Peppermint elixir
I've always loved peppermint Life Savers, so a few months ago I bought a peppermint plant. In retrospect it was a bad food choice: peppermint is too strong for some purposes. Spearmint would work better in most salads. But the other day I recalled the recipe for ginger elixir from Rachel Matesz's cookbook, and it struck me that it would probably work just as well with peppermint. From my plant I gathered, oh, four loose handfuls of peppermint. I stripped the leaves from the stems. Threw the leaves into the blender with two cups of boiling water. Pureed. Added two more cups of boiling water. Allowed to sit. Once that was cool, I threw it in a pitcher and added four more cups of filtered water along with a couple eyedroppers' full of stevia. Regrigerated it. Voila! Peppermint elixir! An entirely decent drink. It's different from our standard pop flavors, so I suspect it will take some getting used to, but it's good.
For my next elixir, I'm tempted to try rosemary. Yes, that seems a dicier attempt, but what the heck.