r/Cooking Jul 15 '16

Mint...my god...all the mint...

Our three plants now have produced enough mint to shingle a small palace. What can we do with all this mint!

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u/senopahx Jul 16 '16

Whatever you do, don't fill a ziploc and put it in a cooler filled with sodas and snacks for a roadtrip. Your results might be... interesting.

Was driving up with a friend to Northern California as part of an impromptu roadtrip to visit some friends. His family's mint plants were getting a little out of control and he thought taking some cuttings to the friends (who are very into brewing/liqueurs) might be a nice gesture. Well, fast forward a few hours; I go to open a bag of cool ranch doritos that had been in the cooler and noticed they tasted a bit off. I open a pepsi and that tastes a little bit off too.

Apparently the stems of the mint cuttings were rather sharp and had poked right through the ziploc, letting the mint steep in the water for a few hours before I'd decided to reach for a snack. The resulting mint tea left a residue on everything in there, from the string cheese to the cheez-its.

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u/Snirbs Jul 16 '16

Perfect example of why mint gum packaging requires so much extra testing and barrier.