Fresh Herbs & Fresh Intentions: A Recipe to Welcome Spring 🌿

Spring always feels like an invitation — to begin again, to step outside, to clip something green and fragrant and let it perfume your hands. For me, it’s the season where memory and possibility sit side by side in the kitchen.

Shortbread has always carried that duality.

Brechin Cathedral and round tower

My great grandmother was from Brechin, a small cathedral town in Angus, eastern Scotland, where history sits quietly in stone walls and narrow streets. Brechin is home to a 1,000-year-old round tower and an ancient cathedral that has marked time for generations — baptisms, market days, marriages, harvest festivals. I often imagine her walking those same streets, the air cool and damp, the River South Esk moving steadily nearby, the church bells carrying across the rooftops. It was a place where traditions were not trends but inheritance. Recipes were not written down so much as remembered in the hands.

Her “shorties” were worked the same way — by feel. Butter pressed into flour and sugar, the dough handled just enough. In a town like Brechin, where linen was woven, grain was traded, and households ran on skill and rhythm, that kind of baking was both practical and sacred. Her shortbread wasn’t ornamental. It was sturdy, generous, meant to be shared with tea after church or offered to neighbors across the way.

Those shorties became the stuff of legend in our family. And when I make mine now — wherever I am — I think about the lineage of hands before mine. The stone streets of Brechin. The cathedral bells. The quiet discipline of women who built tradition through repetition and care.

I make my shortbread in honor of her.

But I also make it for where I am now.

Blending Where I Come From & Where I Am

Tradition is beautiful. But tradition is also alive.

I love infusing new ideas into old recipes — especially through herbs. Clipping fresh rosemary for rosemary lemon shortbread. Harvesting lavender for a floral, delicate lavender lemon shortbread. Playing with savory-sweet ideas like thyme, basil, and flaky sea salt.

My garden expands based on the ideas I have and the environment I’m in.

Since moving to the desert, I’ve added a lemon tree, Mexican tarragon, and lemon balm. The soil is different. The light is sharper. The air carries heat instead of dew. And still — herbs grow.

No matter where I live, I’ll find a way to grow something.

Blending where I come from and where I am is one of my favorite journeys — and one that never gets old.

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🌿 Rosemary Lemon Shortbread

Flavor Profile: Bright, piney, buttery, slightly crisp at the edges.

Ingredients

• 1 cup high-quality butter

• ½ cup sugar

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• Zest of 1 lemon

• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

  
  

Method

1. Cream butter and sugar by hand or mixer until smooth

2. Combine lemon zest and rosemary with flour

3. Work in flour mixture to sugar and butter -- bring it together into a dough

4. Press into a parchment-lined pan or shape into a log and chill for 30 minutes

5. Bake at 325°F for 18–22 minutes until just lightly golden at the edges

6. Let cool fully before slicing if baked as a round

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The Ritual of Spring

There’s something grounding about clipping herbs in the early morning light. About letting butter soften naturally on the counter. About pressing dough with my palms the way she would have.

My great grandmother likely never imagined flavors like rosemary lemon or thyme basil sea salt. But she would recognize the hands working the dough. She would understand the intention.

Fresh herbs remind me that growth is possible anywhere — even in desert soil. Even in seasons of change.

And shortbread reminds me that roots matter.

This spring, maybe the invitation isn’t just to plant something.

Maybe it’s to remember something.

And then to make it new again. 🌿✨