Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Lavender (But Were Afraid to Ask)

It was just a week ago that I published my Lazy Mama's Honey-Lavender Ice-Cream recipe. I have some leftover lav-buds and I might make scones out of them (that's a lie, I did it already). I'm still kind of obsessed with the plant. Why?

It's so pretty, sophisticated, retro, tasty, mysterious... It's Jean Shrimpton.

If Jean Shrimpton were French.

So here goes:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Lavender (But Were Afraid to Ask)

1. The name 'lavender' is not directly derived from the Latin 'lavare', to wash, though it was influenced by association. No, it is from 'lividis', meaning bluish (or livid!). It was, however, used to clean and freshen the laundry.
2. There was an identical word in Middle English, 'lavendre', that meant 'laundress'. It also meant prostitute/whore/camp follower and became a surname in the 13th Century.
3. Not only does lavender smell good, it has antibacterial properties. Cf. laundry, camp-following.
4. It also kills human skin cells in a petri dish.
5. Lavender is part of the mint family. So are basil, rosemary, sage, oregano and teak (yeah, the tree).
6. It's considered not only cheesy, but also lucky to plant lavender and roses together.
7. Lavender originated in the Mediterranean and was (probably) spread through Europe by the Romans. They used it in their baths. A pound of it cost 100 denari, which is roughly equivalent to a month's worth of a day labourer's wages. Those shi-shi Roman spas.
8. Lavender repels bugs – so it was actually an affective anti-plague herb, since it kept the fleas at bay. This use continues to the modern day: it can easily be made into an effective bed-bug repellant spray for Montréal's very own version of the plague.
9. Cleopatra is said to have seduced both Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony with lavender (kind of like I did with my husband). The asp that killed her may have been hiding in her lavender bush (... *crickets*).
10. Lavender has about a billion medicinal uses. Mostly it calms things down – it can cure insomnia, anxiety, headaches, eczema, alopecia (through rubbing diluted lavender oil on the affected skin), and acne. It can also clean things, as we see in its use as an anti-fungal and anti-bug and anti-bacterial agent.
11. Lavender reduces physical pain! Patients undergoing major surgery were given lavender-infused oxygen and reported less pain than patients with just the regular O. I say we bottle it and sell it.
12. Lavender reduces emotional pain! Capsules of non-essential lavender oil are sold in Germany, after a study found that they were as effective at chillin' ya out as lorazepam (Ativan).
13. Pure lavender oil is a little dangerous! It takes between 100-300 pounds of lavender to make one pound of lavender essential oil, depending on what it's diluted with. That's about 2600 cups of lavender buds (1 lb. = 13 cups of buds). Highly concentrated. And so...
14. Lavender oil makes you grow breasts! A recent study found that pre-pubescent boys who used lavender and tea-tree oil products (though it wasn't measured in what concentrations) developed breasts, a condition called gynecomastia. Components of lavender oil have been found to mimic female hormones – and suppress androgens. It's theorized the use of lavender oil products may also be related to the early incidence of breast growth in girls.
15. The Greeks called it nardus after the Assyrian city of Naarda, modern day Dohuk, Iraq.

Someone else's picture of lavender scones.
You know it's coming.

I am very much indebted to the Herb Gardener for her great research. Also, Wikipedia and the Online Etymology Dictionary.

The Lazy Mama's Lavender Ice-Cream

My Home-Made Honey-Lavender Ice-Cream.
If I can do it, you can too.

A few years ago my friend Nicole told me about an experience she'd had eating lavender whipped cream. "James and I took it to this dinner party, and it was delicious. But when we were biking home, it was like we were sooo stoned. But we weren't! It felt so weird. Then we came home and fell asleep, like totally passed out. We weren't even drunk."

I nodded, smiled, and filed this under two mental categories. The first was Soporific. The second, Ways in Which Nicole is Better Than Me.

You see, I am not a domestic goddess. I want to sew, but I don't have the patience. I like to eat food but if left to my own devices, I eat yogourt and cereal. I like laundry but my mending pile is so well-established, the clothes have actually come back in style.

But some mamas – those better-than-me mamas – they enjoy making stuff at home. They bake cookies with their kids. They source locally-grown, organic food and prepare it in delicious ways.  They don't consume processed crap and everyone in their family has a healthy relationship to bread. They are beautiful, healthy, strong, beautiful... Did I mention, beautiful? They glow, they cloth-diaper, they accomplish the impossible; their kids eschew candy.

