No secret here that Roots & Crowns is very Rose-centric. 

Roses are part of all the kinds of products I formulate. Whether it be ingestible, topical, or scent-ual Rose has an absolutely cornerstone in my work.

In celebration of the 6th birthday of my first ingestible product: Beloved Bitters, I've mixed this beverage of yumminess and wanted to share it with you! 

You'll need to prep at least a day in advance to make the infusions, but it's super easy! 

Step 1: 

Infuse tequila (or water) with roses. 

2 cups tequila (or water)
3 tbsp. dried red rose petals 

Combine in clean jar, seal with wax paper and jar lid. Give it a good shake and put somewhere you'll remember to strain it! Kitchen counter is a good choice. Strain 18 hours later if you don't want the Rose flavor to become too astringent. When you strain the tequila/water it will be a reddish/brown color but the pink magic will happen when you mix your beverage!

Infuse simple syrup with roses.

1/3 cup organic cane sugar
1//3 cup recently boiled water
1 heaping tsp. dried red rose petals

Stir all together in clean jar until the sugar is dissolved. Let steep for a full day and then strain. You can keep what you don't use for a couple of weeks in the fridge!  

Step 2: 

Cocktail time!
This is a recipe for 2 beverages. 

3 oz. Rose tequila
1.5 oz. Rose simple syrup
1.5 oz. fresh Lime juice
1 dropper-full of Beloved Bitters

Combine Rose tequila/tea, Rose simple syrup, lime juice in a shaker with ice. Shake, shake shake. Strain into a glass (observe the magic color shift!) with an ice block, preferably with roses inside. Top with Beloved Bitters. Enjoy!

Adam and I made this recipe up in a moment of fun necessity when we realized we were hungry and the only things left in the produce drawer were a head of cauliflower and a few leeks! This was so yummy and so gosh darn easy that we've made it several times since and it's a hit. It would be a perfect dish for Chanukah! 

Servings: 2-4 depending on how hungry you are
Start to finish prep and cook time: just under an hour

• 2 tbsp butter (regular or vegan)
• 2 large leeks, thinly sliced (white parts and light green)
• 1 head of cauliflower chopped up
• 4 cups broth of choice (we used chicken)
• 1/3 cup of white wine 
• sour cream for serving
• fresh dill for serving

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Chop the cauliflower up and arrange it with some oil on a baking sheet. Keep a small pile of cauliflower that you chop extra tiny separate and off to the side of the sheet- these will get extra crispy and be a great topping for the soup. Roast the cauliflower for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, add the sliced leeks to a buttered deep skillet. Sautee the leeks until they are nice and soft- about 5 minutes. Add 1/3 cup of white wine and let it simmer and reduce on low until most of the liquid has been absorbed or gone. Add 4 cups of broth/stock and bring to a light boil. When the cauliflower is finished, gently add it all (aside from the tiny crispy bits) to the vitamix or high powered blender. Pour the stock + leek mixture into the blender on top of the cauliflower, and salt and pepper to taste. Blend for a minute on high. 

To serve: pour the soup into bowls and garnish with a dollop of sour cream, fresh dill, and the cauliflower crispy bits. This soup is also nice served with fresh baguette. 

Enjoy!

 

I sorta just made this up the other day when I realized it was frozé weather but I had a nice bottle of Rioja open and I didn't want to waste it. 

You need: 

• a 750 ml bottle of red wine (mine wasn't entirely full, but it worked anyway!)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup frozen fruit of your choice- I recommend strawberry and pineapple
• 1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
• 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon
• handful of fresh rose petals for extra love

Blend this all in a high-powered blender. Add it to an ice cream maker and turn it on! If you don't have an ice cream maker, add the blended concoction to a ziplock bag, freeze overnight, and blend again right before enjoying!

My love affair with Violet continues this year, and besides making Violet Syrup and up-gaming my Essence of Violet. I decided to make Violet Jam! The inspiration for this project was to use the jam hamantaschen recipe for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which was yesterday. 

Making any treats with violets starts with a morning harvest on a (preferably) dry, sunny day. Though I'm fortunate to have a growing patch of violets in my backyard, I also am fortunate enough to have made a local friend who basically has fields of violets on their property, and allow me to forage as I please. 

