In Love with Lavender
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at 4:00AM 
Your immediate associations with lavender may include eye pillows, scented dresser drawers and massage oil. But the fragrant buds are also a standard culinary herb most commonly known for its starring role in the classic French spice blend, herbes de Provence.
It dawned on me during a recent visit to the Lavender by the Bay farm in Long Island, NY, where the violet stalks are in bloom, that lavender buds are a versatile and underutilized ingredient. So I picked up a sack of dried culinary lavender to tinker with at home…my suitcase still smells fabulous, but that’s nothing compared to the warm, sweet scent wafting from the oven.
Now, no matter how inspired you might be to cook with these fragrant florets, don’t run to your dresser drawer and rip open the sachet perfuming your skivvies. There are specific varieties of lavender that are good for cooking, sold as “culinary lavender.”