Highland Tea

You’ve probably noticed that since returning to live in Turkey,  I’ve become partial to a thistle. Three posts so far on cooking and identifying them. This post comes to you from Scotland, a country proud of its national prickly flower. I haven’t actually seen one growing yet but I was chuffed to find in Inverness Tesco, a box of Thistle tea . It went straight into my trolley and although it tastes pleasant enough, it’s a bit bland and I can’t help feeling I’ve been mildly deceived. There is a big picture of a purple flower on the front of the packet but in the very small print on the side the ingredients list just 4.5% thistle to 95.5% black tea.  When I get home I’ll be drying the flowers to see if I can get a better ratio.  This is my first time in Scotland since the late 1970’s  and all I can remember about my first trip was the non-stop rain and bouncing  through the highlands in an ancient Land Rover Defender with wooden bench seats, sharing the already cramped vehicle with a long dead seal in a black plastic bag. This week’s trip coincided with the best weather Scotland’s ever had, (well for a long time). It was 27 degrees when I landed, which was about 5 degrees hotter than Bodrum and cruising along in Range Rover with defunct air conditioning,  I was thankful that there were no dead aquatic animals in the back.