Hi - just for the tea-from-straw thing: SWIM used to do so for several summers and it worked very good - was even better than bought material.
He just chopped and stomped 10 - 20 plants completely with pods, straw and everything, cooked them with water and some citric acid, lemonjuice, ascorbic acid or even vinegar, best for an hour or more, squeezed the liquid through cloth, cooked off excess water and drank it as a tea. (the taste is better if brown, dry, ripe plants are used.) The result left nothing to be desired not even in comparison with street material worth 25$ (ok, it was about 10 years from now in a rather rural area ...) One could also cook (carefull) all water off and store the gunk. I'm sorry if this is not in 100% relation to the threads question but after reading the other replies i thought it might be interesting (er, just for the case you did not already know, of course)...
(by the way - sorry, english isn't my 1. language ...)