As I’ve mentioned, I try to eat virtuously every now and then, so I have a pantry full of stuff like flax seeds, wheat germ and quinoa. And green tea. LOTS of unused green tea. The virtues of green tea are well known even if not fully understood (and in some cases not fully substantiated): Its antioxidants may help fight disease, possibly assist with weight loss and cholesterol management, etc. Good stuff. Read more here and here. *

But the taste … well if you love it good for you. I don’t, so I must hide it in something else.

Heh heh. OK, this isn’t about ice cream (but isn’t it always about ice cream??) Anyway, I was tooling away on the Stairmaster the other day, reading my Body + Soul magazine, and came across this little gem.

Green tea, concealed with spices and fruit. Brilliant! I was, of course, nervous about the quantity of green tea because 1. Ick! And 2. I had tea bags and could not see myself cutting open enough tea bags to yield a third of a cup. Eventually I ditched the loose-tea approach out of pure laziness. It turns out, it’s just fine and saves a step to just use the tea in the bags. And it saves you the inevitable floating chunks that loose tea leaves behind. I would proceed with caution if you want to use more than four bags (which using my tea bags yielded less than 1/8 cup of leaves) because the apple flavor is delicate and easily masked by the tea. To compensate somewhat for the vastly reduced tea quantity, I lengthened the steeping time a bit.

You could go a little wild with other stuff in small quantities … I considered adding a slice of fresh ginger, maybe a handful of fresh cranberries for color and a little flavor. If you love green tea and have some loose, maybe try the original recipe linked above. Otherwise, for a warm, spicy beverage that tastes a little like green tea but much better, try the one below. Seriously, I’m making it again tonight, and this time it’s purely voluntary.

Spiced apple green tea

Adapted from Body + Soul magazine

1 Granny Smith apple, finely chopped

4 cups water

1 cinnamon stick

Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste

4 strips orange zest (use a vegetable peeler for this)

2 tablespoons honey

Four bags green tea

Stir together apple, water, spices, zest and honey in a saucepan. Bring to boil, then reduce to simmer for two minutes. Turn off heat and allow to steep 15 minutes. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer over tea bags, pressing on solids to extract as much liquid as possible and let steep two minutes. Resist the urge to swirl tea bags and squeeze all the liquid out of them, as this can make the tea quite strong and mask the other flavors. Remove tea bags and reheat if necessary. Drop in a couple apple slices to garnish, if you like, and enjoy.

*Full disclosure: We’re both science gals, but not experts on health and nutrition. When we talk about nutrition on BIK, it’ll be from a relatively conservative point of view using trusted non-peer-reviewed sources. We’d love to go to the nutrition journals and read all about this stuff and give you our most informed, most unbiased opinion, but we got no time! We try to be skeptical of whatever we read, eat as many whole foods as possible and enjoy most things in moderation.