UK Wild Chai Tea
Home Made Chai Tea, UK
I realised I hadn’t shown you this picture yet. These are the ingredients for my home made local chai. My politics don’t allow me to photograph food 
but I can still share some of the things I have in jars in my kitchen.
So, if you like spiced teas to warm you in winter here is a way to make a local chai tea without the food miles and dubious extraction methods. Ash keys are everywhere still, brown and dangling from bare branches , peel off the dried wings and inside is a seed when it is dried on the tree like this I liken the taste to cardamom. Next up; wood avens (aka herb bennet or clove root) has a root that contains Eugenol, the same phytochemical that gives cloves their clove taste , has a leafy top that is showing right now, the final local spice here is hogweed seeds which I saved from a couple months back; dried on the bare flower stems of autumn. I liken the taste to a cross between orange peel and washing up liquid .
I pop the clove root in the oven just for five mins to dry it so it grinds easier with the other already dried spices. That’s it ! Just add hot water or sugary tea!
It occurred to me I don't post enough ‘fancy meal pics’ as other folk I’ve seen. I teach self reliance not gourmet cooking but mostly; in a world where starvation is rife I don’t feel I’ve a right to post food pictures, but I can show you all my jars of ‘stuff’ and explain what they are and how I use them . Hope that’s ok!?
In other blogs on here I’ll show you more of the stuff I have made from the wild, including salt, and the skin infection treatment mix my teenage boys are used to me passing them that has cured everything they’ve dabbed it on!
Join me on a wild food walk here: https://www.wildharvest.org/collections/wild-food-foraging-walks
