This recipe is inspired by a blue cornmeal cobbler I came across in A Feather and a Fork, using seasonal berries and ingredients that were easy for me to find locally. Because I was on a ‘traditional grains’ kick, I used millet and buckwheat flours in addition to the cornmeal—but the recipe would also work well with all-purpose or whole-wheat flour instead. The addition of maple syrup and maple extract gives this cobbler breakfast-y vibes; it tastes like blueberry pancakes and cornbread had a super-yummy dessert baby. And importantly, I use sumac here for two reasons: first, native sumac varieties are frequently featured in indigenous cooking, and second, sumac gives a bright “lemon-y” flavor without interacting with the cast-iron skillet and creating a metallic aftertaste (which is what will happen if you use lemon juice instead of sumac… don’t ask me how I know!). Video recipe here.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Bake time: 35-45 minutes
Yield: One 8 or 9-inch cobbler
Ingredients: 

For the topping: 
          1 cup blue cornmeal* 
          1/4 cup millet flour (or substitute all-purpose or whole wheat flour) 
          1/4 cup buckwheat flour (or substitute all-purpose or whole wheat flour)
          1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt 
          1/2 teaspoon baking powder
          2 eggs
          1/4 cup maple syrup 
          1/3 cup brown sugar 
          1/4 cup heavy cream 
          4 tablespoons (2 oz.) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled 
          1/4 teaspoon maple extract (optional; takes this cobbler to a real 'french toast' place) 

For the filling & assembly: 
          4 cups fresh blueberries (or substitute seasonal berry of choice)
          2 cups fresh blackberries (or substitute seasonal berry of choice)
          1/2 cup maple syrup 
          2 tablespoons freeze-dried blackberry powder (or substitute 2 tablespoons      
             cornstarch) 
         1/2 teaspoon sumac
         2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

*Check out the resources here for heirloom cornmeal varieties, which are much more nutrient-dense than standard cornmeal (and also produced using sustainable agricultural practices).  

First, make the sweet cornbread topping: 
1. Whisk together eggs, maple syrup, brown sugar, heavy cream, and maple extract (or substitute vanilla) until slightly frothy. Pour in melted butter while whisking and continue to beat for a minute or two, until slightly lightened in color. 

2. Add blue cornmeal, millet & buckwheat flours, salt, and baking powder. Stir until just combined (you may want to switch to a spatula). Set aside while you make the filling. 

Next, prepare the filling & assemble the cobbler: 

1. Prepare the pan: generously butter an 8- or 9-inch cast iron skillet. Set aside. 

2. In a large bowl, gently stir together the berries, maple syrup, freeze-dried blackberry powder (or cornstarch), and sumac. 

3. Pour the berry mixture into the buttered pan. Top with spoonfuls of the sweet cornbread mixture (you don't need 100% coverage here!). 

4. Bake at 375 degrees for 35-45 minutes, until the berries are bubbling and the cornbread is slightly brown and dry to the touch (it should not look wet or shiny). Cool for at least 20 minutes and enjoy with a dollop of whipped cream, drizzle of maple syrup, and sprinkle of flaky sea salt. 

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

- Mary Oliver

Upcoming Seasonal Celebrations

August marked the beginning of harvest season, and September is its continuation: we continue to reap the many crops that were planted in the spring and early summer months. Together, these autumn celebrations reflect a collective turning away from outward exertion and toward gratitude, community preservation, and preparation for the quiet rest of winter.

• Fall Equinox (Mabon)

  • Timing: September 22 (Northern Hemisphere)

  • Peoples: Historical agricultural communities across Europe—including ancient Celtic, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon farming societies—and modern earth-centered spiritual traditions.

  • Significance: One of the four major solar points in the year, the equinox marks a point of exact balance between light and dark. It is traditionally celebrated as a “second harvest” festival of thanksgiving, gratitude, and reflection (after the first harvest festival, Lughnasadh) before the descent into the darker half of the year. Celebrants often gather to share feasting, apples, grains, and wine, symbolizing the earth’s bounty.

• Coya Rayni (Koya Raymi)

  • Timing: Throughout September (specifically peaking around September 21–22)

  • Peoples: Indigenous Andean peoples (historically the Incas, and modern Quechua communities)

  • Significance: An ancient festival dedicated to the Moon (Mama Killa) and the Coya (queen), celebrating feminine power, fertility, health, and the start of the planting season (the rainy season). It marked a time of purification rituals to drive away evil spirits and illnesses from communities.

Read more

Widely known across popular almanacs as the Sturgeon Moon, the August full moon is far more than a simple astronomical marker—it represents a rich mythology woven from Indigenous ecological wisdom to medieval European harvest lore. Rather than stemming from a single universal myth, the names and meanings attached to August’s full moon reflect how different communities across time and geography have tracked the changing seasons, food sources, and subtle shifts of the natural world.

Let’s take a closer look at the global traditions, astrological significance, and invitations for ritual during this week’s Sturgeon Moon.

1. Origins of the Name and Indigenous Traditions

The name most familiar to Western observers—the Sturgeon Moon—has deep roots in North America, originating primarily from the Algonquin-speaking tribes and communities native to the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain regions. Traditionally, the lunar names tracked by these communities applied to the entire lunar month rather than just a single night, signifying a sort of ecological calendar.

For the nations inhabiting the Great Lakes basin, August marked the peak time of year when lake sturgeon—a massive, prehistoric “living fossil” species whose lineage stretches back over 100 million years—swam into shallow waters. These magnificent fish, which can grow to immense proportions (up to 9 ft long and 300lb) and have incredible lifespans (females can live to a whopping 427 years), were readily caught during this month of the summer. For centuries, sturgeon served as an essential seasonal food staple and vital resource for the survival of Indigenous communities. Indigenous peoples utilized every part of the sturgeon—transforming its meat for food, its bones and tail into tools like needles and spearheads, its inner swim bladder membrane into glue, and its oil into lamp fuel, wool softener, and paint. Today, while lake sturgeon are considerably rarer due to overfishing and habitat disruption, the namesake Sturgeon Moon endures as a testament to an ancient, reciprocal human relationship with the waters.

Because the lake sturgeon played such a critical role in survival, it naturally took on profound cultural and economic significance across the region. Sturgeon is a cornerstone of Menominee folklore—inspiring the creation of the sacred “Sturgeon Clan” ( the observance of the Sturgeon Festival, and spiritual reverence for the fish as the sacred protector of wild rice. Similarly, the sturgeon served as a vital economic cornerstone for the Anishinaabe nation—earning communities in the Winnipeg River watershed the historical designation of “Sturgeon Indians” during the fur trade era—and sturgeon was harvested using specialized tools such as spears, weirs, and nets.

A Menominee Creation Story:

“In the beginning, the Menominee came into existence near the mouth of the Menominee river which flows into Green Bay. First of all, a bear came forth from under the earth and became a man. Then another followed him became a woman and they existed there. The name of the man was Sekatchokemau or Great Chief. As soon as the man and woman saw each other they were pleased and recognized that they were to be mates. The man realized that they would need shelter. Sekatchokemau built the first wigwam for their home and then made a canoe so that he might go out on the waters and catch sturgeon, which were very abundant at the foot of the nearby cataract, where they had been created for the use of man. Sakatchokemau was very successful in taking sturgeon. He brought home a large quantity, which his wife prepared. First, she split them from the head down and drew them; then she hung them over a frame to dry. When they were sufficiently cured she cut them into flakes and made the first sacrifice and ceremonial offering to all powers.”

(adapted from writings provided by David Grignon (Nahwahquaw), tribal elder and preservationist)

Different Indigenous nations, however, tracked the August full moon through their own distinct ecological and cultural lenses:

• Berry and Fruit Moons: As the late-summer landscape reaches its agricultural zenith, many Indigenous communities across North America named the August moon after the rich abundance of ripening berries and fruits. These names serve as natural calendar markers indicating when to harvest seasonal wild fruits for sustenance and preservation.

  • Anishnaabe (Chippewa & Ojibwe): miini-giizis — Berry Moon (Great Lakes region / Upper Midwest)

  • Assiniboine: capasapsaba — Black Cherries Moon (Northern Great Plains / Montana and Saskatchewan)

  • Dakota: — Cherries Turn Black Moon (Northern Great Plains / Dakotas and Minnesota)

  • Tlingit: sha-ha-yi — Berries Ripe on Mountain Moon (Pacific Northwest / Coastal Alaska)

  • Wishram: — Blackberry Patches Moon (Columbia River region / Washington and Oregon)

  • Shawnee: po’kamawi kiishthwa — Plum Moon (Originally Ohio Valley / now Oklahoma and surrounding regions)

  • Lakota: wasutoa wi — Moon of the Ripening (Great Plains)

  • Cherokee: galoni — Fruit Moon

• Feather Shedding and Environmental Heat: Other nations looked closely at the changing habits of local wildlife and the physical intensity of the late-summer climate. These titles capture the ecological transition of birds molting their feathers and the lingering, heavy warmth of peak summer before the cooling relief of autumn.

  • Passamaquoddy: apsqe — Feather Shedding Moon (Northeastern woodlands / Maine and Atlantic Canada)

  • Arapaho: — Geese Shedding Their Feathers Moon (Great Plains / Wyoming and Oklahoma)

  • Shoshone: guuteyai-mea’ — Hot Moon (Great Basin and Intermountain West / Idaho, Wyoming, and Nevada)… this name feels about right in Atlanta right now!

