Fresh Garden Mint Tea

Start with the mint. Not dried leaves from a tin that has sat in your cabinet for two years, but living mint, the kind that releases its scent the moment you brush against it. This is the whole recipe. Everything else is just hot water.

When I first understood what fresh mint could do, I was in a small village in Morocco, watching a man pour tea from height into tiny glasses. The mint came from a plant growing in a cracked pot by the door. He tore the leaves right before steeping. The tea tasted like a garden at dawn, cool and bright and impossibly alive.

Your choices shape the food system. Growing mint on a windowsill connects you to your food in a way that buying tea bags never can. The plant gives and gives, asking only for water and light. It spreads with the eagerness of something that wants to be used.