Spicy Paloma Cocktail & Mocktail with Herbs
Cocktails and mocktails provide the perfect opportunity to put our favorite botanicals to creative use. Whether mixed with fresh garden herbs, homemade tinctures, or kitchen spices, mixed drinks are a fun and tasty way to enjoy the benefits of herbs and spices—and to apply our love of herbalism.
Minty Lemongrass Oxymel (Without Vinegar)
Oxymels are an herbal extraction of an acid mixed with honey. Usually, when we think about extracting herbal properties with acids, we look to vinegars. But did you know that if you replace the vinegar with a citrus juice like lemon or lime, you still capture the herbal constituents and end up with a drier oxymel that is perfect for summer mocktails?
Our friend Amanda Crooke from the Center for Herbal Studies has kindly shared a simple recipe for a delicious citrus-based lemon-mint oxymel and a lemony, bubbly mocktail that is the perfect refreshing sipper on a hot summer day. We think these are the ideal recipes to get the summer party started!
Spring Pesto Recipes for Health & Vitality
Research compiled by Oregon State University has shown that roughly half of the adult population in the United States doesn’t get enough of the vitamins and minerals that leafy greens supply: 52% don’t get the recommended intake of magnesium, 44% don’t get enough calcium, and 43% don’t get enough vitamin C. Although many of us know that we need two to three cups of leafy greens a day to supply our exquisitely complex bodies with the vitamins and minerals needed to carry out cellular processes and repairs, many of us have trouble eating adequate amounts of those greens.
Dandelion Chive Pesto Recipe for Spring
Research has shown that about half of U.S. adults don’t get enough of the vitamins and minerals that leafy greens provide, including magnesium, calcium, vitamin C, and more. Our bodies need those nutrients to carry out cellular processes and repairs, but many of us find it difficult to get an adequate amount of those all-important greens. Enter… pesto! Pesto is a fantastic way to bring fresh greens and herbs—with all their flavor and nutrients—to your meals. Adding fresh herbs helps our bodies improve nutrient uptake by increasing digestibility, supporting the enzymes and probiotics in the gut, and helping to catalyze digestive processes. When you have pesto on hand, it’s easy to top any cooked food with fresh greens! When you think of pesto, you might think of the delicious basil version, but our friend, herbalist Kami McBride, has four new pesto recipes for you to try, because the world of pesto is bigger than basil.
Flowers Inspire Us Together | Featuring Bevin Clare (Rerelease)
Today’s episode is a rerelease of an excerpt from our spring online Free Herbalism Project hosted on April 8, 2021. This presentation was the inspiring and informative intro with our guest emcee Bevin Clare. Bevin covers a few of her favorite spring flowers and notes their traits as well as some lesser known facts. It’s a fun, short presentation, but we think you’ll have a lot of takeaways from it.
Salad Dressings from Around the World: 4 Recipes for Summer Salads
There are a lot of reasons to love summer, but a big one here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon is the wealth of fresh garden and farm produce. We’re heading into salad season, always a good opportunity to explore new flavors and ways to enjoy the freshest greens, ripest tomatoes, crispest cucumbers, sweetest corn, and more. We’ve got four standout salad dressing recipes from around the world for you to enjoy this season, along with ideas about how to best use them: horiatiki from Greece, wafu from Japan, esquites from Mexico, and tahini-lemon from the Middle East. Enjoy!
Spring Rain Essential Oil Blend + Wax Melt Recipe
I love to live fully within the seasons. I take in all the nuances of the seasonal elements, ebbing and flowing with the twists and turns of the weather and the expansion and contraction of daylight. This mindfulness practice allows me to connect with the “now” and fully appreciate all that the Earth shares with us through her wondrous cycles.
Now, as the spring rains fall and the first blooms of the season begin to unfurl, I feel called to create a new aromatherapy blend that melds with my natural environment. I have found over the years that many seasonal aromatherapy creations are created to match the exact scents of the season, rather than to complement nature’s aromatic offerings. In other words, they try to “outdo” the subtle aromas of nature by making them stronger.
I crafted this “Spring Rain” recipe to highlight the elements of spring while leaving enough room for nature to shine through. The bergamot I used in this blend is light and breezy and allows the fresh blooming flowers to dance with the olfactory senses. Similar to cheery lemon balm, litsea cubeba is added as a symbol of the sun which generously shines longer and with promise. Meanwhile, sweet marjoram offers an herbaceous tenacity, which helps balance the ethereal scents of the previous two oils. And finally, vetiver grounds out the blend, offering its sweet and earthy notes, symbolizing the damp earth.
Meet The Makers: Featuring Kevala Ayurvedic Skin Care
It was not until I found Ayurveda that I began to understand that the things I disliked about myself were the very things that made me perfect and were a beautiful representation of who I was meant to be—a driven, compassionate warrior goddess. Ayurveda gave me permission to love myself and teaches that we are deeply interconnected and yet so uniquely divine!
We are connected not just in spirit, but also to the universe and all its elements. We are vibrant like the sun, we are spirited like the air, and we are patient like the earth. The energies of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha govern the way we look, our likes and dislikes, our tendencies, our careers, hobbies, and so on.
Herbs for Health: 11 Superfood Powders to Sprinkle Into Your Diet
Powdered herbs—whether we speak of culinary spices like cinnamon and garlic powder or nutritive herbs like acai, nettle leaf, and mushrooms—bring together the best of several worlds. They are highly nutritious, easily absorbed by our bodies, wonderfully convenient, and versatile in how we can use them. When stored correctly, herbal powders retain their nutrients, fiber, and flavor for about a year. And they are supremely easy to use. We can cook with them, make tea from them, add them to smoothies and juices, put them in capsules, or simply take them with water. They can also be added to skin and hair-care products and used as poultices for everyday insect bites/stings or minor abrasions. For many of us, herbal powders are the first herbs we ever used: in the form of the dried spices and herbs we add to our food for flavor. Let’s take a look at some of the healthful powdered herbs that are as easy to incorporate into our daily lives as adding salt and pepper to a meal.
Aroma Oils for Spring: DIY Diffuser and Fragrance Oils
Spring is just around the corner, which means it’s time to craft our favorite spring aroma oils for diffusSpring is in the air, and I’m more than ready to refresh my spirits, feel the sun on my face, and set out on new adventures. With that in mind, I’ve been gathering up my supplies to craft some of my favorite DIY essential oil blends for spring, ones that our Mountain Rose Herbs’ in-house aromatherapist developed with careful intent to clear the mind of lingering winter fog and bring the power and pleasure of aromatherapy wherever we travel, whether it’s a grand European tour or a trip to the grocery store. Warmer days are just over the horizon, which means now is the perfect time to create diffuser blends, fragrance oils, and aroma sprays in preparation for the annual blossoming of spring.er blends, fragrance oils, and aroma sprays.