  • Mohawk: seskehko:wa — Moon of Freshness (Northeastern woodlands / Upstate New York and Canada)

• Cultural Milestones and Seasonal Transitions: Finally, several communities marked the turning of the lunar cycle by celebrating community joy, courtship, and the turning point of summer:

  • Hopi: paamuya — Moon of Joyful (Southwest / Northeastern Arizona mesas)

  • Choctaw: Hash Tek Inhasi — Courting Time Moon (Southeastern woodlands / Mississippi and Oklahoma)

  • Kalapuya: akupiu — End of Summer (Pacific Northwest / Willamette Valley, Oregon)

In European and Celtic traditions, August’s moon earned titles such as the Grain Moon or Barley Moon. This period corresponded closely with Lughnasadh (or Lammas), a major cross-quarter festival dedicated to the Celtic god Lugh—a deity of craftsmanship, light, and skill. Communities historically gathered on hilltops, lit great bonfires, and partook in feasts of thanksgiving for the year’s first wheat and berries, offering prayers for protection against coming crop failures.

In Anglo-Saxon England, August was historically recorded by the Venerable Bede as Weodmonath (the “Weed Month”), a name reflecting the explosive, unchecked growth of wild vegetation at the height of summer. Drawing from traditional medical compendiums like Bald’s Leechbook, Anglo-Saxon herbalists and foragers viewed the late-summer moonlight as an ideal window to harvest medicinal plants and roots at their peak potency, before the intense summer heat began to fade and the plants’ active constituents faded. Similarly, the Paint Clan (Ani-Wodi) of the Cherokee nation—known as spiritual healers—traditionally foraged medicinal plants in August.

Across time and cultures, then, under the heavy warmth of late summer, the August full moon rises as a luminous beacon of Earth’s great bounty—from the ripening berries and heavy grain fields to the ancient fish swimming in deep waters. The Sturgeon Moon calls communities together across traditions to honor the peak of the harvest, gather wild medicines by silver light, and celebrate the magnificent abundance of the changing seasons.

2. The Pisces Lunar Eclipse and Western Astrology

This year’s Sturgeon Moon happens to coincide with a partial lunar eclipse. In many spiritual traditions, lunar eclipses are viewed with profound reverence, spiritual care, and attentiveness. For example, the Maya tracked lunar cycles and eclipse patterns with incredible precision using advanced astronomical tables—viewing these rare alignments as dangerous, unstable periods when the boundary between the heavens and the underworld grew precarious and required ritual appeasement. Among the Lakota and Dakota nations, a lunar eclipse is not traditionally seen as a negative omen or a moment of fear, but rather as a sacred turning point where the natural order pauses. During this time, families gather quietly indoors, honoring the cosmic forces at work without interfering—viewing the moment as a powerful opportunity for deep prayer, reflection, and spiritual alignment.

In Western and modern esoteric astrology, the astrological significance of the August 2026 Sturgeon Moon is especially potent, because this lunation arrives as a full moon lunar eclipse in the sign of Pisces—placing the Sun (in analytical, grounded Virgo) in exact opposition to the Moon (in intuitive, boundless Pisces). This celestial axis invites a delicate bridge between earthly responsibilities and spiritual reflection:

• The Virgo Sun: Emphasizes order, health, practical harvest preparations, daily routines, and attending to the fine details of life as summer winds down. It invites us to look at our habits and organize our physical spaces.

• The Pisces Moon: Rules dreams, the subconscious, spiritual surrender, collective empathy, and release. It invites us to feel deeply and let go of rigid control.

A full moon is always an astrological tug-of-war, because the Sun and Moon are standing on exact opposite sides of the sky—thus, the Sun and Moon are in polar signs (for example: a full moon during Leo season will always be in Aquarius; a full moon during Capricorn season will always be in Cancer; etc.). This opposition is thought to be especially potent during an eclipse, during which Western astrologers interpret the tension not as a literal celestial shadow game, but as an energetic crossroads. If we are painting with a wide brush here, we can interpret the Virgo Sun as urging us to keep meticulously organizing our routines and habits, while the Pisces Moon urges us to step back, feel our emotions, and surrender control.

Furthermore, this lunar eclipse is amplified by a tight square—a tense 90° angle in the sky—to Uranus in Gemini, a planet that governs sudden disruptions, breakthroughs, and unexpected shifts. Western astrologers generally think of eclipses as natural accelerator portals, catalyzing fated events and emotional culminations. Because this full moon takes place in Pisces—the final sign of the zodiac—it heavily signals the closing of a long-term karmic chapter or cycle that may have been unfolding over the past year (or more). And with Mercury—the planet governing the mind, communication, and logical planning—closely aligned with the Sun in Virgo right as the eclipse happens, there is an underlying, urgent push to find practical, tangible ways to ground abstract dreams, artistic visions, or emotional releases into daily reality.

Where This Lands in Your Chart:

Because this eclipse activates the mutable axis of Virgo and Pisces, its impact will vary depending on your individual birth chart. Astrologers look to the specific astrological house where 5° Pisces (the precise position of this full moon) falls for you:

• If it hits a Fire house (1st, 5th, 9th): The eclipse sparks a powerful creative or spiritual ignition, urging you to bring bold inspiration, authentic self-expression, or a renewed sense of purpose out into the open. It calls you to step into a bigger vision of your life while burning away old, limiting beliefs about who you are allowed to be.

• If it hits an Earth house (2nd, 6th, 10th): The grounded Virgo-Mercury influence takes center stage, prompting an immediate, tangible restructuring of your finances, daily wellness routines, or career workload. It demands that you build practical, sustainable real-world containers for your evolving insights.

• If it hits an Air house (3rd, 7th, 11th): The spotlight turns toward your relationships, communication style, and community networks, highlighting where your social circles or important partnerships need greater emotional honesty. It invites a breakthrough in how you connect, share ideas, and collaborate with others.

• If it hits a Water house (4th, 8th, 12th): The Pisces-Uranus friction will feel intensely emotional and intuitive, opening deep portals for ancestral healing, dreamwork, and clearing out old subconscious baggage. It offers a profound, sacred opportunity to release past emotional weight and find peace in the unseen currents of your inner life.

To find where 5° Pisces falls for you, you will need your exact birth time, date, and location:

1. Head to a free chart calculator like Astro-Seek

2. Enter your birth details (date, exact time, and birth city).

3. Generate your chart wheel.

4. Locate Pisces: Look around the outer edge or inner wheel for the Pisces symbol (♓︎ or the two fish glyph).

5. Check the Degree: Look at the numbers and/or small notches listed next to Pisces. Find where 5° (or numbers close to it, roughly 0° to 10°) sits, and see which numbered House (1 through 12) that section corresponds to. (The degrees increase in each sign in a counterclockwise direction, from 0° to 29°.)

3. Invitations for Reflection and Things to Do on the Sturgeon Moon

As the Sturgeon Moon reaches its peak illumination and casts its silvery light across the late-summer landscape, it offers a wonderful opportunity to pause, reflect, and engage in seasonal rituals that honor both the earth and our own inner cycles. Here are a few ways to mark the occasion:

• Reflective Journaling on Closure: Because this full moon coincides with a Pisces lunar eclipse, take time to write down what long-term chapters, habits, or mindsets you are ready to let go. List the old chapters, identities, or environments you are ready to loosen your grip on as this zodiac cycle closes (Pisces). Following that release, what is one concrete, step-by-step action plan you can write down to protect your peace and well-being moving forward (Virgo)?

• Create an Ancestral or Seasonal Altar: Gather elements of the late-summer harvest—such as fresh garden produce, seasonal fruits, wild grasses, or dried herbs—to adorn a quiet space in your home. Light a candle to honor your lineage and express gratitude for the abundance of the season, as summer comes to a close.

• Nighttime Herb and Botanical Foraging: Honor the Anglo-Saxon tradition of Weodmonath, and the Cherokee tradition of medicinal foraging, by taking a mindful evening walk under the moonlight. Observe how plants like herbs, wild grasses, and late-blooming perennials interact with the cool night air. Gather a few cuttings to use in herbal teas, tinctures, or seasonal aromatic bundles. (Bonus points: let the tea or tincture steep overnight in the light of the full moon.)

• Stargazing and Celestial Observation: Step outside on the night of August 27th (or early hours of the 28th) to witness the moon’s transformation during the partial eclipse, observing how the shadowed lunar surface takes on a warm, ruddy hue. Inhale, exhale, listen. If you have binoculars, look toward the constellations of Cetus and Pisces to spot passing celestial bodies like Asteroid Vesta shining nearby against the backdrop of the late-summer night sky.

What seasonal traditions or late-summer rituals do you look forward to most as August draws to a close?

“Tamale pie” is a bit of a misnomer, given that tamale pie involves neither tamales nor pie. From what I can tell, the first printed recipe for tamale pie appeared in the 1931 classic The Joy of Cooking, and it called for a layer of ground beef, corn, black beans, and spices, topped with a savory cornbread crust. I’ve kept the same core idea here, just “kicking it up a notch,” as the perennial favorite Emeril Lagasse might say (BAM!); don’t skimp on the spices! Tamale pie can be a celebration of summer produce if you use fresh corn, tomatoes, beans, and/or chiles—and it can just as easily be a cozy autumn meal if you sub frozen or canned vegetables for fresh. Video recipe here!

