Introducing our soap and culinary projects

Saturday was our launch of Lauren’s soaps and they were a hit!  Especially the lavender oatmeal soaps, which sold out.  Looks like Lauren will be busy this week making more soap.  I also finished a few of the eye pillows (little satin rectangles filled with flax seed, rice and lavender), which are just wonderful. I’m excited to share these as well and am working to release our store front within the next few weeks.  

On the lavender front, the 6 new rows are in -- 3 of Grosso and 3 of Hidcote Giant.  Right after we planted the grosso, we had one heck of a rainstorm, complete with some mild mud flows that covered up about a quarter of the new Grossos.  Mark and I were able to dig them out the next morning so we only lost 3 plants.  This has been an unusually humid summer and I know lavenders don’t like that, so I’m just hoping they all survive.  

I have also started a small culinary field in my garden, planting a few small rows of Hidcote and Munstead to start and then adding plants as I clear out more area.  I’m really excited about the culinary front because I’ve been collecting recipes.  I made gluten-free lemon lavender shortbread with grosso buds (my own recipe) and it was delicious! So delicious, in fact, that my son Noah wolfed them down without any comment about either "gluten-free" or "lavender."  The recipe is below if you're interested.  I imagine it will be even better when I use culinary lavender. Lemon lavender bars are next! 

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Gluten-free lemon lavender sandies

• ½ cup butter
• ⅕ cup sugar
• 1-2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped lavender buds (perhaps use a coffee grinder)
• 1 and ⅓ c gluten-free flour
• powdered sugar
  

Blend butter, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, lavender until smooth.  Add flour.  Beat until dough forms.  Refrigerate for one hour.  Roll into balls and bake at 325 for about 20 min.  Roll in powdered sugar.  


Note:  this can obviously be made with regular ol' flour as well...just wanted to try the gluten free version myself.

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