I remember the first time I ate a bagel. It was 1982 and I was teenager from the mountains of Oregon on her first trip to the East Coast. I saw Amadeus on Broadway, I ate Cuban food for the first time, and I went to a wonderful outdoor marketplace that was populated by a fascinating mix of locals, Amish farmers, and Orthodox Jewish craftspeople. While the farmers hosted an auction of horse-pulled buggies and farm equipment outside, I wandered the home-goods end of the event, where I discovered a man making handmade bagels. He had a steaming pot of water at his elbow, and a big catering oven at his rear, and was hand-forming rings of wheat dough as he chatted to passersby. I got sucked in by the smell and bought a perfect bagel accompanied with a side of herby cream cheese. And then there were arias, and the heavens opened, and a great light shown down… which is to say, it was amazing!

Blending botanical perfumes using essential oils is one of the beautiful ways that we can incorporate pure oils into our daily lives. There’s nothing quite like blending a favorite floral aroma with a little spice or a little citrusy zest and grounding it with a rooty, earthy scent. But there are many ways that perfume blending can go awry! Just because we love the aroma of lavender, and geranium, and vanilla doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll love the three together. To keep aromatic perfume blends balanced, there are a couple of essential oil categories we need to keep in mind. As we say in the Herbal Academy’s Natural Perfumery Course, “Although training one’s nose to distinguish subtle nuances of scent takes years, there is always value in improving one’s scent awareness. One can identify note, fragrance intensity, fragrance category, and eventually, the subtle difference within a fragrance category.”

Lately I have been thinking a lot about how to reduce the presence of plastic in my life. With the recyclability of plastics becoming more and more of a question mark, and a disheartening one at that, the place that I keep arriving at is to just try as hard as I can to remove plastics from the equation altogether. The kitchen was the first place I started with my sustainability makeover. I slowly began to change my shopping habits so that I would wind up with less leftover single-use plastics at the end of the week. It wasn’t easy but it was incredibly liberating; it eased my conscience a bit to know that I was able to take steps toward a greener lifestyle. As my interest in living more sustainably snowballed, I began seeing problems everywhere I looked in my house, particularly with my cleaning products, and especially with my bathroom cleansers.

There has been a lot of talk about self-care lately, and with good reason. With this last year weighing heavily on many of us, there is a renewed focus on the ways in which we can offer ourselves some TLC. One of my favorite ways of having a quiet moment with myself this time of year is to go on long walks and hikes. Nothing brings me a sense of calm more than adventuring outside with my pup. Unfortunately, my feet do not seem to feel that same serenity after a long walk, and recently my attention was brought to one area of my body that I routinely neglect—my feet!

Roughly every 24 hours, we roll out of bed and ready ourselves to take on another round of life. We call this “facing the day,” and with good reason. We experience a huge portion of our lives face-first—the sun, wind, and wet of the weather; the scents, textures, and flavors of our daily meals; the touch of a loved one’s kiss on our cheek; the critical informational exchanges conveyed through our expressions—and each of these encounters leaves its mark of experience behind. That’s A LOT of responsibility for one small part of the body to handle, so it’s important to give your complexion the nutrients it needs to repair and fortify itself for the storms, sensations, and smiles ahead!

Being a bona fide condiment collector and aficionado, I was stoked when my colleague Jessicka requested that I investigate and write about “hot honey”, which is making its rounds in the gastronomic blogosphere. I love the combo of both sweet and heat, so this incredibly simple recipe was a surefire winner for me. Simply put, it’s an infusion of chili peppers in honey (and a dash of vinegar), then strained.

By now, if you’ve been following along with my seasonal cocktail recipes here on the Mountain Rose Herbs blog, you know I have a passion and something of a reputation for making herb-infused spirits. This year on the Spring Equinox, I started thinking about what I wanted to create to celebrate the end of winter. Something fun and fresh, with herbal goodness. Also, I happened to have a couple bottles of my favorite artisan gins hanging about, Desert Juniper from Bendistillery and another from Thinking Tree. So: spring, gin, relief after a long winter. Obviously, my version of an herbal gin fizz was in order.

Of all of the DIY skin and body care products I love to make, share, and write about, lip care products are easily my favorite. It sounds trivial, and it might be, but I have a lip balm recipe for just about every season, mood, and occasion. It’s something that I use so often, it brings me great joy to create new, unique ways of delivering it. And since lip products are so easy to make in bulk, they are always great gifts to share with family members or friends.

Whether you are lactose intolerant or not, learning to make different non-dairy “milks” is a fun way to vary up the nutrients you’re getting in your diet. For instance, hemp seeds contain magnesium and a host of other minerals, as well as a nice profile of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Out of all the nut milks I’ve tried, hemp milk is easily my favorite. It’s got an unparalleled nuttiness that I enjoy quite a bit. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the sustainability of hemp production. Hemp production requires less water than dairy farming, is beneficial to the soil, and can be easily grown organically. 

Bitter melon (Momordica charantia), also known as bitter gourd, has a long history of use in the herbal tradition of Ayurveda. As its common name suggests, this member of the Cucurbitaceae (cucumber family) is very bitter, unlike its many relatives that so commonly grace our dinner table! Even with its strong bitter flavor, bitter melon is utilized in cuisine and herbalism from many areas of the globe, including East Asia, India, South America, and the Caribbean, and it is one of those special plants that straddles the line between herb and food.

Electuary: just saying it is fun. And after a bit of research, I found out that the word likely comes from the Greek word “ekleikhein”, which means “to lick up.” Or perhaps that’s just one of those constantly regurgitated bits of info that gets passed down from blog to blog. Nonetheless, it’s still a fun factoid worth mentioning. I’ve worked in the herbal industry for a decade now, and over time it’s been fun to see what goes in and out of fashion. Just the other day, my herbalist friend Erika Galentin with Sovereignty Herbs posted on social media about her ginseng leaf electuaries (amazing). I’ve seen a few others post about this ancient herbal tradition over the past few months as well. It occurred to me that after attending countless herbal conferences and taking two herbalism apprenticeships, I’ve managed to never have made one of the simplest of recipes: the electuary. As I explained to one of our photographers here at Mountain Rose Herbs, “It’s basically just powdered herbs mixed with honey.”