Recipes: Garden Dreaming Tea and Essential Oil Blend
by Melanie Pores
Ayurveda, the more than 5000-year-old life science from India, emphasizes eating in harmony with the seasons (Ritucharya) and using food as medicine to nourish the body, mind, and spirit. The springtime is the season of Kapha*, when earth and water elements predominate. Therefore, as you enter the transition into springtime, your body benefits from consuming cleansing beverages and dishes. These incorporate foods with pungent, bitter, and astringent flavors that are dry, and light, to help counter the wet and heavy nature of the elements of this season.
Honest Weight Food Coop has an extensive collection of dried flowering plants in the bulk department—including dried lavender, chamomile, and rose petals—along with a collection of healthy dried herbs/aromatics such as fennel seeds, cardamom pods, and dried licorice chips.
Here’s a brief synopsis of the Ayurvedic taste profile (rasa) of the ingredients in my recipe below:
In Ayurveda,
-Rose petals are considered to have a complex taste profile that is a combination of sweet, bitter, and astringent.
-Chamomile is pungent, astringent, and drying.
-Lavender is pungent, astringent, and sweet.
-Grated fresh ginger is light and initially pungent and spicy, with a sweet aftertaste. It balances Kapha due to its heating, pungent, and stimulating qualities.
-Cardamom is primarily sweet, but also pungent.
-Fennel is sweet, pungent, bitter.
-Licorice is sweet and has a mildly bitter taste.
Here is a simple Ayurvedic tea for spring that supports the transition from winter's heavy foods to spring's light, fresh bounty, and helps make a nice winter connection to our dreams of summer gardens.
Melanie’s Earthy Spring Flower and Herb Tea
This warm, light, and grounding tea helps balance Kapha by using dried flowers along with a touch of ginger, cardamom, fennel, and licorice to assist in kindling your digestive fire, known as agni in Ayurveda.
Ingredients
1 tsp dried rose petals
1/2 tsp dried chamomile petals
1/4 tsp dried lavender buds
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
3 cardamom pods
1/4 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp licorice chips
2 cups water
sweetener to taste
Instructions
Bring water to a simmer, just below boiling.
Combine dried flowers and grated ginger, licorice chips, fennel seeds, and cardamom pods in a tea strainer or tea ball or a muslin tea bag (available in the spice aisle) set inside a teacup.
Pour the hot water over the petals and spices to cover.
Steep for AT LEAST 10 minutes.
Strain and stir in sweetener to taste, if desired.
Melanie’s Enchanting Floral Essential Oil Blend
Another lovely way to uplift your spirit is to envision that you are working in your garden, surrounded by flowers.
Our Wellness department has an amazing variety of essential oils and also carrier oils (jojoba, almond, fractionated coconut oil, etc.) needed to create essential oil blends. The next recipe is a lovely springtime flower blend that you can apply on your wrists and inhale. This essential oil blend is great for helping bring down stress levels as well.
Close your eyes, and you will be surrounded by a lovely, enchanted garden of fragrant blooms!
Ingredients & Instructions
Fill a 10 mL glass roller bottle with the following essential oils:
4 drops rose absolute
3 drops jasmine
2 drops lavender
2 drops ylang ylang
Fill the remaining space in the roller bottle with your carrier oil of choice and shake well. I like to use fractionated coconut oil.
Enjoy!
*Other seasons include Vata (late fall-early winter) and Pitta (summer).
Melanie Pores is a retired bilingual educator, an HWFC member since 1978, has facilitated HWFC’s Spanish Conversation Group since 2015-currently on Zoom, Fridays 10am to noon.
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