So what are we putting in our rooibos latte? Rooibos tea for starters, our own nut or seed milk, flavour ideas and sweeteners if desired. Let’s take a look at these ingredients.

I love standing in front of the tubs in the tea store and smelling the minty and spicy aromas.  It has been of great comfort to me since kicking the bean.  But rooibos tea could mean more than that.  Studies have shown some very interesting properties of Rooibos that can be a bonus to all of us tea totalers.

There is a chemical in green rooibos (if you’re a tea junkie you will have seen it before, it is the unroasted rooibos tea that looks green and tastes a bit like green tea) called aspalathin that has been shown to improve glucose tolerance. It does this by encouraging the Beta cells of the pancreas to produce more insulin and also increasing the glucose uptake to the cells so that the insulin in the blood is being used more effectively. Rooibos tea has also been found to have antispasmodic and blood pressure lowering effects.

Nut milk. Now I’m pretty sure you know how to make a great nut milk. Just in case:

• 1 cup soaked nuts/seeds with
• 3 cups water
• blended like crazy and then strained through a nut milk bag

Making this yourself will save you money, eliminate carrageenan and other thickeners/stablisers and provide you with flavour profile options that you would not find in a tetra pack.  Making your own nut milk will also provide options for you in crafting your own fat balance.  Some nuts like hazelnuts and macadamias will provide more monounsaturated fatty acids which can be great for encouraging weight loss among other things when eaten in moderation.  Hazelnuts also have a real classic taste and go so well with so many iconic foods like chocolate or cranberry.  Hazelnuts and Macadamias have a taste and feel that I can only describe best as dry.  Maybe you want to balance out this dryness with some other nut flavours AND you want to tweak the omega 3 profile. Sooo why not use some chia in there and maybe a bit of coconut to help with the uptake of the omega 3 conversion to EPA/DHA (more about this next week :)).  Adding sunflower lecithin will provide choline which is just hard to get anywhere else and is so great for brain health and the sunflower lecithin will emulsify the nut milk a little bit and help if it is going to be part of a warming beverage.

When the nut milk is blended and strained you can consider adding some flavour oils from Medicine Flower or some essential oils or spices.  You can add chocolate.  You can add a pinch of Himalayan salt for minerals and flavour balancing and you can choose the sweetener to fit with what you have decided is best for you.  It is about customizing and balancing the milk for what you need.  This may seem overcomplicated but really all takes less than five minutes.

One major bonus for me in making my own nut milks and making elixirs out of them such as our rooibos latte is that I can heat the water only to the temperature I think is ok. This is especially important to me when I am using omega 3 rich oils, nuts and seeds for my milks. The fats in these seeds are less stable than the saturated fats and can be damaged by heat.  I wonder about the wisdom of the packaged flax milks that are becoming so popular in light of this small but important fact.  Rancid oils.  Not exactly my cup of tea so to speak and not exactly that useful for my body either.

I like to add trace minerals, vitamin D and silica to my nut milks and I like to make them using nettle tea or calendula tea as a base.  This makes them taste great and provides my family with more valuable nutrients.

NOW you can use your customized nut milk in a rooibos latte and kick the bean too.