Prep time: 1 hour 15 minutes (about 30 minutes active time; 45 minutes passive) 
Bake time: 40 minutes
Yield: One hearty tamale pie (serves 6-8) 
Ingredients: 

Filling: 
          2 tablespoons olive oil (or neutral oil)
          1.5 lb ground beef (any fat content is fine; you can also just use 1 lb if it's all you           
                    have) 
          1 large red onion (yellow or white is also fine) 
          3-4 cloves garlic 
          1 16-oz can cooked pinto beans, drained; or 1.5 cups cooked from fresh 
          1 16-oz can diced fire-roasted tomatoes, drained; or 1 3/4 cups fresh 
          2 4-oz cans diced green chiles (I use mild but use whatever heat level you like); or       
                1 cup fresh
          1 tablespoon tomato paste 
          1 tablespoon brown sugar 
          2 tablespoons chili powder (I like Penzey's)
          1 tablespoon sweet paprika
          1 teaspoon ground cumin 
          1 teaspoon Adobo seasoning (I like Loisa) 
          1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
          1 teaspoon ground coriander 
          1 teaspoon garlic powder
          3/4 teaspoon onion powder 
          1/2 teaspoon Ancho chile powder 
          2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt (plus more to taste)

Cornbread topping: 
          1 cup stone-ground cornmeal*
          1 cup all-purpose flour 
          1.5 teaspoons baking powder 
          1/2 teaspoon baking soda
          1.5 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt 
          3/4 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano 
          2 tablespoons brown sugar 
          2 eggs 
          1/2 cup neutral oil (I use avocado oil) 
          1/2 cup buttermilk  
          1/2 cup fire-roasted corn kernels (if using frozen, be sure to defrost first)
          2/3 cup shredded Mexican-style cheese 

*Check out the resources here for heirloom cornmeal varieties, which are much more nutrient-dense than standard cornmeal (and also produced using sustainable agricultural practices).  

First, make the filling: 

1. Finely dice the onion, and sauté in the olive oil over medium heat until translucent (5-8 minutes; add 1/2 teaspoon of salt with the onions). Thinly slice the garlic and add to pan in the last minute of cooking. 

2. Add spices, brown sugar, and tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, for 1-2 minutes. 

3. Add ground beef and 1 teaspoon of salt to the pan. Cook, breaking up the meat, until beef is just browned (about 5 minutes). 

4. Add tomatoes, beans, chiles, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Stir and once it's at a simmer, reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer for about 45 minutes, until the filling is thickened. 

When the filling has about 10 minutes of simmering to go, make the cornbread topping: 

1. Whisk together the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, oregano, and brown sugar in a medium bowl. 

2. Add eggs, oil, and buttermilk. Whisk just until no streaks of flour remain. 

3. Fold in cheese and corn. Set aside. 

Assemble & bake: 

1. Before assembling, turn the fire off from under the filling and let it sit for 5 minutes, until it stops bubbling. Stir it briefly and smooth into an even layer in the pot. 

2. Spread the cornbread topping over the filling. 

3. Bake at 375 for about 30-40 minutes, until the filling is bubbling around the edges and the top is a deep golden-brown. 

4. Let cool for at least 30 minutes, and serve warm. (It's also great as leftovers!) 

Maize (Zea mays)—preferred over the colloquial term “corn” in research and international contexts—is one of the most remarkable and historically transformative plants on Earth. More than just a dietary staple, it represents a profound triumph of human cultivation, evolving from a wild Mexican grass into a global botanical powerhouse. Unlike almost any other crop, modern maize has become completely dependent on human intervention for its survival, encased in a tight husk that cannot open on its own to scatter seeds. From ancient Mesoamerican creation myths to the heart of modern agriculture, maize is woven into the very fabric of human civilization.

Yet, while industrial agriculture has largely focused on high-yield sweet varieties and processing methods that strip the grain of its vitality, ancient and Indigenous breeds—such as antioxidant-rich blue corn—boast a vastly superior nutritional profile. Furthermore, ancestral processing practices like nixtamalization unlock essential vitamins and make minerals far more accessible, revealing a sophisticated agricultural heritage that far transcends the limitations of modern industrial food systems. Beyond the grain itself, corn silk has long held a valued place in herbalism as a soothing remedy for urinary and skin health.

Let’s take a closer look.

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Indian Summer

There’s a farm auction up the road.
Wind has its bid in for the leaves.
Already bugs flurry the headlights
between cornfields at night.
If this world were permanent,
I could dance full as the squaw dress
on the clothesline.
I would not see winter
in the square of white yard-light on the wall.
But something tugs at me.
The world is at a loss and I am part of it
migrating daily.
Everything is up for grabs
like a box of farm tools broken open.
I hear the spirits often in the garden
and along the shore of corn.
I know this place is not mine.
I hear them up the road again.
This world is a horizon, an open sea.
Behind the house, the white iceberg of the barn.

- Diane Glancy

Upcoming Seasonal Celebrations

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, August marks the beginning of harvest season. Many indigenous and earth-based spiritual practices highlight this sudden abundance of crops with celebrations and thanksgivings:

Read more

These cookies are delicious—butterscotch-y, slightly salty, chewy in the center and crispy on the edges, crunchy from the pistachios, creamy from the white chocolate, and with tart fruity bites from the apricots. Feel free to mix and match the mix-ins with whatever you have on hand! If you want to watch a video of this recipe, it’s here.

Prep time: 20 minutes (+ at least 1 hour chill)
Cook time: 15 minutes 
Yield: 12 cookies
Ingredients: 

          5.5 oz all-purpose flour (just over 1 cup) 
          4 oz butter (1 stick) 
          1 tablespoon heavy cream or milk 
          1 tablespoon dry milk powder (optional)* 
          1/2 cup granulated sugar
          1/2 cup brown sugar 
          1 egg, cold from refrigerator 
          2 teaspoons vanilla extract or paste
          3/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt 
          1/2 teaspoon baking soda 
          3 oz good white chocolate, chopped into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces (about 1/3 cup) 
                → or substitute milk chocolate, dark chocolate, butterscotch chips, chopped      
                     candy bars, etc. 
          2.5 oz roasted, salted pistachios, roughly chopped  (about 1/2 cup) 
                → or substitute walnuts, pecans, cashews, almonds, pumpkin or sunflower          
                     seeds, pretzels, etc. 
          2.5 oz dried apricots, chopped into 1/4 inch pieces (about 1/3 cup) 
                → or substitute raisins, dried cranberries or cherries, chopped dates, etc. 

*The idea of adding dry milk powder to browned butter is from a genius recipe over at King Arthur baking. The "brown" in brown butter is really from browning the milk solids in butter. Adding dry milk powder introduces even more milk solids to the mix— and therefore more "brown butter" flavor. 

1. Brown the butter: Place the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, and cook until the butter is completely melted and begins to sputter. Stir constantly, and when the butter stops sputtering and begins to take on color, add the milk powder (if using) and whisk in. As soon as the butter is a rich golden-brown color, remove from heat and immediately scrape into a large bowl (the milk powder will scorch really quickly!). Whisk in the cream or milk and set aside to cool slightly, whisking occasionally, for about 10 minutes. 

2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. 

3. Add the granulated and brown sugars to the brown butter mixture. Whisk until the sugar is moistened. Add the egg and vanilla and whisk until smooth and slightly lighter in color, about 2 minutes. 

4. Fold in flour mixture until no streaks remain. Add mix-ins and stir to incorporate. 

5. Scoop out cookie portions (I used a 2 oz. scoop) and chill, covered, on a sheet tray for at least 1 hour. (I chilled mine for about 11 hours and they turned out great!) Or make ahead, chill for an hour or two, then transfer to an airtight freezer container for cookies on-demand.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for 14-16 minutes, until golden-brown and matte on the surface. 
          

As many years as I’ve been baking, this summer has been the first time that I’ve attempted a strawberry cake. I love strawberries, but they’ve never struck me as much of a “baking” fruit—strawberry pie or tart, sure, but that doesn’t really feel like strawberry baking to me, given that the strawberries in those recipes are left raw. Growing up, though, a strawberry layer cake was a staple of our Thanksgiving table—made every year by Miss Jan, our family friend from the Deep South who also brought candied yams, mac ‘n cheese, ham, greens, a sweet potato pie, and ambrosia salad (legendary). Miss Jan’s strawberry cake was delicious, but I always ended up neglecting it in favor of my beloved Thanksgiving pies (apple and pecan, of course).

When I needed to develop a strawberry pound cake recipe for my baking job this summer, I started by just adding fresh strawberry purée to the sour cream pound cake batter, in place of some of the sour cream. I knew that strawberries would introduce some additional moisture, and I figured that by swapping it out with some sour cream, I’d end up with something perfectly moist and strawberry-y. Wrong. The texture was gummy, and more troublingly, the cake just didn’t taste much like strawberries. For my next batch I upped the strawberry purée content—letting it entirely eclipse the sour cream—and added some baking powder. No dice. Still unpleasantly gummy and not sufficiently strawberry-y.

These failed tests helped me realize that freeze-dried strawberries must enter the mix somewhere: they don’t bring any additional moisture to the cake, yet they bring bright strawberry flavor. I started by blitzing freeze-dried strawberries with the sugar, but this made it near-impossible to cream the butter and sugar properly. Then I happened upon Stella Parks’ recipe for her strawberry cake, in which she incorporates the freeze-dried strawberries into the flour, not the sugar. Now we were rockin’ and rollin’.

