The following post includes Amazon affiliate links.  That means a small portion of your purchase will be paid to me as a commission.  The price is the same for you.  I like to share these links to help support the cost of running this blog and to be a resource to you.  I like to make things easy for you and as always…..keep it real.

The Real Food Experience is a systematic approach to eliminating the harmful ingredients found in fast and processed food from your diet and focusing on eating real food.  Real food that is closer to nature than it is to science.  It’s a great time to focus on eating delicious and nutrient-dense food.  A healthy body has more energy for things that matter most in life. You can join us this week and get caught up by checking out our other weekly challenges. Here is the Week 1 Challenge. 

This week we are focusing on drinking only real beverages. Week by week we are making small changes that will help our family make the switch from highly processed and fast food to a healthier real food lifestyle. What we drink daily is not immune from chemicals we don’t need and that our not healthy for us. Take a look at a typical brand name bottled iced tea. You will see a lot of sweeteners including the dreaded high fructose corn syrup, unknown “natural flavors, chemical preservatives, and finally tea. Why drink extra chemicals when it’s so easy to make iced tea?

My Mom taught me to make iced tea when I was a kid. Iced tea was served to Mom and Dad with every dinner. They didn’t drink soda, energy drinks, or other highly processed beverages. It all starts with a tea kettle and tea bags. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed mixing up different flavors of tea to make a variety of iced tea flavors. Most of the time I enjoy the iced tea without any added sugar, but a little bit of honey does add an extra layer of richness to the Peach, mango, mint iced tea. 

In order to get started making iced tea, you will need to grab your tea kettle. Anyone else love Mackenzie-Child’s tea kettle? I LOVE it, but for a hundred dollar less, I found this similar tea kettle on Amazon. It’s really cute sitting on the stove of my black and white kitchen. Go ahead and boil water in the tea kettle to get started. 

In order to make the peach, mango, mint iced tea, I use two different tea bags. One is the Lipton peach mango tea bag, and the other is the Twinings pure peppermint tea. Place 3 of each tea bag in a heat-safe container and pour the boiling water over the bags. Let the tea steep until cool. Steeping allows the flavor and aroma to come out of the loose tea and will make your house smell wonderful as well.

 

Once the steeped tea cools, pour it into a pitcher making sure to remove the tea bags from the pitcher. I use this glass pitcher, but I have my eye on this in the door pitcher as well. Add cold water to fill the glass pitcher and serve over ice. Like I said, easy enough for a kid to make and free of unknown chemicals and extra sugar that we don’t need. The combination of peach, mango, and mint create a refreshing iced tea that is perfect for summer.

If you like your tea with a little extra sweetness, you can add honey to your cup and stir or to sweeten the entire pitcher, add the honey to the hot steeping tea.  The honey adds a little extra richness to the tea in addition to the extra sweetness. Best of all, honey is real food approved. As you work through the real food journey, you may find that you crave sweetness less and less, but honey is a great sweetener to use in a variety of real food recipes.

As you sip and enjoy your homemade iced tea, why don’t you continue to scroll our website for additional information, recipes, and motivation. For simple recipes your family is sure to gobble up, make sure you check out the recipe index.  I am adding new recipes all of the time, so make sure you check back often.  You will also want to grab this free meal-planning printable calendar to make your meal planning easier.  It has areas to plan your daily activities and your evening meal prep.

How are you doing with this week’s real food beverage challenge? Leave me a comment below and let me know if you have been able to meet the challenge this week. Is your family joining you this week? What do they think about your plans to bring a little more healthy to your family mealtime? Let’s get the conversation going so we can help each other out in our real food journey. Women helping women is what we are all about here at Juggling. Can’t wait to hear from you.