The summer grilling season is here! Although there are many of us to who love to grill year-round, there is nothing like cooking outside on a beautiful, warm summer evening surrounded by loved ones. Try out this spicy barbecue sauce recipe we’ve created with all sorts of good-for-you herbs and spices. As always, feel free to customize to suit your tastes!

Salads are the perfect spring and summer fare—light, crisp, seasonal, and nutritious! But let's face it, we've all grown bored with salads at one point or another. Like many things in life, it's important to have variation, and when it comes to cuisine, sauces and dressings are a great way to quickly mix things up a bit. 

While any time of the year is an excellent time to enjoy matcha, I do find that the resurgence of spring tends to particularly inspire my interest in this vibrant green tea. It’s only fitting—matcha perfectly embodies the spirit of the season, both in its appearance and its origins.

My family loves fruity vinegars. We use them multiple times a week in vinaigrettes, marinades, barbecue sauces, sipping vinegars, and shrub cocktails.

Having grown up in a culturally diverse area of the country, I was incredibly lucky to be exposed to many different beliefs, forms of art, and my favorite cultural expression—food! I spent many of my formative years with friends whose family origins spanned the globe. One of my closest friends during these years was Middle Eastern, and having spent so much time and so many meals with his family, I developed a real taste for their cuisine. Lucky for me, they enjoyed my help preparing meals and even made me an honorary Armenian for my ability to roll “choreg” with the best of them. I learned many of the traditional spice blends that were used, but when I was first introduced to za’atar, I immediately fell in love, and it remains my favorite seasonings to this day.

Herbal sprinkles are a quick and easy DIY project that will help you fit more healthful herbs into your meals. Instead of having your spices tucked away in the cabinet, keep a few versatile blends on your table, and you’ll find that eating herbs at every meal is easy—when they are right in front of you, you can’t help but use them! Pretty soon, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without such a pleasing array of spices at your fingertips to liven up breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

I probably say this about food far too often, but tom kha is easily one of my favorite dishes. It has the perfect balance of sweet, salty, and sour. The backbone of this flavor comes from the Thai food holy trinity: galangal root, lemongrass, and Thai lime leaves. Back in my early twenties, all I knew of Thai food was arguably the cuisine’s most famous dish, Pad Thai. When my friend suggested I branch out and try this incredible soup instead, I was skeptical, but took the advice anyway. I am so glad I did! Now it’s in regular rotation in my household meal plan, and my daughter gets to benefit from that fateful day I decided to expand my palate.

In my late teens, I was bitten by a travel bug from which I’ve yet to fully recover. I spent my young adulthood on-the-move, visiting and living in a variety of settings both urban and rural, across the U.S. and abroad. Along the way, I learned, grew—and ate! I found that delving into different cuisines offered an accessible, informative, and visceral opening through which to explore new cultures in general. No place I’ve ever lived has provided more culinary cultural windows than the intensely diverse city of Chicago, where, after a long ride north on the CTA Red Line, I first encountered phở. After just a few noodly slurps of this fabulous dish, I found myself flushed, near tears, and tingling from head to toe—in short, I was in love.

While looking forward to a fresh new year, it’s important to take a moment to reflect on the past and the lessons learned along the way. We had a blast creating a variety of botanically inspired recipes for you, from natural body care formulations to herbal remedies that will keep you well all year long. Here are seven selections from 2018 that really stood out:

Ever since I laid eyes on the beautiful pink peppercorns we offer here at Mountain Rose Herbs, I knew they would make a perfect garnish for a sweet/savory treat like chocolate bark. Our pink peppercorns have a bright, sweet, and very peppery flavor—the perfect match for one of our gourmet salts. Little did I know that we also had the ingredients to make the homemade white chocolate to go with it! So this winter season, I revisited my my memories of this childhood treat and embarked on a journey to find a few preservative-free herbal variations to share with my friends and family.

The holidays are here, and that includes the beloved National Cookie Day (December 4th, for future reference)! Over this past year we have published many-a-cookie recipe on our blog and we wanted to share them all in one place for your perusing pleasure. Enjoy these sweet treats in celebration of this special day!