Unlike Stella Parks’ recipe, these cakes retain a distinct “pound cake” feel (pleasantly dense, buttery, and rich) while also punching a really strong fresh strawberry hit. Because I’ve been playing around with lemon verbena a lot, I added some lemon verbena into the glaze and as decoration, but these cakes would be delicious without it—or with an alternative addition like basil, chamomile, lemon balm, and/or lemon/orange zest. The lemon verbena gives the cakes an aromatic, lemon candy-like zing. Video recipe here!

Prep time: 25 minutes 
Cook time: 16-20 minutes (for mini Bundts*)
Yield: 12 mini Bundt cakes
Ingredients: 

Cakes: 
          12 oz cake flour (I use Swans Down; 3 cups)
          2 oz freeze-dried strawberries (about 4 cups)
          12 oz unsalted butter, room temperature (3 sticks) 
          16 oz granulated sugar (2 1/4 cups)
          2 eggs + 1 egg white, room temperature 
          1 cup fresh strawberry purée 
          4 oz sour cream (1/2 cup) 
          1 tablespoon vanilla extract or paste
          2 teaspoons baking powder
          1/2 teaspoon baking soda 
          2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt 

Glaze: 
          8 oz confectioner's sugar (2 cups) 
          1 oz freeze-dried strawberries (about 2 cups) 
          1/2 cup fresh strawberry purée
          2 tablespoons sour cream 
          1 pinch Diamond Crystal kosher salt 
          Up to 2 tablespoons water or milk (as needed)
          2 tablespoons fresh lemon verbena, finely chopped (optional) 

Optional decor: fresh lemon verbena leaves (whole), 1 egg white, 1/4 cup granulated sugar

* I tested this recipe using a mini Bundt pan, but I imagine that the batter could be baked in a full-sized Bundt pan—or even two loaf pans—for a longer time and come out just fine. I would start checking the full-sized Bundt or loaf cakes after about 40 minutes and continue baking until they are lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean. If anyone tries it this way, please leave a comment below to let us know how it goes! 

For the cakes: 
Set the oven to 350 degrees.

1. Make the strawberry flour: put the cake flour and freeze-dried strawberries in a food processor, and run the processor until the strawberries are completely incorporated into the flour and no small bits remain. 

2. Make the strawberry sugar (for the glaze): While you already have the food processor out, go ahead and make the strawberry sugar for the glaze. Put the confectioner's sugar and freeze-dried strawberries in the processor, and run until the strawberries are completely incorporated into the sugar and no small bits remain. Set aside for later. 

3. Make the strawberry purée: In either the food processor or a blender, pulse one pint of fresh, hulled strawberries until a smooth purée forms. Measure out 1 cup and set the rest aside for later. 

4. Combine dry ingredients: whisk strawberry flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside. 

5. Combine the wet ingredients: whisk 1 cup fresh strawberry purée, sour cream, and vanilla in a small bowl or liquid measuring cup. Set aside. 

6. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 

7. Add the eggs + egg white, one at a time, beating for a minute or two in between. 

8. Add the wet and dry ingredients, alternating, starting and ending with dry. Beat briefly until the batter is smooth and fluffy. 

9. Grease the bundt pan well (I use Baker's Joy but you could also butter the pan & dust with flour). 

10. Bake at 350 for 16-20 minutes, until the cakes are lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean. Set aside and cool completely. 

For the candied lemon verbena (optional): 
1. Whisk the egg white until pale and frothy, but not entering meringue territory. 

2. Using a pastry brush, brush a lemon verbena leaf lightly with the egg white. Sprinkle with granulated sugar on both sides. (Repeat until you've finished all of the leaves.)

3. Set aside somewhere airy and dry to crystallize. This will take about an hour; by the time the cakes are baked and cooled, the leaves should be done. 

For the glaze: 
1. Whisk the strawberry sugar (see step #2 in 'For the cakes,' above), 1/2 cup strawberry purée, sour cream, salt, and lemon verbena (optional) until a thick glaze forms. You want the glaze to be thick but pourable. Add a bit of water or milk, one teaspoon at a time, as needed until the glaze reaches your desired consistency. 

(Note: the glaze pictured below uses the leftover strawberry lemon-verbena pulp from a shrub I had just made... waste not, want not. The recipe as written for the glaze will result in something slightly smoother and lighter in color.) 

Assembly: 
1. Either dunk the cooled cakes in the glaze or drizzle/pipe the glaze over—whatever you prefer aesthetically. 

2. Top with candied lemon verbena and let dry for about 10 minutes. 

Luckily for me, lemon verbena grows readily and easily here in Atlanta, and I’ve been adding it to all sorts of things in the kitchen. My most common lemon verbena use is dead simple: I just pluck a few leaves, rub them between my fingers, and add them to a glass of iced sparkling water. (My toddler calls this “sparkle tea.”) I’ve also made infusions (i.e., tea) and chilled them in the fridge overnight, which makes for a super refreshing morning pick-me-up. I’ve added leaves to homemade mojitos, usually along with some pineapple mint. My sister and I did a taste test of garden herb additions to homemade blueberry preserves; among a strong line-up of basil, lemon balm, pineapple sage, and thyme, lemon verbena was the clear winner.

As Lughnasadh has passed and we begin the slow seasonal turn toward Autumn, I’ve been thinking about ways to preserve the last weeks of “peak” summer sunshine and garden harvests. Nothing says “summer herb” to me like lemon verbena, and nothing says “summer fruit” to me like strawberries. Strawberries are bright, sweet, juicy—there’s just something about the slow, sticky trickle of strawberry juice down my 3-year-old’s chin that will forever scream to me “summer joy.”

To marry the strawberries and lemon verbena, I decided to make a shrub. A shrub is a super simple preservation technique: mix fruit and sugar, let macerate in the fridge for 24-48 hours, strain the liquid, and mix with vinegar. The acid and the sugar preserve the fruit juice—shrubs actually evolved as a method of fruit preservation pre-refrigeration. This process produces a super concentrated, sweet-tart syrup that can be added to sparkling water or cocktails, or drizzled atop ice cream, yogurt, pancakes, or cake. I know vinegar sounds like a weird and unpleasantly sour ingredient for a syrup, but the shrub is somehow greater than the sum of its parts; you don’t taste the vinegar per se, but you do experience a delightfully sweet and bright strawberry-lemon verbena syrup that tastes fresh from the garden. Shrubs keep indefinitely in the fridge, but I don’t think this one will last more than a week or two!

For the video-oriented folks among us, check out the recipe video here.

Prep time: 15 minutes (plus 24-48 hours maceration time) 
Yield: About 2 cups syrup
Ingredients: 
          1.5 cups fresh strawberries, quartered
          1 cup granulated sugar
          3-ish tablespoons fresh lemon verbena, roughly chopped
          Zest of one lemon
          1 cup apple cider vinegar 

1. Add sugar, lemon zest, and lemon verbena to a bowl. Massage with your fingers until the sugar is the consistency of wet sand. (The sharp sugar crystals help to release the aromatic compounds from the lemon zest and lemon verbena.) 

2. Add strawberries and sugar to a jar or bowl. Shake (or stir) well to combine, then place in the refrigerator to let macerate for 24-48 hours, shaking/stirring periodically. 

3. Optional: blend the mixture until a coarse purée forms. (This step will bring out the lemon verbena flavor even more, but is not strictly necessary.)  

4. Strain the mixture through a fine-meshed strainer, mashing the fruit pulp with a spoon or spatula to extract as much of the syrup as possible. (Save the pulp to eat on top of yogurt or spread on toast!) 

5. Pour all of the strained syrup, along with the vinegar, in a jar. Shake well and store in the refrigerator indefinitely. 

Botanical Profile

Lemon verbena belongs to the Verbena family (Verbenaceae) and is native to Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile—regions with hot summers and dry conditions. The plant’s botanical name, citrodora, literally means “lemon-scented,” a designation that European botanists arrived at after encountering lemon verbena’s remarkable aromatic oils. Lemon verbena’s leaves are glossy, pointed, and slightly rough to the touch (especially as they get older), measuring about 3-4 inches long on a mature plant. In late spring or early summer, tiny white or purple flowers appear in delicate sprays—inconspicuous but elegant, with an airy quality that crowns the open form of the plant beautifully. Lemon verbena is a woody shrub, and in its native South American climate it can grow 10-23 feet high(!); cultivated in pots or garden beds, it typically reaches between 2-4 feet at most.

History

Lemon verbena has been cultivated and gathered by Indigenous peoples for centuries, long before European contact. The Quechua-speaking healers in Bolivia called it wari pankara, and it later became commonly known in Spanish as cedrón or hierba luisa. The strongly aromatic shrub held a central place in everyday Andean life. Indigenous communities integrated its intensely fragrant leaves into traditional home gardens, ceremonial and everyday beverages like fermented chicha, and various spiritual practices, such as placing the leaves in living spaces or under pillows to ward off nightmares or negative forces. Beyond daily household use, traditional healers across the region frequently incorporated the plant into spiritual rituals designed to treat susto—an illness often described as “sudden fright” or “soul loss.” Susto was thought to be precipitated by a shocking or startling occurrence that disrupted emotional or spiritual homeostasis, and it resulted in depression, dejection, and a host of accompanying psychological and physical ailments. Lemon verbena infusions played a central role in curing susto.

