Lilacs

It's early May, Mother's Day is right around the corner and that always brings my mind to lilacs. My mother loves lilacs so every year I try to find some recipe somewhere that I can make for her using those wonderfully fragrant, beautiful blooms. Sadly, I have never had success. One year I tried to make lilac perfume but in the end it came out smelling like burned popcorn, eww! Not exactly the scent I was going for. Through much research I have discovered that it's near impossible to get a true, natural lilac scent. It can be synthesized by chemical/perfuming companies but to use the flowers at home to get the scent...not so much. One point of interest here, I have recently discovered that an essential oil producer has discovered how to make an essential oil but it is such a difficult process requiring so many flowers that it is ridiculously expensive and only a few people in the world can afford to buy it. The good news is that I refuse to give up, I will continue trying different methods of extracting the scent.

So now we know that at this point in time I have no suggestions for using those amazingly scented flowers for anything that we want to put the scent in. BUT! There is hope. The flowers are completely edible. I was doing a little online research and found an article (http://www.henriettes-herb.com/blog/lilac-flowers.html) that said the flowers are bitter and sour and don't taste very good. While within that same article (I believe in the comments section) someone said they pull the flowers out of the green parts and suck on the end where there is a sweet drop of nectar. Well, I don't like to take anyone's word for something so I went and picked a blossom head and gave it a try, first I pulled the flower out of the green part and sucked on the end (like you would do with a honeysuckle flower) and sure enough, there it was, just a tiny hint of sweet, it was actually very good.  well, since the flower was now in my mouth I chewed it up and noted that yes, it had a bitter taste to it but it wasn't all that bad. The worst thing about eating them is that because lilacs are astringent I had a slight dryness on my tongue that lasted a little while, I didn't time it but it was more than a couple of minutes. It wasn't horrible and definitely would not deter me from eating more of them but I just noted that the dryness was there. I ate several more and even shared a couple with my dog who begged for more and found it to be completely acceptable. I would absolutely put them in a salad. I don't think that I would eat them as the only ingredient in the salad but throwing a handful onto the top would be great. Maybe I'll have to try that for lunch. If I were to compare the bitterness to dandelion greens I would have to say that dandelion greens are substantially more bitter and much less pleasant to eat than lilacs.

I suppose now is a good time to talk about the technical part of lilacs. The botanical name is syringa vulgaris and it is part of the olive family. It grows as a shrub that can get to be as tall as 30 ft but most of them usually like to stay in the 10 ft. range. The leaves are really very simple growing between 2 and 5 inches long and between 1 and 3 inches wide.  They are opposite each other on the branch and have a leathery feel to them. Leaves are shaped sort of like hearts but elongated and don't generally have the dip at the top end opposite of the point.  The flowers are mostly 4 petal individual flowers grouped in bunches on stems. Occasionally you will find a single flower with 5 petals and folk lore suggests these 5 petal flowers are good luck.  The flowers come in a variety of colors like pink, white, purple and I have heard of, but never seen in person, yellow. They have an unmistakable scent that makes you want to close your eyes and take a deep breath, breathing in as much of the smell as you can. In my opinion, lilacs are easily the most beautiful and best smelling shrubs there are.

So what can you do with these wonderful, beautiful flowers since we already know that preserving the scent is very difficult at best? Well, we already talked about the fact that they are edible so there's that.  Lilacs are also astringent, I mentioned that earlier after tasting them. How can that astringency be used? Lilac tea makes a very nice facial toner. I have to mention at this point that there is not a whole lot of medicinal value to the flowers, most of the medicinal properties are in the leaves. If you make a lilac leaf tea it has been known to help with skin problems like burns, rashes, cuts and scrapes. Similar to lavender. Drinking the tea can help get rid of intestinal parasites, it acts as a febrifuge which is a fancy term for bringing down a fever. The effects on fever are not reliable though, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't so please make sure you have other options available. One more thing it does is it is an anti-periodic, another fancy word but this one means it stops certain symptoms from recurring.

So to sum up, lilacs smell wonderful, are simply gorgeous, a tea from the flowers can be a nice facial toner and a tea from the leaves can help heal skin wounds, get rid of parasites and help certain symptoms from coming back.

There are a few things you can do in the kitchen with lilacs. Making candied flowers to decorate candies or cakes (really nice looking on petit fours) is one. You can eat them raw in salads like we talked about. Garnishing a side dish would also be a good use for them. (I'm thinking a beautiful garnish to green bean casserole, put a ring of the french fried onions around the outside edge of the casserole then just inside that, a ring of lilac flowers or even an entire flower head in the center of the dish resting on top of the green beans after the cooking/baking part is done).  I personally dry the flowers and add them to other dried, aromatic flowers in a dish.  (potpourri)

Lilacs are often used in aromatherapy instances to help ease tension, they are very calming and relaxing. They can even help with some memory issues that are caused by tension or stress.

Thank you for reading and I hope that you have learned a little something.