Culinary Creations Kit
"Hold up a cup, receive floral fluids, drink the sweet sweat of elements turned upside down. Now the tasting is the Taste.” IMBIBE
Your food is beckoning you to play!
A culinary collection for the passionate palate, an ever-fresh spice rack of ginger, cardamom, cilantro, peppermint, vanilla, cinnamon, turmeric, lemon, coffee, schizandra berry, black cumin, and basil.
Revive and reinvent your favorite dishes with a splash of liquid plant-celebration. Get your juices flowing and your taste buds tingling, and consecrate your meals with a deep dose of potent plant antioxidants and polyphenols that will boost the immune, stimulate the liver, and benefit gut bacteria.
For your gourmet glee, replace fresh or dried herbs and spices with 1-2 drops of your favorite oils. Create your own melodious masterpieces; allow vibrant energies to mix and mingle. Let your appetite be your guide!
This collection of delectable oils will lend notes of flavorful fun to each dish you create. Pure and potent, each offering in this collection doubles as a beneficial essence that will turn meals into healing, restorative happenings filled with flavor and savor. Botanical benefits provide the baseline for the sweet and savory ideas below. Bon appétit!
1. Peppermint (Mentha peperita) – Minty-fresh peppermint lends any culinary creation a burst of cool, refreshing wonder. Peppermint is perfect for cooking and baking because it is strong enough to withstand high temperatures without losing its potency. Smoothies, salad dressings and sweets are perfect pairings for this beneficial oil, which is said to aid digestion, freshen the breath and clear the sinuses. Add a few drops of peppermint oil to delight dishes.
2. Ginger (Zingiber officinales) – Ginger oil stimulates the appetite, cleanses the palette between courses, and has traditionally been used to prevent infections, fight colds and flu, and regulate all major bodily functions. Add a few drops of ginger oil to your stir fry or other Asian-inspired dishes, or to bring zesty balance to sweeter jams and sauces.
3. Cilantro (Coriander sativum) - A wonderfully flavorful digestive aid, cilantro oil is deeply healing and nourishing. It has traditionally been used to boost immunity, fight chronic infections, and eradicate heavy metals from the body. Cilantro oil is the perfect complement to guacamole, fajitas, spicy soups, sauces and salads.
4. Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia) – Forget baking with synthetic, solvent-based vanilla extracts. Our supercritical vanilla oil is 200x more potent than typical vanilla extract! Dreamy, creamy vanilla does more than lend desserts a sweet, intoxicating flavor – vanilla oil is also packed with beneficial antioxidants and is known to be a powerful antidepressant. Dilute in virgin coconut oil, or olive oil and use when making chocolate, raw cookies, or sensualizing your morning smoothie. Vanilla is offered in a 50:50 ratio (in both 5ml and 15ml size kits) with jojoba so that it is ready to use by the drop.
5. Cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) - Cinnamon oil is oh-so-much more than a sweet-and-spicy autumnal treat! Sweet cinnamon is known to enhance the cellular function of the skin thanks to its high antioxidant levels. It is also an appetite stimulant and digestive aid that is perfect for baking – try cinnamon oil in cakes, cookies, milkshakes, and chocolate-making, or add it to savory sauces for an unexpected flavor burst.
6. Turmeric (Curcuma Longa) - Turmeric oil is rich in anti-inflammatories, antioxidants, and detoxifying compounds that benefit the liver, the skin, and the spirits. It is said to block inflammation-causing molecules, improving skin’s tone and elasticity. Use turmeric oil when pickling vegetables, making relishes, flavoring seafood, or to add color to desserts and dairy-based dishes.
7. Black cumin (Nigella Sativa) - Dr. Gary Null calls black cumin oil “the single most important oil you can put into your system.” This 3,000-year old ‘miracle cure’ has been used throughout history to treat parasites, diabetes, heart disease, allergies, migraines, and more. Add a few drops dressings, or a dash with honey.
8. Lemon (Citrus limonum) - Uplifting lemon oil is a wonderful detoxifying agent. It is used to boost immunity, improve concentration, rev metabolism, lift the spirits, and support a healthy nervous system. A drop of Lemon oil can be easily be added to sweet and savory delights.
9. Schizandra Berry (Schisandra spenanthera) – The schizandra berry is one of the most important remedies in Chinese medicine. Known as “five flavor fruit,” shizandra offers a complex palette of sweet, salty, bitter, spicy, and sour flavors. This oil is fantastic for regulating the body’s internal organs and systems, reducing inflammation, and strengthening skin cell membranes. Add sparingly to teas and beverages, use in wine making, or add to soups, jams and jellies.
