welcome back to the garden diva
okay we've come in from the garden where
we've picked the stevia and you gave us
some great tips to pick early in the
morning so it doesn't stress out the
plant and that the smaller leaves are
the sweetest leaves so where do we go
from here well most people when they
come in from the garden with herbs they
want to wash them last night we had a
really good rain and unless you're
picking from herbs that are close to the
bottom where the men might splash on
they're fine so last night we had a good
rain if you do feel that you need to
wash them you need to make sure that you
lay in between paper towels and you Pat
them dry really really well okay before
you do anything else with them I like to
just dry my herbs naturally just with
air I don't have a dehydrator or
anything um so what I do is once I know
that they're clean what I do is I just
put them on a paper plate simply and
spread them out yeah and here you'll see
some that I did a couple of days ago and
you'll see they're not quite dry they're
starting to they're getting there
yeah they're not quite dry and basically
what I do is I just leave them on the
microwave so what you want to do is you
want to put them at a direct sunlight
and you don't want to put them anywhere
near the stove where you'll have steam
coming in off that with the food that
you're cooking so that way they'll have
ample time to dry and you let them dry
completely that's very very important
because if you don't let them dry
completely and you seal them up they're
gonna mold and this is not good so what
do you do once they're completely dried
yes I like to store mine and like a
glass store or somewhere in an air
sealed container yeah some kind yeah and
what I do is I go ahead and I crumble
them out and so that they're ready to go
and as you see it's it's thin it is yeah
and it doesn't take much to do that it
just who looks like any kind of tea leaf
or anything else that you've dried right
right and it is like any other tea Lee
the difference is it doesn't have very
much flavor in it instead it has the
sweetness which is awesome so to make
good southern tea with stevia what I do
is is I like to do my tea in a teapot
some people use a pot on the stove or
anything like that what I do is just go
by how you normally make tea everybody's
got their own ways coming making
biscuits everybody's got their own -
yeah so this is what I do is I put my
tea bags in here so I'm gonna make a
gallon of tea so what I want to do is
get a large tea ball now they come in
different sizes so if you only make 1/2
a gallon you won't make quite as much um
you can find these anywhere Massillon
cooking store like look in the cooking
department you can also find them online
ok as well and this will be one of the
items that we'll have and a good strong
good online anything that you'll need to
make tea so what I do is I just gather
it up and I just load up the tea ball
load it up as much as I can get in there
and then basically I just drop it in the
tea pot oh it's the same time the tea
bags and just drop it in there the herbs
all together yeah so I've all the water
like normal and I take it out and as
long as I'll leave my tea bags in there
I'll leave the stevia - okay now another
thing that you can do with the stevia is
you can also sweeten that lemonade
without losing so much sugar you know a
lot of times you have to use equal
amounts sugar and lemon juice we make
lemonade yes yes it is a lot of sugar
yeah so what I like to do is I make
sugar water with the stevia basically so
what I do is I did the same process I
just don't put tea bags so you're
boiling the water and the stevia leaves
and you're making a syrup but yeah yeah
and it's just a sweetened water is what
it is so once it's cool then I put it in
my picture I'll put half the sugar that
I normally put and then once I do that
but my lemon juice and finish it off
with water so you're still getting sugar
now those people that are doing without
sugar and they're used to it not being
so sweet you really don't have to
the same thing with the tea
people that are getting away from it and
I just they like it lightly sweetened
then don't add the sugar at all that's
even better
you could probably wean yourself away
from having any sugar if you just tried
it a little bit of time yeah one of the
things that I want to mention you'll
notice when you look at the lemonade it
has a little darker color remember that
when you're using the studio to make
that sugar water and it the stevia leaf
itself has a tint to it so when you boil
it in water it's gonna have a tinge okay
well I actually did wonder why that was
a little bit odd color that's good to
know
yeah I think it adds a little color to
it it looks nice anyway you could stick
strawberries all kinds of things in
there and give it all kinds of color but
yeah let's go have some okay all right
that's good