Violet Jam Recipe

Yield: Three 8 oz. Jars

Ingredients: 

• 2 cups freshly picked violets
• 2 cups boiling water
• 2 cups sugar
• 1.5 tbsp. either lemon juice or citric acid
• 3 tbsp. pectin 

Method:

Boil the two cups of water in a sauce-pan, wait five minutes and add the violets.

Cover, and let the infusion sit for 12-24 hours. 24 hours is ideal for strong flavor, but 12 works fine if you are in a hurry.

Strain the flowers from the water (you can use these to make ice cubes, or decorate your pastries later on!).

Add the sugar, lemon juice/citric acid, & pectin to the Violet water and bring to a soft boil. Stir for a few minutes to ensure all the pectin gets dissolved.

Skim any foam that might show up on the top away.

Fill your clean jars, close them tightly and store in the fridge. 

Enjoy!

Special thanks to the Flower Cookery book by Mary MacNicol, which includes so many interesting recipes and information about how enjoying edible flowers is woven throughout history and folklore. I find the snippet from the following violet section so amusing, that I had to share it with you!

This season, I've been reminding my partner every day to "just take a teaspoon of Elderberry Syrup a day!" in order to partake in delicious preventative seasonal medicine. This is the season when shaking hands, touching doorknobs, sharing company with folks who swear they're not contagious anymore, etc. etc. all become a bit of a threat, and Elderberry Syrup (which also contains immune super heroes- Rosehips, and fresh ginger juice!) is a good action step to protect our immune systems. 

It's been a minute since I posted any recipes, so amidst the holiday order bustle, I got myself some Meyer lemons, and concocted this simple, tasty beverage. Arguably, if you're worried about getting sick, alcohol might not be the best part of this concoction, so feel free to leave the gin out. Alternatively, you can also make this beverage warm, but then I'd leave out the fizzy water! 

Ingredients:

• 3/4 oz. Roots & Crowns Elderberry Syrup
• 3/4 oz. freshly squeezed Meyer Lemon
• 1.5 oz. Gin of your choice (optional)
• Fizzy water to top it off

Mix two/three top ingredients in a shaker with ice, strain/pour into a glass with an ice block, and top it off with fizzy water. 

It's no secret to anyone following me on Instagram, that I'm a lover of flowers. But of all flowers, Rose is queen! I'm grateful to live in Portland- the Rose City. And I'm even more grateful to live in a house that bursts with the most fragrant antique roses I've ever seen. Roses have a lot of medicinal uses- both energetically and for the skin. So, many of my products are made with Rose. From cradle to grave, Rose brings hope, trust, self-love, self acceptance, and is downright stress-relieving and magical. I'm sure anyone knows this intuitively when catching a whiff of a fresh rose bloom. Last summer I experimented with using roses in my kitchen, and this year since I have a blog, I'm sharing some of the recipes that I've enjoyed, with you. 

Rose Water 

Can be used as a base for Rose Lemonade, cocktails, or even the base for a smoothie! 

• 5-7 Fresh Fragrant Roses (best harvested in the early morning and processed right away)
• Distilled Water 
• Big Pot

This is pretty simple and basic. Just remove all the fresh petals, add them to the pot, and then cover the petals with distilled water. Cover the pot, and heat over a medium heat until it simmers lightly (don't bring to a full boil, and let it simmer lightly on low for 30 min. Cool, strain water into a jar. 

Rose Cashew Ice Cream

I enjoyed this- it's pretty rich, but definitely yummy and floral. It's nice to know that a dairy free ice cream can turn out so well. 

• 1.5 cups Raw Cashews
• 3 cups Water
• 1 cup Organic Cane Sugar
• 3 tablespoons of Rose Water (recipe above)
• Petals of 2 large fragrant roses, and some extra for garnish

First make the cashew mylk by soaking the cashews for 4-8 hours. Strain out the cashews and them to your high speed blender with 3 cups of water, blend on high for a couple of minutes. Strain the mylk in a nut mylk bag, and massage all the mylk/cream into a jar. You'll notice that the cashew mylk is more creamy than other nut mylks, but squeeze as much of it out as you can. I think this is why the ice cream comes out as good as it does! 

Now add the cashew mylk/cream back to the blender along with the sugar, rose water, and rose petals, blend it all together, and move the concoction to a small pot. Heat over a medium flame, stirring the whole time until you notice it thickening and heated. Again, don't boil! Remove the pot, let the mixture cool, cover, and chill in the refrigerator for a few hours to a day. When thoroughly chilled, process in your ice cream maker! Scoop and serve right away. Garnish with some fresh rose petals if you'd like, and enjoy!

