Photo of staghorn sumac by Dendroica Cerulea, Flickr Creative Commons license.
**
Rose hips, pink clover, chamomile flowers. They're all tea ingredients, and I knew about them. But in my secret heart, I'd always thought that tea wasn't the most interesting thing to do with gathered leaves, berries, and rose hips.
Surely, cake was better, right? That's what I thought until last weekend, when a rainy, cold Sunday met my previously frozen bag of deep red-orange staghorn sumac(Rhus typhina) branches and a warm hangout with friends.
**
Rose hips, pink clover, chamomile flowers. They're all tea ingredients, and I knew about them. But in my secret heart, I'd always thought that tea wasn't the most interesting thing to do with gathered leaves, berries, and rose hips.
Surely, cake was better, right? That's what I thought until last weekend, when a rainy, cold Sunday met my previously frozen bag of deep red-orange staghorn sumac(Rhus typhina) branches and a warm hangout with friends.
**
In the 1928 house under the deep firs, friends Delia
and Toliver had returned from their circuit of western Turkey,
bringing me a large glass evil eye charm (extra-large, they said, to make up
for my traveling), a red, orange, and yellow woolen scarf, some date-like
fruits, and three kinds of apple tea (dried bits; large and ear-like dried bits;
and some that were encapsulated neatly in green tea bags, ready for quick dunking at every cafe in Istanbul).
Delia and I had just gone for a walk to gather bright red and orange Madrona (Arbutus menziesii) berries
and stored them for later use.
When we returned, Delia opened her freezer and said, “What’s this?” I suddenly recalled the sumac
branches I’d picked a week earlier while walking from their house (where I was housesitting) to the grocery
store. There were the rust-red berry branch clusters, in a freezer
bag in Delia's hand.
Delia excitedly compared the sumac’s berry-hued branches
with the jar of ground sumac that she’d brought back from Istanbul
We marveled at this, gazing at the distinctive “stag-horn”
shaped clusters of cinnabar-colored berries, and at the ground spice from bustling marketplaces half a
world away. It was interesting to think of the
same (or a very similar) plant growing in Asia Minor ,
being ground for market consumption and baked on z’aatar bread and other
savories.
We tasted the ground sumac. It was distinctly lemony, with a
slight salt tang. Delia seized her laptop and found that ground sumac often includes
salt for longer storage purposes.
Photo of staghorn sumac by Liz West, Flickr Creative Commons license.
**
Immediately after picking my sumac, I had lost interest in
it, wondering if it was too rain-sodden and late-in the season. (It had actually been pretty late in the season for sumac –they’re typically gathered in late summer – but in the Northwest’s cool temperatures, sometimes plant seasons are extended.) I’d let the sumac dry a bit,
then tossed it in the freezer bag and forgotten it.
But Delia, thorough and art-minded like the graphic designer
that she is, opened the bag and arranged the antler-shaped branches on a
butcher block. Tidily, she began to separate the berries from the branches.
Soon the wooden block was scattered with tiny, slightly fuzzy, round berries. We looked at them, marveling at the fuzz. Delia put them in a colander under a bright lightbulb to
let them dry.
A couple of hours later, we dropped the berries into the
tea-leaf (filter) receptacle of a glass tea pot, and poured in boiling water.
Photo of sumac berries in strainer inside tea pot, by Jody Marx
**
In the companionable household, sitting at a dining table
covered with bright treasures brought back from Turkey
After ten minutes, Delia brought out her new gold-rimmed Turkish
tea glasses, and poured out the amber-red tea. To each tall, ceremonious glass we added a brown sugar cube
from a dish on the table, and stirred.
On that gray, rainy day we drank bright, warm tea with a
native, lemony flavor that filled and warmed us. Sumac tea is sometimes called sumac lemonade or Indian
lemonade. It felt wonderful to drink something from immediately
outdoors, that had been carefully and artfully prepared. It came out tasting
of the earth and of lemons and heat, all the layers of something wild.
Photo of sumac tea by Jody Marx
**
**
