Fresh mint tea may be the choice beverage of royalty.

Or maybe just aristocrats.
I never liked the movie (I'm not sure I've ever even seen it all the way through), but I never knew what "aristocrat" meant until after the movie "Aristocats" came out.  So now, every time I see or hear or even think the work aristocrat, I have to remind myself about that second "r."  It's a terrible affliction.

This year, in addition to a vegetable garden which has had some minor success, I've also tried out herb container gardening.  One thing I'm very good at is putting off things that, if they fail, will make it difficult for me to feel awesome.  So I've been cultivating a chocolate mint plant since the beginning of June, but I've been refusing to harvest any of it, in case it's terrible and I can no longer pat myself on the back for growing a totally sweet chocolate mint plant that, in addition to looking and smelling awesome, also tastes awesome.  Because when I don't actually taste it, I can still imagine it tastes awesome.

Plus I'd have to admit that I don't know how to make tea with actual mint LEAVES.  So there's that.

Well, I finally decided to try this thing out. I clipped about 15 leaves (apparently, those toward the base-- the larger leaves-- are more flavorful), and removed any little stems that remained.

Then I smushed them.

Smushing is a very technical word.  It means doing something like this:

Which, in case you can't tell, involves kind of tearing and mushing and rolling around the leaves.  Generally, you're bruising them and ripping them up to get the flavor out.  Once you've done that, you just treat it like normal loose-leaf tea, and stick it in an infuser and let it sit there until it tastes about right.

And boy, does it taste right.  I added a little sugar, because there's something about mint that just needs a little sugar.  But it was this perfect mix of actual mint (not peppermint, not spearmint, just.... mint) with a little bonus chocolate along for the ride.

Good thing, because I have no idea what you do with a chocolate mint plant except turn it into tea.  So I would have had to have the shame of growing a plant I'm not using for anything at all.  People don't do that, right?