Europe’s fascination with lemon verbena began in the 18th century following its collection by French botanist Philibert Commerson during a 1767 expedition to South America. After making its way to Madrid's Royal Botanical Garden, Spanish professors Casimiro Gómez Ortega and Antonio Palau y Verdera officially named the plant Aloysia citriodora in 1797—also dubbing it Hierba de la Princesa after María Louisa of Parma, Princess of Asturias. Specimens soon spread to Paris, where Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle published it as Verbena triphylla, and then to Britain via Oxford professor John Sibthorp. By the late 1700s, lemon verbena was a staple of London greenhouses, initiating a centuries-long popularity in European horticulture that ultimately earned it the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit.

Traditional & Medicinal Uses

In traditional Andean medicine, Indigenous healers—such as the traveling Kallawaya of Bolivia—and community elders relied on lemon verbena as a versatile remedy for a wide spectrum of physical ailments. Warm infusions of its highly aromatic leaves were most prominently administered as a soothing gastrointestinal aid to quiet stomach cramps, ease indigestion, and relieve nausea. Indigenous practitioners also drew heavily on the plant’s calming properties to treat the nervous system, prescribing infusions to ease restless anxiety, quiet heart palpitations, and promote restful sleep. Additionally, the herb served a critical role in respiratory and febrile care, where hot preparations were given to help break stubborn fevers, soothe persistent coughs, and clear bronchial airways, solidifying its place as a cornerstone of traditional South American pharmacopeia.

In Western herbalism, lemon verbena has long been cherished as a soothing, aromatic herb used to uplift the spirits and ease digestive and nervous tension. Modern scientific research now validates these traditional uses, demonstrating that its rich profile of essential oils and plant compounds offers tangible benefits for stress, sleep, and physical recovery.

The plant’s essential oils—such as geranial, limonene, and cineole—give lemon verbena its gently relaxing, anti-anxiety, and anti-spasmodic qualities. Studies suggest these effects work in part by interacting with GABA receptors in the brain to promote calmness.

• Anxiety & Stress Relief: Inhaling the essential oil as aromatherapy rapidly helps calm the nervous system, lowering anxiety, heart rate, and blood pressure. Taking the extract internally helps reduce perceived stress and lowers cortisol (the body’s primary stress hormone). One 2023 trial found that among women undergoing a cesarean section, 30 minutes of lemon verbena essential oil aromatherapy significantly reduced preoperative anxiety, blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate compared to a distilled water placebo.

• Sleep Quality: Oral preparations, such as leaf extracts or syrups, help people fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Research shows it boosts nighttime melatonin levels and significantly improves overall sleep efficiency.

Lemon verbena also contains powerful antioxidant compounds, including verbascoside and flavonoids like luteolin, which give the plant its anti-inflammatory properties.

• Exercise Recovery: Taking lemon verbena extract helps active individuals recover faster from tough workouts. It reduces muscle damage markers, eases movement-related soreness, protects against exercise-induced oxidative stress, and helps preserve muscle strength.

• Inflammation & Heart Health: In studies on chronic inflammatory conditions like multiple sclerosis, oral extracts significantly decreased inflammatory markers (like CRP) while boosting the body’s natural anti-inflammatory signals. Early research also suggests that lemon verbena may help support cardiovascular health by lowering total cholesterol levels over time.

The European Medicines Agency recognizes lemon verbena for two main indications: relief of mild mental stress symptoms and support for sleep, and symptomatic treatment of mild gastrointestinal complaints including bloating and flatulence. (For a helpful overview of the current scientific research, check out this monograph by the American Botanical Counsel; pp. 6-15.)

Beyond medicine, lemon verbena is also celebrated in fragrances, cosmetics, and skincare for its bright, invigorating citrus profile and versatile uplifting qualities. Its dried leaves retain their crisp scent for years, making it a classic choice for sachets, potpourri, and herbal bath blends, as well as a popular aromatic addition to soaps, lotions, body washes, and perfumes. Culturally, its crisp scent holds a famous place in American literature as the signature fragrance of Scarlett O’Hara’s mother, Ellen O’Hara, in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind—symbolizing comfort, grace, and home. Beyond its crisp fragrance in modern personal care, its botanical extracts and hydrosols are frequently incorporated into skincare formulations to lend soothing antioxidant properties to creams, body oils, and bath products.

In the Kitchen

Lemon verbena is remarkably versatile in the kitchen. The fresh or dried leaves carry a flavor reminiscent of lemon candy with an earthy-fresh essence—a subtle complexity that sets it apart from simple lemon juice. Young leaves are particularly prized for dishes where they’ll be eaten whole, like a bright pesto, while mature leaves work beautifully in infusions, syrups, and oils. Globetrotting through international food culture, lemon verbena’s punchy citrus character anchors some of the world's most iconic beverages and treats. In Peru, it serves as the signature flavor profile behind Inca Kola, the nation's beloved neon-yellow soda, while across France, it is steeped as verveine to make a classic post-dinner herbal digestif. From delicate French sorbets, panna cottas, and craft gins to North African mint tea blends and Latin American chicha, its fragrant essential oils impart a distinctively crisp, sweet lemon aroma that lemon alone can't replicate.

Fresh lemon verbena leaves can be harvested anytime and dried easily—they’re thin and crackle into crumbs within days when laid flat or hung in small bunches in a dark, airy spot. Once dry, store the leaves in an airtight container away from light; they’ll keep their flavor for months. The flowers are also edible and fragrant, and make a lovely addition to a green salad or fruit salad. Whether fresh or dried, lemon verbena offers an array of culinary uses that bring a bright, complex citrus note to both sweet and savory dishes without adding extra acidity:

• Teas & Beverages: Steep fresh or dried leaves for a simple tea, or blend them into syrups for lemonades, craft cocktails, and sodas. Lemon verbena is cooling and uplifting, and is especially great in the summer in iced teas, spritzers, coolers, and smoothies.

• Infused Oil: Blend fresh leaves with a neutral oil (like grapeseed), let infuse for an hour or so, and strain to create a vibrant finishing oil for salads, marinades, or grilled vegetables.

• Powders & Spice Blends: Dry and finely powder the leaves to sprinkle over fish, roasted poultry, or cooked vegetables, or incorporate them into custom herb rubs for added brightness. Or try adding the powder to flour for making pies, cakes, scones, muffins, cookies, or pancakes.

• Poultry, Seafood, & Marinades: Tightly tuck whole fresh leaves inside a roasting chicken, steam them with delicate white fish, or whisk chopped leaves into citrus marinades.

• Sweets, Dairy & Preserves: Infuse cream, milk, or simple syrups to flavor Greek yogurt, puddings, panna cottas, ice creams, fruit preserves, and popsicles.

One standout preparation is lemon verbena liqueur: chop a cup of fresh leaves, add to a jar with 4 cups of vodka, and let sit covered for two weeks, shaking occasionally. After two weeks, add 2 cups of sugar, shake to dissolve, and let sit for another two weeks. Strain, bottle, and enjoy by the thimbleful in desserts, seltzer, or straight—it captures the essence of the fresh leaf’s scent in a way that feels almost magical.

Some other recipe ideas:

• Lemon verbena-strawberry shrub

• Strawberry bundt cakes with lemon verbena glaze & sugared lemon verbena

• Lemon verbena lemonade

• Lemon verbena-ricotta pancakes

• Lemon verbena-blueberry preserves

• “Lemon Verbena Nectar” smoothie from Kami McBride’s The Herbal Kitchen: blend lemon verbena iced tea, ginger honey, frozen blueberries, and fresh lemon balm leaves.

• Lemon verbena-blackberry barbecue sauce

• Roasted salmon with lemon verbena pesto

In the Garden

Lemon verbena’s South American heritage means it loves heat and sunlight, and is perennial in zones 8-11. Plants grown in shade will be noticeably less flavorful and aromatic than plants grown in full sun, so choose your sunniest spot. Lemon verbena thrives in warm conditions and needs well-draining soil, and can be planted in a pot, garden bed, or direct in the soil.

Cold sensitivity is lemon verbena’s main limitation. In frost-free regions, lemon verbena remains evergreen year-round. When exposed to light frost, it becomes deciduous, dropping leaves as a survival strategy. Well-mulched, mature plants can survive brief temperatures as low as 6°F, at which point the plant will die back to the ground and regrow as an herbaceous perennial. In cold climates, plant in early spring so the shrub has time to establish deep roots and develop a sturdy trunk before winter arrives. In zones 7 and lower, lemon verbena will behave as an annual unless it’s brought inside during the winter; plan to either re-plant it each spring or make it a container plant that can come inside to a sunny spot in cold months.

Perennial lemon verbena emerges late in spring, so don’t panic if it seems dead in early April. Prune after the branches have budded and you can identify which wood is truly dead—waiting too long means dead branches become tangled with new growth, making pruning a headache. Spring pruning also encourages a bushier, more attractive form. This is also the time to remove branches that may crowd neighboring plants.

Lemon verbena is low-maintenance once established. Water during dry spells, especially in the first year. No special feeding is required, though a balanced fertilizer in spring can encourage vigorous growth. The plant is not prone to pests or diseases and will reward you year after year with abundant, fragrant foliage.

