you could make mint oil, add equal amounts of mint leaves and oil into the food processor and chop fine, Use this in your cake recipes, brownies, breads, etc. mix it with other herbs and make a pesto, you can strain it and make it into a bread dipping oil. refrigerate any leftovers, it keeps almost forever. steep mint and other herbs in wine vinegar, do not boil. my favorite is orange mint, orange zest, thai hot peppers, and lemon thyme, with a bit of ginger root. add a bit of sugar, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and concentrated orange juice and use it for a chicken maranade. mint is excellent with lamb. use it in a salad 3 tomatoes chopped 1 med onion chopped 1 bunch or large handfull of mint, chopped 5-8 green onions or scallions, thinly sliced juice of 2 lemons salt put all ingredients in a bowl and chill for an hour, serve with grilled chicken or fish Tomato soup with couscous 2 Tbs olive oil 1 onion chopped 1-2 carrots diced 14 oz can italian chopped tomatoes 6 garlic cloves chopped 6 1/4 cup veggie or chicken stock 1 1/2 cup couscous, or alphabet noodles 2-3 sprigs mint chopped 1/4 tsp ground cumin 1/4 bunch cilantro cayene pepper to taste salt and pepper cook the onion and carrots in oil of about 10 minutes until softened add the tomatoes, half the garlic, stock, couscous, mint, coriander and spices bring to boil add remaining garlic and simmer for 7- 10 minutes until couscous is just tender serve hot Chopped Veggie Salad 1 each red, green, and yellow bell pepper seeded, and diced 1 carrot diced 1 cucumber diced 6 tomatoes, diced, I prefer romas 3 garlic cloves chopped fine 3 green onions or scallions sliced thin 2 Tbs chopped cilantro 2 Tbs each chopped dill, parsley, and mint 1 hot pepper chopped fine 3-4 Tbs olive oil juice of 1 lemon salt and pepper to taste add all ingredients, toss, and serve chilled mint can also be added to any green salad

I assume on the 1/2 sugar you meant 1/2 cup?? sounds good I love cranberry juice with a nice splash of OJ in it and I also like the cranberry juice with pomegranate. I really detest the artificial "sugars" but have found that the NECTRESSE is really very good and has the most minimal artificial taste of any I have ever tried. In fact it is so real tasting I can sprinkle it on my berries just like real sugar and that is NOT something I could do with any other artificial. And it is made from the Monk fruit a real natural fruit. It is not super sweet like so many of the artificial sugars. It is very natural tasting. I may just have to try a little of this special tea!

Susan, most restaurants in Virginia have both sweet and unsweetened iced tea, so I guess we are the dividing line on the East Coast. North of here is almost always unsweetened, and I know NC is almost a purely sweet-tea state. Personally, I prefer unsweetened with lemon. And I don't add sweetner of any kind, which means it has to be really fresh. As an aside, I have a friend who travelled to Ohio recently. She stopped at a fast food drive through and asked for a "sweet tea". They gave her "Hi-C". When my sister brought this mistake to the clerk's attention, she apologized, but said she had never heard it called "sweet tea" before.

Boo.. we have a Keurig at work, but I find that since coffee runs through the thing, the tea is off-kilter, taste wise. (I'm not impressed with the coffee, either. Rather watery.) The absolutely most revolting tea I ever had was when I stopped off at a small Mississippi town to sleep in, on my way down to New Orleans. There were two restaurants -- a Bugger King and a Chinese place. I went to the Chinese place. I asked for tea. It came -- sweet. ICK. I asked for a new cup, not sweetened. The waitress told me it was only available... sweet. Chinese tea?? You had to be kidding me! I had her replace it with water, fortunately not sugared up. (After that, I ordered the most innocuous item on the menu -- if they can't get tea right, forget anything interesting!)