Love potion

I have been busy cooking up some potions from my garden herbs. I like to garden. I grow flowers and herbs and the occasional tomato or pepper. My favorite part of gardening is collecting the fresh herbs and using them in salads and other dishes. I am a mediocre cook that gets bored with the same old thing and likes to get adventurous in the kitchen. My favorite things to cook up aren't edible at all. I love to make herbal salt scrubs and lip balms but my very favorite recipe is what I call my love potion. 

         It's really just rose water made from dried roses, distiller water and citrus vodka. It's so easy to make ( shhh, don't tell anyone its my secret and now yours) and smells heavenly. I use hand fulls of dried roses from the garden (the heavily scented kind) a jug of distiller water and a few swigs, I mean drops, of citrus orange vodka. I boil the water and pour them over the roses then steep them in a covered glass bowl for about 40 minutes. After the 40 minutes are up and the water is a beautiful rose tint  I strain the water and discard or compost the rose petals. I then add the vodka and pour the mixture in decorative jars or bottles with stoppers. I seal a few bottles that won't be used for a while with melted candle wax. No need to refrigerate because the vodka acts as a preservative. It smells wonderful and it's very soothing to dry skin. I keep a tiny jar of it in my home altar as well but more on that later. 

  If you don't grow roses in your garden you can buy discarded petals from a florist and dry them yourself. You can also use fresh petals but you want to be sure they haven't been laced with pesticides. I have never used fresh roses and the  recipe is a bit different from the one I use for dried petals. 

  So even though the weather is a bit frightful here in Michigan I can still enjoy my garden. We are expecting a few more inches of snow and high winds tonight. Brrrrrr!!