Precautions

• Drowsiness: Oral extracts are generally well-tolerated, but high doses can cause mild drowsiness. Use caution when driving or combining with alcohol or sedatives.

• Topical Irritation: The pure essential oil poses a moderate risk of skin sensitization and localized irritation. Always dilute it in a carrier oil before applying to the skin.

• Special Populations: Safety data regarding medicinal use during pregnancy, lactation, or in young children is limited, so internal use should be avoided without professional guidance.

Late July is a time of plenty. The wheat has gone from green to gold. The garden, which spent June in a kind of shy adolescence, is suddenly generous: tomatoes splitting on the vine, cucumbers multiplying overnight, blackberries and blueberries darkening along the fence line. Yet there’s also a particular quality of light that arrives in late July; heavier, more golden, angled ever so slightly toward the longer nights to come. This is the time of year the old Gaelic calendar calls Lughnasadh (LOO-nuh-sah)—roughly halfway between June’s summer solstice and September’s autumn equinox. Although the summer solstice is the longest day of the year and technically marks the beginning of shortening days, Lughnasadh really feels like the hinge on which summer begins its long turn into autumn.

Despite the fact that autumn is my favorite season and I always delight in its arrival, there’s a certain grief that accompanies this seasonal tilt toward darkness. Part of the grief is just a particular weirdness I generally feel toward summer. I love the promise of spring. I love the back-to-school energy and cooler weather of fall. Even winter invites a certain kind of satisfying dormancy. But summer—the season that should be “peak experience,” filled to the brim with scorching sun and saltwater and everlasting, firefly-lit nights—often feels bittersweet to me. Summer is it; summer is the season we planned and planted for. Summer is when we enjoy the fruits of our painstaking and backbreaking labor, when our successes and our failures are shown to us in sharp relief and when there is no longer time for fresh starts or course corrections. And there’s a certain finality to late summer in particular, because from here on out the days will only get darker, slower, less abundant.

My summer blues this year feel especially acute. My grandmother died last week. I’m coming up on the one-year anniversary of an enormously sad, life-altering shift to my home life. My birthday also fell a few days ago, and it felt quite emotionally loaded this year (I’m “not a big birthday person”; read: as an adult I’ve grown to hate the attention, expectations, and inevitable disappointment of birthdays). So this late July I find myself thinking about beginnings, and thinking about endings, and semi-managing “the war in my mind,” to quote our Summer-Sadgirl-Queen™️ Lana del Rey. Thankfully we’ve had an incredibly rainy month in Atlanta, so the garden has been (mostly) managing itself.

This late July I also find myself baking a homemade razzleberry pie: more on that below, and if you just want to recipe without any accompanying melodrama, click here.

Lugh’s Funeral Games: Name, Origins, & Folklore

The Celtic “wheel of the year” is an annual cycle of eight seasonal festivals: two solar equinoxes and two solar solstices (Ostara, Mabon; Litha, Yule) and four mid-point days (Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain) spaced between the solar events. The wheel of the year isn’t so much about calendric bookkeeping as it’s about bringing our attention to seasonal rhythms and the attendant phases of birth, growth, harvest, and death. The wheel is formally celebrated today by Wiccans and Celtic Reconstructionists, and informally by anyone drawn to cyclical or seasonal practices as a structure for marking time through food, gardening, and ritual.

Lughnasadh falls around the first of August each year. Where Beltane in May is about fire and fertility, and Samhain in November is about the thinning veil between the living and the dead, Lughnasadh sits in the ripe middle of the year, keeping watch over the first cutting of grain.

The name Lughnasadh comes from Old Irish Lugnásad—a combination of Lug, the mythological Irish god, and násad, an assembly or gathering. (A second, older theory ties the name instead to nás, meaning death or burial place.) In modern Irish, Lúnasa is simply the word for August. In Welsh, the festival is called Calan Awst; in English, by way of Christian adaptation, it’s Lammas, or “loaf-mass,” a blessing of the first bread baked from the new wheat each year.

According to one folkloric history of Lughnasadh, Lugh founded the festival as funeral games—an athletic competition held in honor of his foster-mother, Tailtiu, an earth goddess said to have died from exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for planting. She gave her life, the story goes, so that the land could be farmed for future generations. I’m struck by how unexpected this origin story is, at least to those of us accustomed to white-washed fairy tales and Hallmark movies. Lughnasadh is the first big feast of the harvest year, and its origin story is a funeral. Not a myth about rain or sun or a god's generosity—a myth about a goddess who worked until she dropped, so that the people who came after her could eat. (Kind of morbid; I like it.)

Rituals and Offerings

Traditionally, communities marked Lughnasadh with hilltop gatherings that doubled as county fairs and holy pilgrimages—celebrants climbed to high ground for feasting, athletic contests, horse racing, matchmaking, and “trial marriages” sealed by joined hands through a hole cut in a wooden door (okay, odd, but kind of a cool concept…?). That climbing tradition lives on today: the Reek Sunday pilgrimage in Ireland, held each year on the last Sunday of July, still draws tens of thousands of people up the coastal Croagh Patrick mountain in County Mayo. Climbers often gather and wear flowers on the way up and bury them at the summit; a small funeral for the summer.

Of course, as with many rituals, there’s a central food element: the first cut grain baked into bread, and the season's first wild berries (in Ireland, these are often bilberries or blackberries), gathered from the hillside and eaten together as the harvest's opening tribute. Across Ireland, the festival is so closely tied to bilberry-picking that in many parishes it is simply called Bilberry Sunday. Communities climb the hills specifically to gather the small dark fruit growing wild in the heath, and the harvest of berries is treated as something like an oracle: if the bilberries came in thick and sweet, the rest of the season’s crops will follow suit. If the berries fail, it is taken as a warning that the whole harvest might dwindle. Traditionally, the first loaf of bread or bushel of berries might be given as offerings to ancestral spirits.

That simple instinct—to gather and revel in the abundance of a simple loaf of bread or a small, wild-growing fruit—is one I think about constantly in late summer, watching the blackberries take over an untended corner of the yard, or the blueberries finally darken on a bush that looked half-dead in May. It’s an old human habit, apparently: to be suddenly struck by the simple yet awe-inspiring abundance of the earth. All of a sudden we are reminded of the miracle of it; of everything that had to go right, over eons, for that single berry to ripen on the bush. The Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this feeling in The Serviceberry, watching birds and people share a berry harvest:

“This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them... The Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full.”

Lughnasadh, at its simplest, is an invitation to stop and notice the marvel of it all —that a stalk of wheat and a wild berry, planted or not, tended or not, somehow turn sunlight into something that feeds us, feeds other animals, and feeds the soil. What a small, yet awesome, grace this is.

Razzleberry Pie & The Honorable Harvest

My grandmother never celebrated Lughnasadh as far as I know, but she did have a deep interest in ancestry, painstakingly documenting many generations of her own family history and those of her loved ones’. My own ancestral knowledge is due almost entirely to my grandmother. She kept a spookily tidy home, and welcomed everyone into it, including foreign exchange students from many countries. As a home economics teacher, she truly mastered the domestic arts—including Martha Stewart-level needlework. And she filled her table with comforting, home-cooked Midwestern meals: slow cooker pot roast; famous “Uncle Bill’s” baked beans; a wiggly orange Jello/Cool Whip dessert studded with mandarin oranges and marshmallows; and, perhaps most iconically, Marie Callender’s razzleberry pie. Razzleberry pie is my strongest food memory from my grandmother; she baked it nearly every time we visited, and I still remember my vague confusion as a young child wondering whether “razzleberries” were a real fruit.

Lughnasadh’s oldest traditions are not just about grain or berries—they are about grief. Remember that this whole festival began as a funeral: Lugh burying his foster-mother, mourning the goddess who sacrificed her life to feed future generations. This Lughnasadh, I'm baking my grandmother a razzleberry pie. Well, not a pie for her, exactly— she won't be at the table—but a pie in her honor, made from the fruit that’s ripest this week, the same way the old hillside pickers reached for bilberries on the bramble. This pie feels like the perfect ritual to commemorate my grandmother: it will be baked, and shared, and eaten around a table with loved ones, the way my grandmother modeled for me.

For all of us, harvest is inherited. Few among us grow a crop from a seed that we developed ourselves; someone before us selected it, saved it, learned through trial and failure which variety survives a given climate. To cut the first wheat of August is to draw on generations of that quiet, unglamorous, back-breaking knowledge.

As a closing reflection on Lughnasadh this year, I offer the following passage on the concept of the Honorable Harvest from Robin Wall Kimmerer. The idea of the Honorable Harvest comprises, as Kimmerer puts it, “prescriptions for sustainability”; they are “the indigenous canon of principles and practices that govern the exchange of life for life” (Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 179, 183):

The guidelines for the Honorable Harvest are not written down, or even consistently spoken of as a whole—they are reinforced in small acts of daily life. But if you were to list them, they might look something like this: 

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Introduce yourself. 
Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. 
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer. 
Never take the first. Never take the last. 
Take only what you need. 
Take only that which is given. 
Never take more than half. Leave some for others. 
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. 
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. 
Share. Give thanks for what you have been given. 
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken. 
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.

This Lughnasadh, may we all revel in the harvest, and offer one small moment to honor those who came before us. Climb a mountain (or a large hill, even). Pick some flowers and place them at a special place to commemorate the fruits of summer and generations past. Bake a loaf of bread. Pick berries; bake a pie or crumble or cobbler. Share with others. Take a moment to wonder in the selfless abundance of the earth. Gather loved ones around the table and give thanks for this year’s harvest—a harvest that is not earned, but given.