Leftovers can be added to your morning smoothie. I really liked layering blended Rose Cashew Mylk Ice Cream on top of a coffee/cacao/maca/ashwagandha smoothie. 

Rose Petal Sorbet

This is my favorite recipe so far!

• 5 large fragrant Roses
• 1 cup of Simple Syrup
• 1/2 cup of Rosé (I haven't tried it, but I bet it would be fine with Rose Water instead)
• Juice of 1 Lemon
• 1 Egg White

You can make simple syrup by heating 1 cup of sugar with 1 cup of water until all sugar is dissolved. Cool this syrup before use. Gather the petals from the roses, add to blender along with the rosé and lemon juice.

Blend on high till petals are blended up, strain into a jar with the cooled simple syrup. Shake together and chill in the refrigerator for an hour or more. Now's the fun part! Beat the egg white until it's "stiff." It took quite a lot of whisking to get the egg white to that point, but it was kinda cool.

Fold the stiff egg white into the chilled mixture. Add the mixture to the ice cream maker! If you don't have an ice cream maker you can use a shallow container that goes in the freezer, and just turn the frozen sides in a few times during the freezing process. (I've only done it with an ice cream maker, and it turned out a perfect consistency!). 

Douglas Fir is one of the most ubiquitous trees in our region here in the Pacific Northwest. They're everywhere, tall and stately, decorating our landscape with sheltering, aromatic, silhouettes. Traditionally, the Doug Fir tree was used in communities of Cascadia for many things including building structures & canoes, using the pitch as skin medicine, and even drinking tonics made from the leaves and bark for colds, coughs, and kidney/bladder ailments. But the way I came to learn about Doug Fir was via its bright green spring tips. I was taught that these tips were like nature's gatorade, and if you're ever lost in the woods, you can chew on these tips for for hydration and energy. They quench thirst and hunger, and have a pleasant lemony-piney sweet flavor. You can make Sun Tea with the tips to make a truly delicious, hydrating treat. 

This year, I decided to play with Doug Fir more than I have in the past, and see what kind of treats I could come up with! I made Doug Fir infused vodka to use in cocktails, a Doug Fir simple syrup that I turned into sorbet, and am drying lots of tips to save for tea! 

Harvesting Doug Fir Tips: while there is a bounty of tips to be found in this region, always make sure you don't take too many from one tree, because these tips are the tree's spring growth, so when we forage the tips, we're pruning the tree! So take your time gathering from a bunch of different trees so as no to leave one too bare. 

Infusions

Anywhere from 1 cup to 3 handfuls of tips work well for each 750 ml. of water or vodka. Some people like to blend up the tips so that there's more surface area, but I have found them just fine without. If you're making Sun Tea, add the tips and water to a clean jar and let it do its thing in the sun for a couple of days. If you're infusing vodka, do the same thing, but keep it in a darker cooler place for a few days (I usually do somewhere between 2-4 days). After the infusion time, simply strain out the solid plant material and enjoy it on its own or mixed in drinks. 

Basic Lemonade (to use in Doug Fir Cocktails!): 

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup fresh lemon juice
• 3 cups of water to dilute

Method: on the stove top let the sugar and water come to a boil, once the sugar has dissolved, allow this syrup to cool completely. Once cooled, mix the lemon juice, 3/4 cup-1 cup syrup, and 3 cups of water. Stir/shake well. Serve over ice with a slice of lemon, or use the lemonade to make a Doug Fir Cocktail! Or honestly, if you want to take a shortcut, you can totally replace the 3 cups of water with pre-made Doug Fir Sun Tea or Doug Fir Vodka, and not even make the cocktail that I list below. I'm sure Doug Fir Basic Lemonade on its own is great, too!

Doug Fir Cocktail/Mocktail

• 1.5 oz. Doug Fir infused Vodka (or Doug Fir Sun Tea)
• 3 oz. of the basic lemonade as outlined above
• 1 dropper of Roots & Crowns Forest Bitters
• pretty ice cubes and/or Doug Fir tips for garnish

Make this in your shaker with any old ice, pour over pretty ice cubes in your favorite glass, and garnish with either a slice of lemon or a Doug Fir tip! ENJOY! This is seriously such a refreshing treat for warm afternoons. 

