I got a present in the mail today: a 4 oz. package of lavender from Pen­zeys spices. Four ounces of lavender is a enor­mous amount. All together, it’s over a cup of whole lavender spice that is incred­ibly potent.

Because I’m impa­tient, I imme­di­ately went to the store and pur­chased some of the items I’ll need to create my snack mix: wal­nuts, dried blue­ber­ries, banana chips, and crys­tal­ized ginger. I forgot to pur­chase coconut flakes, but I already had some sweet­ened coconut flakes at home, so I thought I would be okay.

The lavendar comes as little pel­lets that look like grains of wild rice. For this mix, I very very finely minced 1/8 of a tea­spoon until I had a fine powder. If the spice has a strong aroma when whole, it’s a whole other level of strong when it’s chopped up – even this small quan­tity. The lavender was added to the following:

• 2.5 oz. walnuts
• 0.75 oz. dried blueberries
• 0.75 oz. banana chips, broken up
• 0.25 oz. flaked coconut (the sweet­ened kind, minced up into tiny flakes)
• 1 T. crys­tal­ized ginger, minced up
• 1 T. honey with a drop of vanilla mixed in
• 1/8 t. white pepper
• pinch of salt.

I mixed all these items in a plastic con­tainer with a lid that seals tightly. Once all the ingre­di­ents were in, I shook it vig­or­ously to dis­tribute the spices and the honey.

I prob­ably should have put the mix onto a tray to allow the honey to dry, but I was in a hurry. I’ve been eager to try this so I simply stuck my hand into the sticky mix and tried it. My impa­tience was rewarded. My wor­ries about the strength of the lavender were mostly unfounded. It was nicely bal­anced by the ginger, honey, vanilla, and pepper. The pepper might have been a bit stronger than in the pack­aged product sold by Sahale. The mix had a spicy bite to it; good thing I like spice.

Next time, I’ll need to be more patient. Alton Brown has some ideas on how to make snack mixes with nuts, and I should look at how he dries out the mix­ture so it isn’t super sticky. But I’m def­i­nitely on the right track. The real chal­lenge is what to do with all of that lavender.