The folks at Marsh House Rum, a relatively new Louisiana distillery out on Avery Island, sent me a “sample” of their product. Now when I say sample, I mean a fifth of their signature rum and a fifth of their barrel aged rum. Both are smooth rums with notes of vanilla and caramel, and just a hint of tangy citrus — the aged version only deepened those flavors — and both are infinitely sippable all on their own.
While I certainly appreciated the gifts from Marsh House, I was left scratching my head. What was I going to do with two fifths of rum? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good cocktail, but aside from my beer-laden college years, and the drunken whirlwind during my first year in New Orleans, I just don’t drink very often.
Not long after receiving the rum, I was talking to one of my best friends (a lady who evacuated with me before Hurricane Katrina), and I told her about my problem. Dani, an avid herbalist, suggested a more healthful solution . . . quite literally!
The following weekend, Dani arrived at my apartment armed with mason jars, zip-lock bags of dried herbs, assorted funnels, a wealth of herblore, and a plan. You see, I’m a 53-year-old woman who, like so many women my age, has endured the travails of menopause. Though I am on HRT, it still hasn’t been able to help me manage some pretty severe mood swings and debilitating bouts of anxiety. Dani believed I could benefit greatly from a tincture made with dried passionflower, an herb long used to help anxiety and insomnia.
As a little bonus project, she also brought along a bundle of organic Madagascar vanilla beans, so we could make our own vanilla extract, an idea that appealed to the baker in me. I even made a quick trip to *Cost Plus to pick up a few glass, swing-top stoppered bottles before Dani arrived.
I learned so much from our little project! Dani taught me about the ratios of herbs to alcohol, how long to let them steep, squeezing every last drop of tincture using a French press, and that wide-mouth funnels DO exist! Our extract experiment also inspired me to do more research on vanilla-making, how adding more beans per every 8 ounces of alcohol will deepen the flavor i.e. the difference between single-fold, double-fold, and even triple-fold vanilla extract.
I don’t think the distillers at Marsh House Rum created and shared their product with me so I could turn around and make tinctures and extracts, but I greatly appreciate it, nonetheless. Though they might be happy to know we also made some pretty stellar Mojitos.
*I grew up in the Bay Area and World Market, which started in San Francisco as Cost Plus Imports in 1958, will always be Cost Plus to me.