• Krispy Kreme donuts (straight from the Krispy Kreme drive-through itself, if possible)

• McDonald’s apple pies

• Dairy Queen Blizzards; Wendy’s chocolate Frosty in a pinch

• Hostess Cupcakes

• Cinnabons; Auntie Anne’s Cinnamon Stix in a pinch

• Movie theater popcorn, specifically alongside the jumbo pack of Junior Mints (okay, not quite a dessert, but deserves a mention on this list)

• Oreos

• Marie Callender’s Razzleberry Pie

  

  Razzleberry pie is a staple of my childhood. My grandmother baked one almost every time we visited as children, and I still remember my vague confusion for many years about whether “razzleberry” was a real fruit. As it turns out, the “razzleberry” in razzleberry pie is really a mixture of blackberries, raspberries, and apples. And oh, what a mixture. It’s a stroke of genius: the blackberries and raspberries provide a tart berry punch of flavor, while the apple adds sweetness and thickening power in the background (apples are high in pectin, a natural fruit thickening agent). This pie hits.

If I’m being honest, Marie’s razzleberry filling needs no improvement: my aim here is simply to replicate it. The crust, however, can be improved upon; hard to beat a homemade all-butter pie crust. And if you’re gonna do the homemade, “gourmet” version of this pie, might as well go hard and do the pie crust too. Otherwise I’d just as soon hit up my local freezer aisle for the original.

Prep time: 30 minutes (plus at least 1 hour chill time)
Cook time: 45-55 minutes
Yield: 1 pie
Ingredients: 

Crust: 
          20 tablespoons unsalted butter (10 oz.; 2.5 sticks)
          12.5 oz all-purpose flour (about 2 3/4 cups); divided into 7.5 oz and 5 oz
          2 tablespoons granulated sugar 
          2.5 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt (or 1 3/4 teaspoons Morton kosher                   
                salt; 1 1/2 teaspoon table salt)
          1/4-1/2 cup cold water 
          (Or substitute one store-bought double crust)

Filling: 
         2 cups fresh blackberries 
         2 cups fresh raspberries* 
         1 medium or large apple, peeled and grated (about 1 cup) 
         Juice of one lemon (about 2 tablespoons) 
         1 cup granulated sugar 
         1/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt 
         1/3 cup tapioca starch 

Assembly & serving: 
         1 egg 
         1 tablespoon water or milk
         3 tablespoons granulated, turbinado, or demerara sugar (optional) 
         Heavy cream (optional) 

*Feel free to mix and match various seasonal berries here; just make sure that you end up with about 4 total cups of berries. 

For the crust:

This crust is a recipe from America’s Test Kitchen for all-butter pie crust. It’s truly foolproof and easy to work with!

1. Prepare the butter: roughly grate 4T butter on a box grater. Place grated butter in a small bowl and set aside in the freezer. Cube the remaining 16T butter into 1/2-inch cubes. Set cubed butter aside in fridge while you measure the dry ingredients.

2. Place 7.5 oz of the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to combine.

3. Add the 16T cubed butter to the bowl of the food processor. Turn on the food processor and let run until one large clump of dough comes together (it will look almost like cookie dough.)

4. Break up the dough into large 2-3 inch chunks, and scatter them evenly around the bowl of the food processor.

5. Sprinkle the remaining flour (should be 5 oz) over the dough. Pulse in the food processor until smaller, 1/2 inch chunks form. You do not want this to be a cohesive mix; there should still be some loose flour.

6. Dump the dough into a large bowl. Sprinkle the the 4T grated butter over the dough, and mix briefly until the grated butter is coated with flour.

7. Mix in cold water, 2 tablespoons at a time, with a fork or spoon until the dough clumps together when you grab a handful. (This will take anywhere from 4-8 tablespoons depending on the humidity and temperature of your kitchen.)

8. Form dough into two equally roughly-sized balls, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Set aside in the refrigerator to chill for at least 1 hour, or up to 24 hours.

For the filling & assembly:

1. Roll out the pie dough into two uniform crusts that fit your pie dish. Place the bottom pie crust into the pie dish, leaving some overhang for crimping, and refrigerate both crusts while you make the filling.

2. Place berries, apple, sugar, lemon juice, salt, and tapioca starch into a large bowl. Mix and mash slightly until the berries are slightly more homogenous; we don’t want a pureé here, but we want a uniform berry filling. (Do not make the filling ahead of time; you don’t want this sitting too long before baking.)

   

3. Take the refrigerated pie dish and fill with the berry mixture. Place the top crust on top, crimping edges as you wish.

4. Make egg wash: whisk egg with milk or water.

5. Brush egg wash over the top crust and sprinkle with sugar. Cut a few 1-inch vent slits in any pattern you like. If the crust is no longer cold for whatever reason, refrigerate for 15 minutes before baking.

6. Bake at 400 for 45-55 minutes, until crust is golden and berry juices are bubbling out. (If the top crust starts to darken too much before the juices are bubbling, tent with aluminum foil.) Remove from oven and cool for at least 2 hours before serving; the berry filling takes a while to set up.

7. Serve with a drizzle of cold heavy cream (my preference)… or whipped cream, or ice cream, or Greek yogurt (how my sister ate it!).

Meanwhile, I’ve been developing hand pie recipes for my baking job… apple, blueberry, and—lo and behold—peach. Though tarragon is traditionally used in savory cooking applications, I knew that it paired deliciously with peaches… and turns out, tarragon is absolutely wonderful when blitzed into sparkly sugar and sprinkled over top of flaky, buttery pastry that encases cinnamon-spiced, brown-sugared peaches. Omg 🤤

(Note: though I love the tarragon here, it can be omitted entirely if you’re looking for a traditional peach hand pie recipe. Or you might try other seasonal herbs—I imagine elderflower, thyme, lemon balm, or rose petals could be yum here.)

For the video-loving folks among us, check out the recipe video on Instagram: pie crust recipe here and peaches/assembly here.

Prep time: 1.5 hours (plus at least 1 hour chill time)
Cook time: 25 minutes
Yield: 6-8 hand pies, depending on shape/size
Ingredients: 

Crust: 
          20 tablespoons unsalted butter (10 oz.; 2.5 sticks)
          7.5 oz bread flour (about 1 3/4 cups)
          5 oz all-purpose flour (about 1 1/4 cups)
          2 tablespoons granulated sugar 
          2.5 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt (or 1 3/4 teaspoons Morton kosher                   
                salt; 1 1/2 teaspoon table salt)* 
          1/4-1/2 cup cold water 

Filling: 
          2 lb peeled & sliced peaches
          1/2 cup granulated sugar
          2/3 cup brown sugar 
          1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
          1 tablespoon butter
          1 pinch salt
          2 tablespoons tapioca starch 
          1 tablespoon lemon juice 

Tarragon-sugar sprinkle: 
          1 egg, beaten 
          1/2 cup turbinado or demerara sugar (or you can use granulated sugar; it just 
                 won’t be as crunchy)
          2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon, or 1 tablespoon dried 

*Don’t come at me; I don’t make the rules! 

First, make the crust: 

This crust is an adaptation of a recipe from America's Test Kitchen for all-butter pie crust. The ATK version has always been my go-to pie crust, but I found that it was actually *too* tender for hand pies; the hand pies couldn't be picked up without breaking. To remedy this, I use a 60:40 ratio of bread flour to all-purpose flour. The bread flour increases the protein content and results in a sturdier (but still flaky and tender) all-butter crust. 

1. Prepare the butter: roughly grate 4T butter on a box grater. Place grated butter in a small bowl and set aside in the freezer. Cube the remaining 16T butter into 1/2-inch cubes. Set cubed butter aside in fridge while you measure the dry ingredients. 

2. Mix the bread flour and all-purpose flour together in a bowl. Set aside. 

3. Put 7.5 oz of the flour mixture into the bowl of a food processor, then add sugar and    
salt (you'll have flour left over!). Pulse to combine. 

4. Add the 16T cubed butter to the bowl of the food processor. Turn on the food    
processor and let run until one large clump of dough comes together (it will look 
almost like cookie dough.) 

5. Break up the dough into large 2-3 inch chunks, and scatter them evenly around the bowl of the food processor. 

6. Sprinkle the remaining flour mixture (should be 5 oz) over the dough. Pulse in the food processor until smaller, 1/2 inch chunks form. You do not want this to be a cohesive mix; there should still be some loose flour. 

7. Dump the dough into a large bowl. Sprinkle the the 4T grated butter over the dough, and mix briefly until the grated butter is coated with flour. 

8. Mix in cold water, 2 tablespoons at a time, with a fork or spoon until the dough clumps together when you grab a handful. (This will take anywhere from 4-8 tablespoons depending on the humidity and temperature of your kitchen.) 

9. Form dough into two equally roughly-sized balls, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Set aside in the refrigerator to chill for at least 1 hour, or up to 24 hours. 

(If you plan to make the dough more than 24 hours in advance, simply transfer it to the freezer after its initial chill. To defrost, place in fridge overnight or at room temp for about 1-2 hours.) 

