Spearmint Tea- Hot or Cold

I walked into the courtyard of our apartment and smelled MINT! Sure enough, my neighbor was ripping them up saying they were overgrowing the area and just had them piled up to whither and die! I rescued them and found a more useful for them to die. Here's what I did with them and if you have access to fresh mint, give it a try! It's such a refreshing drink: hot or cold.

I pulled all the leaves off and rinsed them. It came out to about 1 cup of packed leaves. Once in a pot with a few cups of water, bring to a boil and immediately turn off the heat, keeping the lid on for about 10 minutes. This will keep the valuable oils from evaporating. Run it through a strainer and add 1/4 cup of sugar to the warm tea; stir until dissolved. This mixture is in a concentrate form, so you can either keep it hot by adding a few more cups of HOT water, or ice it like I did by adding a few cups of COLD water and ice cubes.

A friend of mine said she's heard of adding Ginger ale to it- that sounds amazing but I don't have access to that marvelous stuff here in Taiwan.