Decaffeinate your favorite tea at home

Tea--- which is made from the plant Camellia sinensis--- is a useful drink on the ketogenic diet. Plain tea is allowed even as a fasting fluid--- which means, if you are on the 'no-breakfast' plan, you can sit down to the family breakfast table and have a cup while the others eat. You can also use tea as the basis for a 'bulletproof' beverage by adding butter or MCT oil and heavy cream.

Herb teas are not true teas, and the tea-like drink made from peppermint leaves or chamomile flowers is a tisane, not a tea.

There are different forms of the tea plant. Regular tea or black tea is processed and oxidized to a greater extent than other tea. It has the most caffeine of any kind of tea. Pu-ehr tea (my favorite) is a kind of tea which has been aged, and is from older tea plants, and is similar to black tea in caffeine content. Oolong tea is less oxidized, has less caffeine, and a milder flavor. Green tea is not subject to the oxidation process and has less caffeine than either black tea or oolong. White tea is made of baby tea leaves and has even less caffeine than green tea. [Red tea, or rooibos, is not from the tea plant at all and is a caffeine-free tisane.]

To decaf your own tea, simply steep the tea leaves or tea bag for 30 - 45 seconds and discard/reuse the 'tea' from that steeping, which will contain 80% of the caffeine. Then make your cup of tea from the leaves/tea bag.

I reuse my tea bags, as my paternal grandmother did before me. I use regular tea bags, not decaffeinated by the process above, in the morning when I need some waking up. In the afternoon and evening, I use the tea bags I used earlier in the day, which by now have little caffeine. This way an excess of caffeine does not disturb my sleep.

The steep water from home decaffeinating can be allowed to cool and used to water plants. It can also be diluted with more water and put in the cats' water dish.

Dear readers old and new, how has your ketogenic diet been going over the past weekend? Have you seen any great benefits, or are you just hanging on at this point? My blood sugars have been going up a little from my 5-day fasting period, which I guess is normal, but it disappoints me just the same!

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I have a book at my home called Lose Weight with Green Tea by Patricia Rouner.  I didn't lose any weight from it, but the author shared a lot of scientific studies about the benefits of all the forms of tea. If you are a tea lover you can learn a lot from this book!

My favorite kind of tea is Prince of Peace brand Pu-ehr tea. It has an earthy flavor, which I came to love after I grew used to it. My niece Brianna got me a couple of boxes of it for Christmas, but I'm out right now. Sad, sad, sad! But I will soon buy more.

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