I was poking around on the internet and discovered that, while it is difficult and takes a ton of mint to make peppermint oil, some of my homegrown mint supply can easily be used to make extract for use in baking, hot drinks or for making homemade mint candies. I am thrilled with how easy it is. Or will be, in my case, as I haven't made it yet. All it takes is a little alcohol (vodka), a few mint leaves and more patience than anything else. Just put it all in a jar and let it sit for about six weeks while giving it a shake every day or two. At the end of that time you have good old homemade peppermint extract. And it works the same for other types of extracts, so I think I'll try some lemon, too, as lemon is another one of my favorite flavors. And maybe orange, as I use that fairly often also...hmmm. There are even homemade imitation maple extract recipes out there using fenugreek seeds and vanilla bean. There are many sites with recipes, but the methods are all basically the same. Here is one that I liked: http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/10/diy-mint-extract-recipe.html
This sounds interesting just one problem. This is some very expensive extract. Vodka isn't cheap to buy unless you know how to make that at home as well. Anyway, I think its probably cheaper to buy the extract from a store I know we don't know what in the store bought extract but I still think its less expensive that way.
Not so expensive. I bought a pint today for under four dollars. Not the best vodka, probably, but it doesn't need to be to make good extract. And that's a lot of extract for very little money or effort. Mostly it just takes a bit of time and patience. I'm betting it works out very nicely. And it occurs to me that I have some friends in my church group who make regular trips to Mexico. I think I'll ask one of them to bring me back some vanilla beans as real vanilla extract is a bit pricey for me considering how much I like to bake. And the beans are out of the question for me from the grocery stores. I hear, however, that they are quite a bit cheaper in Mexico. In about six weeks or so I'll let you know how my peppermint and lemon extracts turns out.
The mint that I planted seems to be thriving, and I think that it is spreading also. I am not going to do anything except let it spread this year; but by next year; I should have enough mint plants that i can use some of the tops and try making a mint extract. I love flavored coffees, and also I like mint tea; so I think that having a mint extract to add to the coffee or tea would be an awesome idea. Thank you for sharing the idea, and i am now going to check out the webpage that you listed. A similar thing that i was reading, was to take lemon peels and soak them in vinegar, and then spray it on your pets to deter fleas in the summer. I have some that i put under the kitchen sink, and then forgot about. I guess it is time to take it out and put it in a spray bottle. My dogs are mostly in the house; but bug season is here, and the fleas will be showing up out in the yard, too, probably, although we have not seen any as of yet.
I've had a bottle of orange peels soaking in white vinegar for some time now. It's supposed to be good as a cleaning agent. Now I'm wondering if it might work for fleas, too, since orange is citrus.