FULL MOON BENCHMARKING & ROSEMARY RECIPES
Benchmarking on the February Full Moon:
The peach tree and redbud trees have their first buds on them!
Bright Venus is outside our east-facing bedroom window every morning.
It's been super windy (I've been cargo-biking kiddo to daycare, so I notice this!).
Our volunteer peas have flowers on them. Kiddo is harvesting and eating peas at daycare.
Bright yellow oxalis is everywhere!
Neighborhood chickens seem to be laying a lot of eggs!
Yesterday a crew of crows (maybe six?) were chasing off a big hawk over our backyard. Do they have eggs already?
Rosemary Recipes
Rosemary has been showing up everywhere in my life right now. So I'm sharing my favorite rosemary recipes below for the February Full Moon. More musings on Rosemary and some recipes for hair rinse here.
Rosemary Buttercream
Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter
3-4 sprigs rosemary
3 cups powdered sugar
1 T heavy cream
1/2 t kosher salt
Bring butter to a boil for one minute in a saucepan with the rosemary sprigs in it. Remove from heat and let steep with lid on. After 90 minutes, strain out the rosemary sprigs.
Cream room temperature rosemary-infused butter with all other ingredients.
This works well for a cake or eating by the spoonful!
The cake shown above was for a February birthday and made with a gluten-free almond cake, fresh lemon curd and this rosemary buttercream.
Rosemary Mocktail
Ingredients:
3 sprigs rosemary
1 cup sugar (more or less to taste)
6 ounces water
1/4 cup strawberries
Directions:
Bring sugar, rosemary, water and strawberries to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and simmer with lid on for 15 minutes.
Let steep for 15 minutes with lid on, then strain and preserve the liquid.
You can try this with other fruit as well depending what is in season or on hand!
Use in many cocktails or mocktails that call for flavorful simple syrup such as this lovely mocktail:
1 ounce Rosemary-Strawberry Simple Syrup
1 ounce pureed strawberries
4 ounces carbonated water
Immuni-Tea
Make this lovely tea with ingredients you have on hand. I don't measure, but add all, or some of the ingredients listed below to the pot intuitively, depending what I have.
Ingredients:
Orange peel
Onion
Astragalus
Rosemary
Ginger
Fennel
Bring to a boil and then immediately reduce to a simmer with lid on for 10 minutes. You can steep as long as you like! I recommend keeping the lid on while steeping.