancer

- It acts as a muscle relaxer and can help ease menstrual cramps and upset stomach

- It can help calm nerves

My personal experience with rosemary is that it boosts my mood, helps me feel more energetic and can ease headaches in their early stages. Rosemary does not make me jittery or nervous like too much coffee does. Rosemary helps me calm down when I'm feeling anxious. I call it my Happy Tea, especially when I add a little lavender, which has its own calming and relaxing effects.

A quick note of caution: pregnant women should not take rosemary medicinally. Pregnant women may still use rosemary in cooking. Go ahead and eat the focaccia with rosemary on it. Just don't make a tea from the herb until you've given birth.

So, how do you make the tea?

Just place 1 - 2 teaspoons of the dried herb into a cup of very hot water (not quite boiling). Cover the cup to keep the essential oils inside. Steep for 5 minutes. Remove the herb (either pour the infusion through a strainer or start out by putting the herb in a reusable tea ball) and enjoy. 

I think rosemary tea tastes rather different from rosemary used in cooking. I like rosemary used in cooking, but I prefer rosemary tea.

If you like to sweeten your tea, use a bit of agave syrup or stevia.

Drink a cup of rosemary tea as needed or up to three times a day. While a little bit of rosemary can relax muscles, overdoing it can cause muscle spasms.

If you're trying to break a coffee habit, take it slowly and try replacing an occasional cup of coffee with a cup of rosemary tea. It won't give you the jolt that coffee does, but it may just elevate your mood enough to help you not miss the coffee so much.

Let me know how rosemary works for you!