Doug Fir Sorbet

• 3 cups fresh Doug Fir tips
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup sugar or honey
• 3 tsp. fresh lime juice
• garnishes like chocolate, flowers, or more tips

Bring the tips, water, & sweetener to a light boil. Turn off the flame, cover, and let steep for about half an hour. Remove solids, add the lime juice, mix well, and pour into your ice cream maker! Sorbets take a little longer to solidify in the machine than ice creams do, but my goodness what a simple process. I'm glad I splurged on an ice cream maker in time for sorbet/ice cream season! I got this one. (Yes, in millennial pink! :)) You can use the sorbet kinda soft right out of the machine or let it harden in the freezer. This recipe makes a good quart+ so you can keep some for later on! I also loved adding a scoop of Doug Fir Sorbet to my champagne. It looks beautiful and tastes divine! 

I hope you enjoyed this post and share it will anyone who would have fun with it, too! Tag @rootsandcrownspdx on any photos you post of your creations that were inspired by this! 

Special thanks to herbalist Elise Krohn for first turning me onto these conifer tips, and for inspiring some of these recipes! 

It seems to be a spring thing that we begin doing a lot more events for local businesses. We love that! It's nice to feel the inspiration from what is blooming as we come up with drink ideas, and it's nice to feel the common sense of emerging to socialize within the community. 

Here are two drinks we recently did: one for the new brilliant barbershop, Morehouse Barbershop, and one for Solabee's one year anniversary in their stunning new space. Noteworthy also, is the fact that these are also businesses with whom we've become good friends with. Kale Chesney is now with Morehouse Barbershop, but has been our dear friend for a long time and also is the genius behind all of Roots & Crowns's branding. And Solabee is a group of beautiful women who have embraced Roots & Crowns in community, and is constantly an inspiration for jungle goals in home and heart! 

The Morehouse Buzz

1.5 oz. Dogwood Distilling Gin
.5 oz. Rosemary Simple Syrup
.25 oz. Lemon 
1 dropperful Roots & Crowns Blues Away Bitters

Purple Rain

1.5 oz. Dogwood Distilling Vodka
.5 oz. Violet Simple Syrup**
1/2 dropperful Roots & Crowns Detox Bitters
.5 oz. Lemon
1 dropperful Roots & Crowns Violet Essence 
top with 2 oz. fizzy water 

**The Violet Bundle has been totally sold out! So if you're trying to make your own Violet Syrup for this recipe, check out my blog post on Violets! 

There's something about catching a glimpse of a Violet patch amongst all the Spring green that becomes like a treasure hunt for me. Flashes of purple as I drive down busy streets, and the strength of their scent given how small they are. I love Violets! I started experimenting with violet infused honey a few years ago, and this year I created a little challenge for myself to go full-on violet with my menu and for an upcoming cocktail event that we'll be doing for Solabee Flowers here in Portland. 

What I came to realize, is that making violet syrups comes with a whole array of colors and alchemy! The ratio of Violets to water matters, as does your decision to add acid to the mix.

So play with the volume of violets, and play with the acid (like fresh lemon!) to come out with different potency and colors. It's a fun thing to play at, and the result is tasty! 

                                   

...and with that comes the weird late-winter blues. 

I don't know about you, but I've been feeling pretty low-energy. Adam and I sleep nine hours or more each night, being the early-to-bed, early-to-rise creatures of the Pacific Northwest. I like this pace of life, but I am anxious for spring plants to start sprouting out of the earth, and for the sunshine to return more. 

I cannot recommend self-care baths, night-time and morning rituals, and drinking nourishing tea, enough. If you haven't checked out my You're Ok bundle yet, I think it's a helpful way to curate a good self-care evening in. The new You're OK tea is a good option for calm vibes for any time of day and can be used in the following cocktail/mocktail! 

Here's a recipe for a nice night-cap to keep us well-rested with happy dreams:            

Ingredients:
1 brown sugar cube
Rest Well Bitters
slice Meyer lemon
2 oz Bourbon
ice cube (freeze with camomile if you're feeling fancy)

Soak brown sugar cube with 2 droppers of Rest Well Bitters in glass. Add slice of Meyer lemon and muddle. Top with whiskey, stir well and add ice cube. Enjoy!

*Can be served hot!
*Bourbon can be replaced with steeped You're Ok Tea for non-alcoholic version

**Photos borrowed from the beautiful feature that Beam & Anchor did on me and my work a few months ago**