Next, make the filling: 

1. Place peaches, granulated sugar, brown sugar,  cinnamon, butter, and salt in a medium saucepan. Cook on medium heat, stirring regularly, 15-20 minutes until peaches are saucy and juices are slightly thickened. Remove from heat. 

2. Stir lemon juice into peaches. 

3. Place the tapioca starch in a small bowl. Spoon about 1/4-1/2 cup of the peach juices over the tapioca starch. Whisk until there aren't any lumps, then add the tapioca/juice mixture back into the saucepan of peaches. 

4. Place the saucepan back on the heat, and cook on medium-low until the juices just thicken (keep an eye on the color: once the juices go from cloudy to clear, you're done.) Remove from heat. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 3 days in advance. 

Assemble and bake: 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. 

1. Remove one chilled dough portion from the fridge and let stand at room temp until pliable. Keep the other dough portion in the fridge while you work on the first batch of pies. 

2. Roll dough into a rectangle, about 1/4-inch thick (depending on your dimensions, it'll be about 10x14 inches). The exact size is not important, but try to get it as rectangular as possible. 

3. Trim edges with a sharp knife so that the dough forms a sharp rectangle without any curved or wavy edges. 

4. Cut the dough into a rectangular or square grid: depending on the desired size of your hand pies, you can cut the dough however you want. The bigger the squares, the bigger the hand pies will be. Each square will make one hand pie, so visualize each square as one piece of dough folded in half on itself. 

5. At this point, check the dough temperature: if it's feeling soft and sticky, place back in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. If it's feeling cool and pliable, move forward: spoon a bit of peach filling onto one side of each square of dough. (You'll need less than you think; I'm prone to overfilling these and then having them explode in the oven. Err on the side of less filling.) 

6. Fold the dough over the filling like a book, and press edges together to seal filling. You can seal the edges with any pattern you like. I just used a fork to crimp the edges shut. Place pies on a parchment-lined baking sheet into the refrigerator, and chill for at least 15 minutes or up to 1 hour. 

7. For the tarragon sugar: place the sugar, tarragon, and salt into a coffee/spice grinder, blender, or food processor and blend for 30 seconds until the tarragon is incorporated and fragrant. Set aside. 

8. For the egg wash: beat the egg with a tablespoon or so of water in a small bowl. Set aside. 

9. Sprinkle and bake: take the hand pies out of the fridge. Using a pastry brush, brush each pie with a thin layer of egg wash, and sprinkle with tarragon sugar. Using a sharp knife, cut 2-3 slits into each pie. 

10. Bake at 425 for 15-25 minutes, depending on the size of your pies. The crusts should be a deep golden brown, and the filling should be bubbling. Remove from oven and cool as long as you can stand it before eating. 

Repeat with other dough portion and the remaining peach filling. 

Tarragon is a hardy Eurasian perennial best known as one of the essential French fines herbes, prized for the sweet, anise-like bite it lends to béarnaise, hollandaise, and tartar sauce. Tarragon also has a rich medicinal history; long before it settled onto the spice rack, it was a folk remedy across Asia and Russia for digestive complaints, fever, toothache, and menstrual troubles. Modern lab research has since found evidence for the antibacterial, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory activity behind many of those traditional uses.

Let’s take a closer look.

Botanical Profile

Tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus) is a hardy, hairless perennial in the Aster family. Within the Aster family, Tarragon is a member of the Chamomile tribe, which puts it in the company of (you guessed it) chamomile, yarrow, sagebrush, wormwood, chrysanthemum, and tansy. Like its tribe-mates, it’s highly aromatic, and has thin, dry, semi-translucent bracts wrapped around its flowerheads (called “scarious” bracts).

The plant itself is upright and many-branched, reaching up to five feet in the wild (usually two to three feet in cultivation), with ribbed stems that stay bare of flowers low down. Leaves are narrow, sharp-tipped, and smooth-edged—the lower ones split into three at the tip, the upper ones simple and lance-shaped—and small yellow, tubular flowers gather into loose, hanging clusters. Below ground, it holds onto a thick, woody rhizome that sends out clusters of fine roots. It likely originated on the steppes of Siberia and Mongolia and has since spread into Central Asia, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, and North America, favoring alkaline meadows, riverbanks, and mountain slopes.

History

Tarragon’s Latin name is revealing. Dracunculus means “little dragon,” a diminutive of the Latin draco, and medieval herbalists—working from the “Doctrine of Signatures,” the belief that a plant’s shape hinted at its use—looked at tarragon’s twisting, serpentine roots and decided the plant must guard against snakebite (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). Pliny the Elder was already calling it draco in the first century AD, recommending it carried on the body or drunk as protection against venom, with the juice used for ear complaints. Some scholars think the name may also be a distorted version of the Arabic tharchum, which became tarchon, tarcon, and eventually tarragon as it moved through Europe. There’s an odd bit of folklore tucked in here, too: because the leaves resembled flax, some believed tarragon didn’t grow naturally at all, but sprouted from flax seeds packed into hollowed-out onions (again, spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

By the seventeenth century, tarragon had mostly settled into ordinary garden use. Simon Syrennius's 1613 herbal called it torchun, described a "very peppery" taste, and recommended it for toothache, digestion, and tossed into salad. A century later, Krzysztof Kluk's plant dictionary praised the same "spicy and pleasant" leaves for their use in salads, seasonings, and vinegars. By the 1700s and 1800s, most European pharmacopoeias had reclassified tarragon as a kitchen herb rather than a medicine, and a nineteenth-century recipe for tarragon vinegar—fresh herb steeped in wine vinegar for eight days, then pressed and filtered—reads exactly like something you'd find in an herbal cookbook today.

Traditional & Medicinal Uses

Outside Western Europe, tarragon held onto a much bigger medicinal role. Folk medicine across Asia and Russia used it for fever, gastric troubles, ulcers, intestinal cramps, menstrual problems, poor appetite, indigestion, and allergic rashes. Ancient Greeks chewed the fresh leaves to numb a toothache—a practice explained today by the eugenol present in tarragon, the same compound used in clove oil and still applied in dentistry as a local anesthetic. Ayurvedic tradition used tarragon as a tonic and immune support, and indigenous herders in the Himalayas still make a paste from the leaves to treat wounds on their livestock.

Laboratory and animal research over the past decade — much of it from Iranian research centers—has documented antibacterial, antifungal, antiprotozoal, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, immunomodulatory, antidepressant, anti-tumor, hepatoprotective, and hypoglycemic activity in tarragon extracts, along with a role in thyroid hormone regulation and insect/larvicidal effects. Specific findings include activity against Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, and Helicobacter pylori; measurable pain-relief effects in animal models partly reversed by the opioid-blocker naloxone; and, in a small human trial, improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity after 90 days of daily extract use. (See this paper for a helpful review of the recent scientific literature.)

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In the Kitchen

A classic French fines herbes, tarragon is essential to béarnaise, hollandaise, and tartar sauce, and pairs well with chicken (notably chicken salad), fish, and eggs. It can be macerated in oils or vinegars for use in marinades and dressings. Essential oil content is 0.3–1.0%, with estragole (methyl chavicol) as the dominant compound —up to 82% in French tarragon—responsible for its bittersweet, licorice-like flavor; other constituents include methyl eugenol, elemicin, sabinene, limonene, and roughly 1% coumarins. Drying significantly reduces flavor, so fresh use or overwintering a cutting indoors is generally preferred. Fresh tarragon is a strong source of vitamins C, A, and B-complex, and of calcium, manganese, iron, magnesium, copper, potassium, and zinc, ranking among the higher-antioxidant common culinary herbs.

Some tarragon recipe ideas (maybe someday I’ll get around to writing a lot of these)…

• Peach hand-pies with tarragon sugar sprinkle

• Green salad with tarragon, mint, chicken, goat cheese, & peaches (this has been on repeat in my kitchen!)

• Mushroom, tarragon, & gruyere tart

• Waldorf chicken salad with pecans, grapes, celery, and tarragon

• Creamy skillet tarragon chicken, served with new potatoes

• Barefoot Contessa’s herb-baked eggs (but add tarragon!)

• Tarragon-red wine vinegar

• Peach & tarragon soda or shrub

In the Garden

French tarragon — the cultivar known as ‘Sativa’ — has the best flavor and almost never flowers or sets viable seed, so it’s propagated only by root division and cuttings. Russian tarragon (A. dracunculoides) grows easily from seed but has noticeably less flavor, one that only fades further as the plant ages. So-called “Mexican tarragon” isn’t an Artemisia at all — it’s Tagetes lucida, an anise-scented marigold relative that makes a reasonable substitute in the kitchen when true tarragon isn’t available.

Site requirements: full sun, dry, well-drained soil (supposedly tarragon does not tolerate wet conditions, though we’ve had a very wet July here and my tarragon seems to be doing fine so far). Space plants 1.5 ft apart (ha!); prune regularly to encourage branching. Divide the root mass every 2–3 years in early spring as new leaves emerge, cutting it into sections with roots and at least one stub of prior growth—the center of established plants dies back naturally, so division is standard maintenance. Tarragon requires a period of winter dormancy and is prone to fungal disease in humid conditions, limiting suitability in the deep South. Top growth dies back after a hard frost; remove dead stems and mulch, with new growth returning in spring. Its strong scent deters many insects, making it a useful companion plant.

Precautions

No known precautions documented. Some traditional sources advise against heavy use during pregnancy, given tarragon’s historical use as a menstrual stimulant.