In Estonia one can find a bag of
Kubja naistetee at any local pharmacy. The name
Naistetee means
Women's tea but all ingredients in this tea are indeed beneficial for people regardless sex.
We tried replicating this Kubja naistetee recipe at home.
>>> INVESTIGATE THE LABEL:
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| It is worth noting that the tea is NOT explicitly marketed to pregnant women and women during breast-feeding. |
The blend has 5 ingredients in the following ratio by weight:
Shepherd's Purse - White Clover - Catnip - St. John's Wort - Lady's Mantle = 1 : 3 : 5 : 5 : 6
(Hiirekõrv : Valge Ristik : Naistenõges : Naistepuna : Kortsleht = 1g : 3g : 5g : 5g : 6g for every 20g of the blend)
The main ingredient is
Lady's Mantle (6g in 20g). This may be the reason for the company to brand this blend "Naistetee/ Women's tea". Lady's Mantle herb is very commonly used as a pain reliever in folk medicine. Particularly for women during menstruation, it helps relieve mild aches and pains as well as lessening excessive bleeding (Soule & Szwed, 1998).
The flowering note of this tea is
White Clover (3g for 20g).
>>> FORAGE THE INGREDIENTS:
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Kortsleht / Alchemilla / Lady's Mantle / Daggkåpesläktet / Poimulehdet / -
- Collect the aerial part
Our neighborhood in Helsinki is full of this lovely herb yet we have not seen it in LabLand so far. This bunch was foraged around Tartu Observatory. |
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Valge Ristik / Trifolium Repens / White Clover / Vitklöver / Valkoapila / Cỏ Ba Lá Hoa Trắng
- Collect the flowers[1]
Like those of many other Clover species, White Clover flowers smell sweet and taste sour.
Red Clover (Trifolium Ratense) and White Clover tend to grow together on country meadows and lawns. If you find them and are curious, why not try the former instead for a new blend flavour exploration?
[1]For this tea blend we use the aerial parts of all the ingredients except White Clover. With White Clover, only the flowers are used. |
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St. John's-Wort and
Catnip each makes up 5g in 20g of the blend.
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Naistepuna / Hypericum / St. John's-Wort / Johannesörtssläktet / Kuismat / -
- Collect the aerial part
St. John's-Wort is well-known for its antiseptic, anti-inflammatory and biliary enhancing properties.
B caught this lone plant next to a shortcut in LabLand. We are lucky to have many of them. One should harvest the herb when it blooms. The vividly yellow flowers are very outstanding even in between grass higher than one's head. |
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Naistenõges / Nepeta Cataria / Catnip / Kattmynta / Aitokissanminttu / B?c Hà Mèo
- Collect the aerial part
Last week Sister P paid an unexpected visit and gave us this pot of young Catnip!
I personally struggled to find this herb in the wild at first. I only got to know Catnip with my bare eyes and nose for the first time this June in Tartu Botanical Garden, and searched extensively since but could not find it either in Labland or around Tartu Observatory. Not until asking Sister P did I know that Catnip is indeed a garden herb - only grown in gardens. |
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If you do not have Catnip available and do not want to buy it from an herb store, you can improvise: either omit this component from your blend, or substitute it with some herb(s) of similar flavour or similar health benefits, or experiment with mixing & matching from what you have on hand.
Catnip's smell reminds us of
Peppermint (Mentha × Piperita) and
Stinging Nettle (Urtica Dioica) so flavourwise we would swap Catnip with Mint, Nettle, or both of them.
In fact, Catnip literally means "women's nettle" in Estonian (though Nettle and Catnip belong to 2 different families) and "cat's mint" in Swedish and Finnish. (Catnip and Mint are in the same family Lamiaceae.)
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Kõrvenõges / Urtica Dioica / Stinging Nettle / Brännässla / Nokkonen / Tầm Ma
-Collect the aerial part
For our Vietnamese friends who only heard about cây tầm ma from Andersen's The Wild Swans where Princess Elisa has to collect cây tầm ma in graveyards to knit into 11 shirts for her brothers, now you know cây tầm ma is not just a fairy tale plant. Cây tầm ma stings (or burns) you when you touch it - even very slightly at a leaf - so one has better to wear gloves when harvesting cây tầm ma. Remember the detail that Princess Elisa endures great pain and her hands are blistered because of nettle stings?:) Cây tầm ma however only stings when it is fresh. |
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Piparmünt / Mentha × Piperita / Peppermint / Pepparmynta / Piparminttu / Bạc Hà Âu
- Collect the aerial part
Peppermint is a cultivated plant but once it is grown, it spreads very quickly and sometimes can be spotted in nature. We do not have Peppermint in LabLand but we have a kind scientist who "feeds" the whole Observatory with his Peppermint, all year round. |
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The remained 1g of 20g of the blend is composed of
Shepherd's Purse.
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Hiirekõrv / Capsella Bursa-Pastoris / Shepherd's Purse / Lomme / Lutukka / -
- Collect the aerial part
Shepherd's Purse is abundant around the Observatory and along the pedestrian paths in Tartu city. We plucked a bunch on the way home and brought to LabLand to cultivate. |
Once the ingredients are gathered and well air-dried, simply mix them in the proportion indicated on label. Home-blended herbal tea easily stays for 1 year in an airtight container.
A general rule in herbal tea consumption: although the commonly-used herbs usually have a mild nature, a medicinal tea is still a
medicine so if you get any side effects, talk to your doctor or pharmacist.
>>> BREW A CUP OF TEA:
1 - 2 teaspoons | 100
oC | 10 - 15 minutes. Drop in a dollop of honey.
>>> DOSES:
1 - 2 glasses a day.
[2]Soule, D., & Szwed, S. (1998). A woman's book of herbs. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub. Group.
