hortus conclusus

IN honor of spring, I have composed a floral cocktail that captures the fragrance of flowers and allows you to eat them. Of course, the idea of drinking flowers is nothing new. After all, perfumers must add that nasty compound to keep people from drinking their creations—and apparently this is still a problem in Russia , believe it or not! If you think about it though, we drink flowers ore often that we think about it. Jasmine tea, chamomile and hibiscus drinks are all made of flowers, as is one of my very favorite teas, China Rose . I named my cocktail, rather obviously, Floralia, but you can call it whatever you like. It is very feminine and fresh, and I really like it. First, zest a teaspoon’s worth of lemon peel and put it in a teapot with 1 tablespoon jasmine tea, one tablespoon chamomile tea, and rose petals, if you have them. Pour approximately two cups boiling water in the pot and let it steep until at least lukewarm. In a co cktail shaker, squeeze and then drop in one large ...

I know this is old news for a lot of you, but I need to get my two cents in on everything, so I’m going to tell you what I, la Bonne Vivante, think of Annick Goutal’s Mandragore . First of all, this is an awesome name, conjuring images of village wise women pounding down mandrake roots in mortars and pestles, aphrodisiac concoctions containing dangerous ingredients like belladonna, hensbane, and mandrake,  and metempsychosis, the movement of a soul from one entity to another. And, of course, now the Harry Potter books, where Rowling uses the traditional folklore of the screaming root to great effect. My favorite literary reference to mandrake next to its use in the Old Testament to imply sexual intercourse (see the Song of Songs and Genesis 30 ) is the Great John Donne’s poem of impossibilities: Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil’s foot; Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off ...