Enjoy Liquid Refreshment Today with Lavender Rose Lemonade: a recipe
Liquid refreshment keeps all your tissues alive and energized, especially when you can work straight from your garden or a friend’s, with the beauty of organic flowers. Now is the time to be enjoying and harvesting roses and lavender. Where can you play? Who can you enjoy it with?
LAVENDER ROSE LEMONADE
A translucent pink, friendly, and gently aphrodisiac beverage
Time: 1 hour plus a few minutes (think ahead)
Makes: 2 cups
1 cup water
1 Tablespoon dried organic lavender flowers
1 teaspoon dried organic rose flowers
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon zest (freshly grated lemon peel)
1 more cup of water
2 Tablespoons coconut sugar or raw honey
3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Bring one cup water to a boil, pour it over the lavender, rose and lemon zest in a stainless steel or pyrex bowl; stir. Cover and let sit one hour. Strain. Warm the second cup of water, take it off the heat and stir in the sweetener and lemon juice. (Do not heat the honey!) Pour the two mixtures together, add the rest of the ingredients and enjoy liquid refreshment immediately!
Effects: calms Vata, neutral for Pitta and Kapha.
This drink supports: production of digestive juices (lemon, lime, lavender), plasma, blood, temperature modulation (the lemon zest), nerves (rose and lavender), gentle aphrodisiac (the rose).
Comments: Here rose, lavender, and the coconut sugar all balance the warming quality of the citrus well.
Notes:Our recipe testers had challenges sourcing organic rose petals. As one tester wrote, “but I wouldn’t want to anger the gods by having too divine of an elixir anyway! A nice method to try with other (edible) flowers as well, maybe?” Do play!
Thanks to Western herbalist Lynn Childson for her inspiration on this recipe.
Organic Rose Petals or Lavender: How to have your own organic flowers early in spring. Nurture or find an organic rose bush or lavender plants. When they bloom in late spring or early summer, make an offering to them in appreciation for their beauty with a song, a pinch of cornmeal, whatever speaks to you. With a scissors cut off whatever flowers you want to gather into a basket or bowl (not all of them of course). Spread them on a cookie sheet to dry in a dry place. When they are dry (here in the arid southwest, this is in less than 24 hours) store them in a clean dry glass jar. The flowers will keep for a year.
VARIATION:To calm Pitta and Kapha, add 1 Tablespoon or more organic aloe vera gel or juice per cup. Or use lime juicein place of the lemon for Pitta.
VARIATION:For a delicious drink with anti-inflammatory action, soak 1 Tablepoon chia seeds in 1 cup of the LAVENDER ROSE LEMONADE for 30 minutes, stir in 1 Tablespoon of aloe vera and ½ teaspoon fresh grated ginger (thanks to Renee Lynn).
Special offer now through the end of May: Purchase your print copy of Amadea and Renee’s new Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda, Delicious and Nourishing Recipes from All Seasons now and receive a free eBook, Cleansing and Sustaining Recipes. Get the same great SPRING recipes and photos as in the print book, downloadable to your devices. Available only at www.EasyHealingDrinks.com.
Amadea Morningstar, MA, RPE, RYT is an expert in Ayurvedic health care. She meets you where you are, and is available with respect, bringing over 40 professional years of experience, academic training and hands-on knowledge to her sessions and books. Sessions with Amadea include Western nutrition, Ayurvedic nutrition and herbalism, Polarity Therapy, Marma therapy, Integral yoga, and nature-based approaches. She and Renee Lynn are co-creators together of the Easy Healing Drinks series.
Photographs by Renee Lynn