My grandmother has been making her own herbal tea mix ever since I can remember. She makes it from herbs growing in her garden, which she carefully dries. When I was a child, she used to make us this tea of hers, and we used to drink it with a bit of milk, honey and some Petit-Beurre biscuits. The herbs in her mix were mostly mint, linden and marjoram, with little sage and some other plants.
Herbal and fruit teas
In Istria there is an abundance of plants and fruits, out of excellent teas can be made, whether one chooses to make them from fresh or dried flowers, or from leaves, seeds, roots or fruits. The choice of flavor is a matter of taste, but also of the occasion or necessity. Some of the ones I would like to highlight for your enjoyment, as well as for healing purposes, are mint, chamomile, sage, thyme, hollyhock, nettle, rosemary, marigold, yarrow, lavender, dandelion, John’s wort… There are also pomegranates, mulberry, elderberry, blackberry, apple, pear, anise, blueberry, chokeberry and even walnut! It was in Istria that I, for the first time in my life, tasted tea made from olive leaves. The bitterish “green” taste of this tea won me over primarily because I did not expect to have the opportunity to experience such a thing.
Enrich your tea
There is a lot you can supplement your tea with. But you do need to know what to goes with what. Although I like to try new flavors, when it comes to tea, I’m inclined to go the classic route. In the first place, there are the already mentioned honey and milk which be added to tea, with biscuits, of course. But I will certainly not run away from adding cinnamon, vanilla, lemon or orange. My mother used to “twist” grandmother’s tea recipe during the hot summer days: she’d just put some sugar in the tea and cool it down. We drank it as if it was water. Delicious, refreshing, healthy water, sometimes with ice cubes. This is something I still drink to this day. And you can, too, from whichever of the listed plants and fruit trees you like the most. 
