Stop and smell the...Lavender!

Well folks, its the most wonderful time of the year again! 

No i'm not thinking it's christmas in June, what I am talking about is....Lavender! 

Oh the heavenly smell. The beautiful,deep purple color. The tons of uses for it both culinary and medicinally. There are like a thousand reasons to love lavender. And believe me, I love it. 

And in one blog post I am going to get you(hopefully) to love it as much as I do!

A butterfly enjoying our lavender patch!

Lavender. The name itself just sounds good. In fact, its name derives from the latin verb to wash, and both the Romans and the Greeks used it to scent their baths and soaps.

Medicinally, Lavender boasts a modest amount of uses. 

*Its profound relaxing,calming and uplifting effects make it great for helping headaches and dispelling mild depression and melancholy. It is one of the best herbs to use in the bath to relieve stress, tension and insomnia. 

Lavender's effectiveness as a traditional antibacterial, antifungal, and antiseptic agent has been confirmed by numerous clinical studies*.

It works in treating a variety of infections like staph,streps colds and the flu.

For beauty purpose it's hard to find a better smelling herb than lavender. You can drop essential oil of lavender into lotions,shampoos, body washes. You name it. 

Lavender infuse oil is great for massages and a sore tired body in need of some R&R.

One way we use Lavender is in our face pillows. I keep one at my bedside and whenever I need some calming down I grab that pillow and inhale. It also works great for headaches and insomnia. And it's the perfect size to stuff in your purse for long car rides or vacation where the baby won't stop crying, your husband won't stop and ask for directions and you really want to just join in with baby and howl.

Oh life. 

Good thing God gave us Lavender.

On the culinary side of things, Lavender does have a very distinct flavor.

We have used it in lemon lavender cake, lavender lemonade and we have yet to try some lavender shortbread cookies. 

I'll type out the recipe for the bread here for those of you who want to try it out!

Lemon Lavender Cake

1cup. unsalted butter-room temp.

2 cups. sugar

3 cups. flour

4 large eggs.

1 cup. buttermilk

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tbsp. lemon zest (optional)

Juice of one large lemon

1 generous tsp. dried lavender buds.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs at a time fully incorporating after each addition.

Stop and scrape down the sides with a spatula and resume beating until the mixture looks like buttercream frosting.

Meanwhile, in separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda.

Combine the lemon zest, lemon juice and buttermilk together.

With the mixer on low alternately mix in the flour mixture and buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour, in 3 additions.

Do not over mix, just allow the ingredients to come together.

Stir in the lavender.

Pour into two greased loaf pans. Bake at 325. F for about 50 min.

Check for doneness at 40 min.

Cake is fully baked when a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

When cool pour glaze over.

Glaze recipe.

1 cup powdered sugar 

1 tbsp. cream

Juice of one lemon (more or less depending on your taste)

Whisk together and pour over cooled cake.

Lavender beauty.

Well people there is your introduction to lavender. Try it out for yourself and tell us how you liked it.
Doing more research is a good idea, so dig into some books and sites and learn it up!

Thanks for stopping by,
Gabrielle


* excerpt taken from Rosemary Gladstar's awesome book, "Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs. A beginners guide."