Hasselback Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, & More + Herbal Seasoning Recipes
It’s the time of year when I’m working my way through the last of our stored root vegetables and winter squash looking for ways to extend their lifespan and nutrition. With this in mind, I spent an afternoon last weekend hasselbacking. In its simplest form, hasselbacking is a special cutting method for raw vegetables (also some fruits and even bread) before roasting. The most common version is Hasselback potatoes: the Potato à la Hasselbacken or, in Swedish, hasselbackspotatis. The glory of this cutting/cooking method is that it allows you to get flavorful fats and your favorite herbs and spices down inside the food so all that deliciousness gets roasted in. Plus, hasselbacking makes your food so pretty!
Sprouts: Grow Sustainable Food on Your Countertop
Eating sprouted seeds is an easy, delicious way to capture a botanical’s nutrients, minerals, and vitamins at their peak. Depending on the sprouts you choose, they can be an excellent source of potassium, magnesium, folate, beta-carotene, calcium, vitamin C, and also vitamin K, which is a key vitamin for bone growth and blood clotting. They add flavor and texture to a wide variety of foods: salads, sandwiches, bagels, stir-fries, soups, frittatas, scrambled eggs, and more! These days they’re easy to find at farmers markets, natural foods stores, and in the produce section of many grocery stores, but did you know they are remarkably simple to grow right on your kitchen countertop? All you need is a jar, a sprouting screen or cheesecloth, seeds, and water.
Herbal Chocolate Truffles with Jiling Lin
Tune in as our dear friend, Jiling Lin, teaches us how to make herb-inspired chocolate truffles! She shares how easy and approachable this herbal preparation can be and why weaving wellness ingredients into our favorite treats is a great way to harness the power of plants!
Irish Sea Moss Gel Recipe
Perhaps you’ve noticed that sea moss gel has been trending for a few years now in wellness circles. Made from red algae, sea moss gel is rich in nutrients like iodine, magnesium, iron, folate, vitamin K, and calcium. Bonus: it’s simple to make at home with just three ingredients and provides countless ways to up the nutrient value of your favorite recipes. Sea moss gel doesn’t have a lot of flavor on its own, so while you can certainly dip in a spoon and eat it as-is, its add-in potential is where it really shines! Try adding this easy ocean superfood to a winter soup or a stir-fry, or blend a frozen cube into your morning smoothie for a nutrient-packed start to your day.
Pickled Burdock Recipe for Gut Health
Inulin is a popular supplement right now, and for good reason. It is an impressive prebiotic that provides support for gut and bowel health, and absorption of key minerals, amongst other wonderful things.
As herbalists, we often prefer to take our constituents in whole plant form, and we’re happy to say that there are a lot of delicious foods and herbs that contain inulin. Excited to learn more?
Check out blog.mountainroseherbs.com for the full recipe!
Homemade Elderberry Gummies (Vegan)
We love elderberries for their nutritious immune benefits and delicious flavor, so we’re always excited for new recipes, and right now we’re all about elderberry gummies. Unfortunately, gummies are usually made with gelatin, which is a hard no for our vegan friends. We wanted to create an elderberry gummy that anyone can enjoy, but how do you get a gelatin-like gummy without the gelatin? The key is agar-agar powder! Agar-agar comes from the structure of cell walls in certain kinds of red algea, so this wonder of nature is vegan-friendly and makes a beautiful, shiny, delicious gummy that has a nice “squish” and works especially well in candy molds. If you’ve ever had a Japanese fruit jelly, you’ll recognize the consistency of agar gummies. What a fun way to get a little boost of immune-supporting elderberries!
New Year Reflections & Journal Prompts of an Herbalist
Our botanical sanctuary and primitive homestead in the mountains of New Mexico runs on solar power, and during these shortest days of the year, solar can be in short supply. While this can make keeping up with online work more challenging, it also means we’re more likely to take advantage of the quiet and dark to reflect and reset. As I write this, our usually calf-deep river is raging through the narrow mountain canyon, too deep and fast to cross even in a kayak, much less on foot. The clouds are thick overhead and freezing rain pelts the gray skeletons of the cottonwoods.
I can neither leave our property for supplies nor even turn on most of our LED lights in the cabin, but candlelight and storms certainly make for a cozy atmosphere to consider the year past, and the years yet to come. We are at the cusp of change, a liminal space between the growing dark returning to the growing light, although it will be some time before we’re able to really see that shift. Likewise, internal shifts we choose to make this time of year may take a while to show up in the visible world, but that doesn’t make those changes any less real or profound.
Goal Setting for a Healthy & Fulfilling New Year + Journal Prompts
The transition from the old year to the new is a perfect time to reflect on our lives and determine what is working for us and what isn’t, what we should nurture, and what we should jettison from our day-to-day. We are blessed to share our friend Kiva Rose Hardin’s beautiful reflections on measuring time in the rhythm of the botanical world and developing deeper relationships with plants.
Journaling can be an effective and transformational part of the process—writing down thoughts, ideas, and insights can provide structure as well as a record of what we’re learning and where we hope to head in the future. Happily, Kiva offers some wonderful writing themes to help us all think about relationships, transformation, gratitude, and more! Happy New Year, friends!
Best Essential Oils for Winter + Diffuser Blend
Now that winter is here, we’re all thinking about cozy comfort and holiday cheer. We love our fuzzy blankets and immune-supporting teas, of course, but we’re also big fans of the soothing comfort and gentle uplift that aromatherapy brings to our wintery days.
Mulled Cider Recipe With Warming Spices
Mulled wines and ciders have been around since ancient times. Mulling is simply infusing spices, usually through heat, into wine, beer, or cider. In ancient Greece, mulling herbs in wine was a potent medicine-making method, but today mulled ciders and wines are primarily festive drinks that are often imbibed during the winter holidays. We say it’s time to combine old-school wellness-supporting herbs with new-school festive mulled ciders!
This comforting, delicious, healthful mulled cider recipe includes traditional warming spices such as cinnamon, allspice, and cloves with the botanical boost of immune-supporting elderberries and astragalus. Salud!
