Verbena Vesper
Lemon verbena is one of my favorite plants growing in my garden. If you’re not familiar with it, I seriously recommend seeking it out. The South American native shrub has such a lovely, bright, lemon-y fragrance that is similar to lemongrass or lemon balm. Our plant is growing like crazy this year so I needed to prune it back— leaving me with a lot of leaves to play with.
Blood, sweat, & Tears
This month’s @homebarawards is stirred tiki. It’s really a great challenge and brings up at least one important issue: how do you bring bright tropical flavors if you can’t shake up fresh juice? For this drink, my answer to this puzzle is one of my favorite tools to bring bright flavors and acidity to a cocktail: the shrub.