Roots and Leaves

Herbal lemonades, you ask?  Oh yes, one of my favorite summertime treats!  When I was a kid I used to really dislike lemonade.  I’d rather drink water, if you can imagine that.  Then when I got a little older I found out about lemonade mixed half and half with beer–oh yummy!  Sweet, tart, fizzly and just a little bit alcoholic, it became my number-one-summer-swinging-in-the-backyard-hammock drink.  You should try it with your dandelion beer (see recipe a few posts back)!

From the lemonade/beer experiment,  I moved on to other lemonade ideas.  Iced tea mixed with lemonade is also delicious.  Then my friend Jennephyr showed me her Lavender lemonade and I was lost— hooked on herbal lemonades.

These days, the herbal lemonade I make most often is a combination of siberian ginseng, astragalus, hibiscus and lavender.  See, I really like how astragalus and siberian ginseng make me feel, but I don’t like how they taste.  And I love hibiscus tea, and I love lavender in general.  So… voila!  Combined with a simple lemonade recipe, the delicious flavors of lemon and the other herbs pretty much overpower the sawdusty taste of the ginseng and astragalus, and you get to enjoy your medicine as a treat.

This won’t work with all nasty-tasting herbs, but it seems to work pretty well with these two.

Not too long ago I noticed—I think it was in the Bozeman Chronicle, but I’m not sure—a recipe for ginger lemonade.  I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds fabulous.  Ginger is a warming herb and will help settle your stomach, bring on a sweat in a fever, and improve your circulation.  Lemon is cooling, stimulating to the digestion and stimulates the liver and gall bladder.  So it might seem like in combo these two wouldn’t do so well, but not so!  Think about how your body cools itself when it’s hot out:  you sweat, and in an ideal climate, the liquid from your sweat evaporates on your skin which makes you cool down.  I think Ginger can probably aid in this process by improving the circulation to your peripheral arteries and making you sweat sooner.  So while it might seem more intuitive as a warming winter drink, I think Ginger tea would probably help in summer as well.  Mixed with lemonade, it can’t possibly go wrong!

So how do you make an herbal lemonade?   Easy!  Just make an herbal tea, and use it instead of water in your favorite lemonade recipe.  Try it with all your herbs!  I think Lavender lemonade is far and away my favorite still, though.  I even like lavender lemonade mixed with beer.  Quite a combo.  But very … very … yawn … ah … relaxing.

I throw about 4 tablespoons of lavender flowers into 2 quarts of boiling water.  Steep it 10 minutes then strain the flowers out and mix the tea with honey and lemon juice to taste (I use about a cup of each).  Put lots of ice in it until it’s chilly and somewhat diluted, then drink up!  Also good served with a mint leaf, or a few frozen raspberries floating around in the bottom.

You can use any herbal tea with this recipe.  Try it with Basil! Try it with licorice root!  Ginger!  Sassafrass!  Who knows what great taste sensation you can come up with.  But you don’t have to use my recipe.   You can just run on down to Albertson’s and get one of those cans of frozen lemonade, pop it open and use your herbal tea instead of water when mixing it up.

Before you know it you’re going to be like me, with a constant gallon of strange-colored, sweet-tart delicious liquid in your fridge.

Enjoy!

We’re not talking about a Spice Girl here, you know.  We’re talking Ginger, the spicy-spice herb, the great nausea-healer, tummy-settler, Punkin-pie spicer, Oh Ginger!  So sweet and hot and strong…

When I was a kid I had a dog named Ginger.  She was a spicey one, all right.  Lots of energy, lots of fire and excitement and joy.   I’m not meaning to babble about my dog here either, I do want to get to the plant eventually—but it’s interesting how Ginger-pup did have that gingery temperament.  I wonder if we named her somehow knowing how she would turn out, or if she turned out that way because of the energy of her name?

Or maybe it was just dumb luck.

In any case.  Ginger the plant.  Last spring I was in Long Beach CA with my friend Tami, visiting her friend Samo who lives in a lovely little bungalo on a quiet street filled with flowers.  It was my first sojourn to the LA area, and staying there, quietly soaking up the sun in Samo’s pretty garden, I understood finally why it is that people put up with LA’s traffic.  It is BEAUTIFUL down there in April and May!  I’d left a snow storm behind in Great Falls, and every part of my body was thoroughly enjoying soaking up the balmy weather and sweet air.  Samo told me that one of the best things about living in Long Beach was that she has something blooming in her garden all year round.  Imagine that!  Tami showed me her favorite plant, which unfortunately was not the one blooming just then.  It was a ginger plant.  Wow!  I’ve only ever seen ginger in the produce section of the grocery store, those big knobbled knotted chunks of rhizome.  Somehow I’d never imagined it as a growing living thing. 

Well, you know.  Remember when you were a kid and (unless you grew up on a farm) thought that milk grew in cartons and meat just came that way, neatly wrapped in packages?  What a disconnect, to put together that cow grazing in the field with the hamburger on your plate, or the milk in your glass. 

So I guess it was kind of the same thing with the ginger plant.  I mean, intellectually I knew it was a plant that produces a flower and grows in tropical areas, and the part used is the rhizome (which is kind of like an addendum to the root system).  But to actually see one growing was like a miracle.  I wish I’d been there to see the flower.  From what I hear, it’s a lovely mellow creamy yellow and it exudes a fresh, sweet, spicy scent.  I can imagine, given the wonderful sweet zinginess of the rhizomes.

I carry dried Ginger in my store, both powdered and chopped.  I like to use the powdered herb for recipes (like pumpkin pie, of course, among others) and the chopped herb for teas and also some recipes like the beer and wine recipes I mentioned earlier.  I also like to use fresh juicy ginger rhizomes grated in salads, sprinkled in my morning oats, and sometimes sliced into my bath (it’s awesome, you should really try that sometime!).

Once a couple of years ago I was helping a friend move and she gave me a huge bagful of frozen ginger rhizomes.  I chopped them up into chunks, threw them in a double boiler with a bunch of turbinado sugar, and simmered it practically all day long.  What I ended up with was some of the tastiest, spiciest, yummiest candied ginger I’ve ever eaten.  I imagine you could do this with raw unfrozen ginger as well, but I haven’t tried that yet.

Stay tuned!  More about Ginger in my next post!