Do you have leftover apple peels from making sauce, pie, and other seasonal apple dishes? Instead of tossing them in the compost, simmer the peels on the stove for a sweet scented tea.
This is technically a tisane rather than a tea, although you could add apple peels to a cup of black or green tea. What we do is forgo the tea leaves and simply simmer a handful of organic apple peels in a saucepan of water for 5-10 minutes.
Your kitchen will smell amazing, and the drink has the delicate flavor of apples and any other whole spices you add, such as a cinnamon stick, cardamom, or cloves. Honey and lemon are also good additions. Red apple peels impart a lovely shade of pink, but any peels are tasty.
If you live someplace where fall weather hasn't quite arrived and you can't imagine drinking hot tea (ahem, Los Angeles, we're looking at you!), this is also delicious chilled.
Related: 5 Good Uses For Your Apple Peels
(Image: Emily Ho)
5 Things Paris Taught Me About Travel
Recipe: Ham, Cheddar & Chive Egg Bakes
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Bacsac Bacsquare 04...
Apartment Therapy's Sofa Shopping Guide
Nikki’s Sweet and Cheery Print Studio
It sounds like Turkish Apple Tea.
Emily, thanks for sharing your apple tisane! Love using citrus peels when making iced tea ... SO deeelish! Using apple peels sounds wonderful ... especially knowing how rich fruit peels can be in scent & taste. I often scent & humidify my home with a simmering pot of water, fruit peels & cinnamon stick. A dear friend once thought I was baking when she stopped by ... she had to know the name of my air freshener once she recovered from her disappointment that there wasn't a cobbler in the oven (lunch & chocolate helped), :-)
This might sound really weird, but slivers of beetroot with the apple peel mellow out the flavour and acidity of the apple and makes a gorgeous pink tisane.
I look forward to trying this apple tisane with organic apple peels. There are still a lot of people that don't know that apples are tops for pesticide contamination; so, I wanted to provide this link to EWG's 2012 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce http://ewg.org/foodnews . I use their free Dirty Dozen / Clean Fifteen app (great reminder when grocery shopping).
I was about to point that out — seems like this tisane could be pretty toxic unless made with unsprayed apples.
Actually David's Tea (a Canadian tea shop) makes a tea with apples and beets (and almonds too) called Forever Nuts. It really is delicious and one of my favourites from there.
@wondercat - I was just thinking the same thing. Although I eat unpeeled, probably-sprayed local apples all the time, so it's probably not that much different. Still, steeping the peels in water seems like it would extract more of the chemicals, which is silly because you'd probably get the full complement by eating them, but still. I feel weird about it. And organic apples around here are hideously expensive and usually from Washington state (I live in New York).
Now I'm kicking myself for throwing away the peels when I made an apple crisp last week (incidentally, I can get organic local apples for $1.60/lb, so I always buy organic now).
I made a big batch of this in October or November (it was great!) after a serious day of making apple butter to can for Christmas gifts. Since I had so much of it, I threw the extra into some swing top bottles to save for later. Cleaning out the fridge yesterday I found a forgotten bottle and I went to pour it down the sink. When I opened it I was surprised with a champagne-esque pop! Seems like having left if alone for so long it somehow carbonated. Any idea what the science might be on that one?
I had used the same swing top bottle in brewing beer in the past but had sanitized it before reusing - though leftover yeast is the only thing I could imagine causing it.
Thanks for posting this. You may or may not know, but apple peel tea was a great favourite of Hitler. But don't let that stop you from making it or drinking it. At his mountain retreat, in OberSaltzburg, he had a teahouse where he used to take his visitors after a pleasant walk. And apple peel tea was his favourite. I had never heard it, and wanted to know how to make it, since I have a couple of apple trees. That's how I ended up here.