What do I 'source'? I source no-name-brand marshmallow-chocolate cookies at 4am. I wear cosmetics with lead in them and I don't even care (very much). My baby knows where those processed cookies live and feels perfectly entitled to his fair share. I took anti-depressants and anti-histamines while I was pregnant. I'll never be one of those mamas. But I have, in my own way, recently come around to the creation of food.

Making food is awesome. It's like making art – except that, when done right, it doesn't stick around cluttering up your basement. Since I'm married to a fantastic cook, my domain is desserts. Which is kind of a good thing because if you're just getting into making food, it's encouraging when it's delicious. Enter, lavender. Lavender is the most awesome, bestest thing to ever come out of hipster domesticity, knitted bondage gear notwithstanding. It grows in abundance around our neighbourhood (Bernal Heights/Glen Park/Out Mission/Excelsior – yes, in SF you can live in four neighbourhoods), it's purple and in case you didn't know, it's the bush-form of French white linen drying in the sun.

This is the man who makes all my meals.
He's the man-form of French white linen drying in the sun.

Today we're making honey-lavender ice-cream. From scratch. I'm basing it off a Martha Stewart recipe so if you're the kind of person who's interested in doing things the right way, who does things like sifting flour and purchasing special cake tins, click here to follow the original domestic goddess recipe. For the rest of you lazy mamas, read on...


You will need:

• 2 cups whole milk (2% tastes good too)
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup clean lavender buds (about 25 stems)
• 1/3 cup honey
• 5 eggs
• **You can add some natural dye for extra goddess points, if you're feeling fancy. Look below for some suggestions.

Ingredients (cut out the sugar, the honey makes this dessert sweet enough)

Step 1: Making the milk taste like lavender.

• Throw the lavender buds into the milk, put it in a pot on the stove and bring to a boil (leave a few stems out to use as a garnish).
• Once it's reached a boil, remove the pot from heat and let steep for five minutes.
• Strain out buds – don't throw them out, you can keep them for future deliciousness. You could even make lavender whipped cream with them.
  

Step 2: Whipping Eggs.

• While the milk is steeping, blend the egg yolks on medium for 3-5 minutes. You can use a blender or elbow grease. It should be kind of thick. If you forget to keep the egg whites out, don't worry. This will just make the whole thing a bit more frothy. I know, because I did it.

Step 3: Add eggs to milk

• Slowly add eggs to lavender milk, stirring to mix it in.
• Stirring continuously, bring lavender milk/egg mixture to a low boil. It should thicken and become like a runny custard. 
• Remove from heat.

Step 4: Add cream and chill

• Pour the cream into a chilled bowl (preferably sitting in another bowl of ice-water).
• When the lavender milk/egg mixture has cooled, mix it in with the cream.
• Let it chill, then transfer to a freezer-appropriate container in the freezer. I used a yogourt container.

Step 5: Breaking up the ice-crystals

• If you don't have an ice-cream maker and you're using the empty yougourt container method, it's a good idea to take a wooden spoon and stir the ice-cream every few hours so that it remains creamy (I had every intention of doing this, but I just fell asleep).

Serve with the lavender garnish. Done!

I'll leave you with a few other tips. In no particular order:

• Colouring: I used the juice from some preserved pinot-noir beets to dye the ice-cream pictured above. You could also use a bit of red cabbage juice, regular beet juice, blackberry jam...

Lavender-esque colour.

• Health Caveat: Like everything fun, lavender is not recommended for pregnant women and nursing mothers. No hard evidence as to the potential negative side effects, but you might not want to gorge on the ice-cream if you're preggers/nursing. To that effect, it would make a great weaning ritual gift...
  
• Herbology: There are two popular strains of lavender. The left is English lavender, which is best for eating. The right is Spanish (commonly known as French) lavender, which is prettier. Your choice.

English lavender, left. French/Spanish lavender, right.

• Harvesting: The rule if you're stealing lavender from your neighbours is not to take more than 3 off any one bush, and to take only stems that wouldn't be noticed. Stay away from plants on the roadside or beside driveways. Even a few feet from the street greatly reduces the toxins you'll be ingesting. When you get home, wash all the stems in water and then remove the buds by sliding your fingers down the stalk.

Wash the lavender, remove the buds.

Enjoy!