By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
The smell of winter and the holiday season filled the air in the Westwood Council on Aging (COA) this past Monday, December 4th, as they held a Make Your Own Festive Seasoning event. This workshop was hosted by Therapy Gardens who offers an array of in-person activities including cooking and nutrition, healthy living, and indoor and outdoor gardening. They specialize in working with libraries, senior community centers, and other living facilities throughout Massachusetts and parts of the New England Area.
This event focused on learning about and creating festive seasonal mixes that will not only benefit your health, but also taste and smell delicious! Therapy Gardens’ owner, David Wheeler, discussed with all COA members in attendance about the different spices and herbs they would be mixing. To go along with this discussion, Wheeler made sure everyone received two handouts, one with a detailed ingredient list on how to make each holiday mix, and one with the different health benefits and fun facts about each herb and spice being used in this session.
When discussing the herbs and spices, many COA members were shocked about all the health benefits there truly are. In terms of sage, Wheeler wrote out and mentioned, “Sage gets its name from the Latin word Salvere, which means ‘to save.’ Current research indicates that sage may be able to improve brain function and memory, especially in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Other studies have also shown that sage can improve memory function in healthy people, both young and old.”
Once everyone understood the various health benefits of each of the spices, it was time for the most exciting part of the morning, mixing these wonderful spices together! Some of the blends they could create were a mix of both savory and sweet: a spicy coffee blend, a mocha spice blend, a pumpkin spice blend, a roasting blend, a warming spice blend, just to name a few.
The biggest hit of all the blends that almost everyone in the room made was the roasting blend. For this, one would add rosemary, garlic powder, sage, onion powder, celery seed, oregano, paprika, black pepper, thyme, and a pinch of cinnamon. In terms of measurements for each spice, Wheeler mentioned that there really is no exact measurement, it really is up to you on how much you like the spice and/or how strong they are. He went on to say that if you happened not to like a spice or herb included in the recipe, you could leave it out and it would still taste great!
In terms of the event as a whole, Wheeler stated, “I love doing the seasonings presentation, particularly the festive one because these are the kind of scents and aromas that remind people of different things. For example, cloves are typically a holiday thing but I don’t particularly like them, I’ve had to make myself like them in a way. But I started thinking about it and I love all the spices like nutmeg and cinnamon but just not this one. And then I realized, if you are of a certain age, what do you associate cloves with? A ham dinner. I hated that as a kid. So I realize now that I associate with that but I’m working past that. But some of the other ones, the minute I smell nutmeg, it’s Christmas Eve to me. And everyone has their own so I love doing this with all of you.”
By the end of this event, everyone left with two to three different spice/herb blends and were all ecstatic to experiment with these blends at home.
