Lavender Cookies

Yes, you can use lavender in food! Adding a touch of lavender to cakes, lemonade, jellies, and cookies makes for an unexpectedly pleasant tasting surprise. It’s a delicate flavor that smells as good as it tastes.

But when using lavender beware. The old adage that “if a little is good, a lot is better” doesn’t apply here. Too much lavender in foods turns an elegant essence into a sudsy mouthful by making foods taste a bit like hand soap. So go easy on the measuring and enjoy the fresh-from-the-field flavor of lavender.

Here’s a recipe that’s fun to make and share. It’s from The Complete Book of Herbs by Andi Cleavely and Katherine Richmond. Enjoy.

5/8 Cup butter plus more to grease baking sheets

½ Cup granulated sugar

1 egg beaten

1 tbsp dried lavender flowers

1 ½ Cups self-rising flower

Assorted leaves and flowers to decorate

Preheat the oven to 350º. Cream the butter and sugar together, then stir in the egg. Mix in the lavender flowers and the flour.

Grease two cookie sheets and drop spoonfuls of the mixture on them. Bake for about 15–20 minutes, until the cookies are golden. Serve with some fresh leaves and flowers to decorate. Makes about 30.

Fun with Herbs: Wonderfully Green Weeds

One of the more interesting things I’m fortunate enough to be able to do is teach a class through the Derry Cooperative School District - Center for Adult Studies in Derry, NH. I taught a class for the first time with them in Spring 2007, and they were kind enough to invite me to teach again this year.

The course is titled “Fun with Herbs” and is a five week course that covers introductory topics and activities with the smell good, feel good, taste good, wonderfully green weeds. Here’s a description of the class according to the Spring 2008 course flyer:

“Learn the basics of how to use common herbs in your everyday life. This hands-on course teaches you how to plant a small window box garden, make an herbal inspired meal, create a soothing lip balm, blend your own home-made incense, and understand how to harvest, store, or select quality herbs.”

Each Monday evening for five weeks beginning in March, students get to know the plants. They get their hands dirty planting, cutting, cooking, blending and using herbs in ways they may not have tried before. The course focuses on just a handful of plants, which gives each student time to get to know each plant individually and to gain a working knowledge of what they are, how to use them, how to grow them, and how to harvest and store them.

The best part about the class work, other than working with the plants themselves is of course getting to know the students. During the first class I taught, I was pleasantly surprised by the sincere interest and enthusiasm of the six women in the group. Despite their different backgrounds and lives, they made an instant connection and were swapping contact information and sharing resources, tips and recipes without hesitation.

In today’s world of drive-through food, frenzied work-loads and over-scheduled lives, the simple pleasure of women gathering around a table to learn, talk, laugh, and share stories is a simple pleasure that I treasure. Taking time to interact with each individual person and to learn about them is refreshing. Taking time to slow down, be present and experience the smell, texture, and taste of the plants, is rejuvenating.

Teaching this course is as much fun for me as it is for the students who attend, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend my late-winter/early-spring evenings sharing the lessons of herbs - the wonderfully green weeds.