So if you know us, or have spent any time around us, you have probably been doused in something or fed something that has essential oils in it. They are such an integral part of our lives and the first thing we reach for as a natural remedy when we need one that it was a logical next step to start cooking with them. To be honest, I’ve never been very good at replacing dried herbs as often as you’re supposed to. I think the recommendation is like every 3 – 6 months to ensure
maximum flavor. This means I would end up doubling or tripling the recommended amounts to offset the loss in flavor which can make things look more like a dried leaf salad than say, soup or pasta sauce.
What finally clicked for me is that it’s the essential oil that is evaporating off the dried herbs. That’s the flavor that you’re looking for when you buy them. So why not skip the middle man? We started experimenting. Most of the time it’s been great but it was challenging at first to wrap our head around the less is a LOT more concept with the oils.
See, if one drop of peppermint is the equivalent of approximately 32
cups of peppermint tea in volume of essential oil this means that 7-10 drops of peppermint essential oil in a batch of ice cream, while delicious and super frosty, will act as a rapid colonic. Which we discovered one evening. There were three of us all locked in our respective bathrooms for more than an hour texting each other bc we were miserable and mint scented. It was rough. Lesson learned. No more than 4 drops in a batch of ice cream. Just saying.
Most of our other experiments have been delicious if a lot like 
learning to paint with watercolors. A delicate hand is key. The first thing to master is using a toothpick to dip into the EO bottle and swirl into whatever you are cooking. Remember, you can always add more EO if it needs it, you can’t take it out. One of my favorite things is lavendar meringues. They’re fragrant, delicate and beautiful. I love piping them with a touch of purple food color and then topping them in a few bits of lavender buds, easy and elegant.
Because the oils are lipophilic (meaning they are absorbed into fats easily) mixing them with things that are fatty is a wonderful way to add them to a recipe (think egg, oil, butter). This also means that they make a bomb marinade for meats (or tofu, if that’s your thing). Because they are lipophilic they spread through the entire piece of 
meat in a very short period of time. Where this benefits last minute, throw it together and hope sort of cooks like me is that you can get meat that tastes like it’s been marinated overnight in 15 minutes. Better than that actually as it will permeate the entire tissue of whatever you’re marinating so you don’t have to butterfly a chicken breast to get flavor all the way through. You can melt some butter, add oils to it and brush it on a whole chicken to bake or add some EOs to olive oil and toss a steak with it just before grilling for incredible flavor. It’s great for you plan ahead people too, since it saves you time which is a valuable commodity in all of our lives.
The one caution I would give in experimenting with these recipes is that we are super picky about what essential oils we use. This means that we are super brand specific in any of the recipes we give out. There are reasons for that, in particular, Young Living is the only brand I can be positive is unadulterated and therefore safe to consume (the oils that are herb based that is, some should never be eaten, more on that elsewhere).
Many of you know that I was a founder of a fairly large bath and body company, oh, many moons ago now. We lost unbelievable amounts of money on large quantity purchases of essential oils due to the fact that there is little to no regulation on essential oils and EO labeling in the US.
What this means is you can buy a bottle of essential oil in a store that says organic, or 100% pure 
and it can be 90% chemical/perfume extender and 10% essential oil. How this effected us is that one order would be fine, and the next would be adulterated, they came from the same company, and were labelled the same. We would only know they were adulterated when they ruined the soap we were making.
If you’ve never made soap from scratch, I recommend it, just make sure you’ve got a well ventilated room or can do it outside. At some point this year I’ll be doing a workshop on small scale soap making, if you’re interested, send me your info through the Contact Me page.
Here’s the basic process: mix some lye with water, let it cool to the desired temp while you melt/mix the fatty oils you will be making your soap from (anything from shea butter to bear fat can be used, if it’s oil, it can be soap). When they’re both at the right temperatures, you blend the two together, the lye will react to the fats in a process called saponification. When the mix is creamy, like a custard or pudding before it sets, you add the color or additives and then the essential oil. What we would run into is that one drum of essential oil would be fine and then we’d get an adulterated one that would curdle the soap like spoiled milk. We finally had to resort to paying a company to test the essential oils for us, before we would accept them, to ensure they weren’t adulterated. The additional cost saved us thousands of dollars of waste. Most people don’t have a mass spec machine or gas chromatography on hand so Cyndi and I stick with Young Living.
Young Living’s standards require internal testing to ensure that the oils meet or surpass AFNOR standards. Since they own or partner directly with the farms that produce all the plants for their oils they can control the way they are grown so that they are the cleanest growing conditions possible. They also distill all their oils themselves and bottle them in house.
Members are invited to attend harvests to learn in detail about the plants, growing methods, distillation and bottling processes. You can go participate directly in everything from cutting the plants to labeling bottles. They are the only company that does that and the transparency that is involved there is a large part of why we are confident cooking with their oils. The Vitality Line of oils has also all been approved for FDA nutritional labeling.
Of all the companies out there hocking essential oils (and there are a LOT of them) they are the largest company in the industry, over $1 billion in sales in 2016 and they are constantly innovating and working to create wonderful products that support your wellness, create a cleaner environment (all the way down to the farming practices), help those of us involved with them to achieve our health and financial goals, all with a specific charity arm of the company devoted to direct action that makes the world a better place. Every other company buys from the same general clearing houses that gather various qualities of oils, test for basic profiles of constituents and then bottle them with different labels. So basically, most of what you see in a store, or order online is produced in the same place and labeled differently. I’ll stick with the company that grows their own.
If you would like to order some of their oils, you can go directly here to purchase a membership (it’s kind of like Costco only you get a bottle of essential oil rather than an ID card that doesn’t look like you, you can also buy the products without a membership at retail pricing)or email me through the Contact Me page and I’ll follow up with you to help.
If you’re in our hood (Los Angeles) or in any of the places we visit/teach in regularly (New Orleans, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and soon Washington) hit us up about our Cooking With Essential Oils Classes. We do them regularly both in our place and for people and their friends. It costs $20 a person and will be a full meal that we will teach you to prepare, you will also get a handout with the recipes we are featuring to take home. We have various menus on the schedule and always look forward to them, they’re a lot of fun. Send me an email on the Contact Me page if you want to be included on the mailing list for this or would like us to come out and teach your peeps about all of this yumminess.
Quick Reference: Recipes & Projects That Include Essential Oils On This Site
Bell Pepper & Italian Sausage Gravy
Herbed Lemon Matzo, Matzo Ball Soup
Lavender Lemonade