10. Basil (Ocimum bascilicum) – Breathtaking basil is fragrant, herbaceous, and a staple of cooking in many cultures. But it is also fantastically medicinal, and is said prevent viral infections, stimulate the adrenal glands, improve circulation and support a healthy immune system. Combine with olive oil and drizzle on tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, add to mayonnaise and spread on sandwiches, or use it to create a basil-flavored salad dressing.
11. Coffee (Coffea arabica) - Our freshly distilled coffee essential oil is a caffeine free way to enjoy the aroma and flavor without the edgy perk. A wonderful aromatic addition to smoothies, chocolates, raw desserts and creamy teas. Combine with lemon and vanilla to make mouthwatering-mocha flavors.
12. Cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) - Sweet and spicy cardamom oil is known as a powerful aphrodisiac that doubles as a diuretic and digestive aid. It is used extensively in Indian cooking and Ayurvedic medicine. Add cardamom oil to perk a sensory sensation to your culinary creations.
Culinary Use of Essential Oils
Across Europe and India and in many cultures throughout Asia, it is a popular and ancient practice to ingest essential oils and use them internally. Doctors and other medical practitioners in those countries often prescribe the ingestion of essential oils to heal or manage health issues and to bolster immunity. In the United States, as well as in most of North America, essential oils are less well-known, so people shy away from that practice. Honestly, it is best to avoid eating (and applying) the low quality, mass produced essential oils that are sold by some health stores and multilevel marketers.
Essential oils are under the purview of the FDA as food items, and it maintains mountains of muddled regulations for the internal use of oils. Among those regulations, the FDA keeps a list of essential oils that are labeled Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS). The GRAS label is granted to an essential oil by the FDA if it is "generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use…" The food and flavor industry adds essential oils like bergamot, peppermint, and vanilla to boost the taste and aroma of many items, such as juices, liqueurs, and teas. The health supplements industry uses the super critical extracts of many herbs and plants in pills and capsules, including seabuckthorn berry, saw palmetto, and basil.
Plan for Potency
Most really real, pure, and organic steam distilled essential oils are safe to eat (including some left off the GRAS list), and many of them are distilled from common culinary items such as orange, ginger, alfalfa, tea, turmeric, cocoa, coffee, coriander, rose, chamomile, lemon, juniper berries, and many more. (See the footnotes for Living Libations' 57 GRAS edible oils.) The key difference between eating the whole food and eating its essential oil is potency. Essential oils are powerfully potent, concentrated plant energy! For example, the aromatic molecules of 60 roses must be distilled to make 1 single drop of rose essential oil.
For clarity, let's compare this with coffee drinking. Drinking a cup or two of coffee is enjoyable and may benefit your health. Drinking a pot or two of coffee is probably imprudent, though. Similarly, eating a reasonable amount of an essential oil can be enjoyable, healthy, and safe though guzzling a whole bottle is ill-considered. Wise use of oils follows the "less is more" principle because the full botanical blessing is encompassed in just one drop. One single drop of oil is a dose or serving and the daily allowance is 10 drops (0.5ml) of an oil. It is also a good practice to mix the drop of essential oil with organic honey, olive oil, or coconut oil. When adding a drop of essential oil to a culinary creation, add one drop per portion and do so just before serving.
Listen to Intuition
Even though the FDA recognizes that over 160 essential oils are safe to ingest, its guidelines on who may recommend ingesting them is rather narrow. We at Living Libations are not medical professionals, thus we refrain from advocating to our clients specific protocols for eating essential oils or using them internally. Instead, we refer to the protocols and prescriptions provided by the leading professionals in essential oil safety and use. Our favorite resources are:
Robert Tisserand, Essential Oil Safety: A Guide for Health Care Professionals
Kurt Schnaubelt, PhD, The Healing Intelligence of Essential Oils: The Science of Advanced Aromatherapy, and Medical Aromatherapy: Healing with Essential Oils
When it comes to your health and your body you should always use your intuition. If your intuition inspires you to use essential oils internally and you feel that it will benefit your health, we hope that you will contact a qualified professional to assist you and/or carefully consider the protocols in well researched essential oil resources such as the books above.
www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/
Living Libations GRAS Edible Oils: all spice, basil, bergamot, blood orange, black pepper, black cumin seed, cardamom, carrot seed, chamomile, cape chamomile, blue chamomile, cinnamon bark, clary sage, clove bud, coffee bean, coriander, cypress, eucalyptus, frankincense, ginger root, grapefruit, grand white pine, geranium, goldenrod, Greenland moss, hemp blossom, immortelle, lavender, lemon juice, lemongrass, lime, manuka, marjoram, mastic, myrrh, neroli, nutmeg, orange, oregano, palmarosa, palo santo, peppermint, ravensara, rose otto, rosemary, roses over geranium, seabuckthorn, schizandra berry, spruce, tangerine, teatree, thyme, thyme linalool, turmeric, vanilla, yarrow, ylang