Hibiscus festival is on Saturday and Vero Beach is buzzing with hibiscus excitement (at least among everybody that counts). We are starting our week (closed Sundays and Mondays so yeah, our week starts on Tuesday) with the long awaited return of the Hibiscus bubble tea!

If you don’t know bubble tea you owe it to yourself to try one. Not necessarily made with tea (although our chai is made with black tea and spices and the green one is made with matcha) bubble teas are blended, frozen concoctions (again, ours are, some are just iced) with a giant straw so you can “drink” the tapioca (think gummy bears) bubbles lounging in your tea. They are absolutely addictive. We typically carry them in Chai, Green tea, Mango, Tarro (kind of vanilla-ish?) Strawberry, Blueberry, Lychee, Passionfruit and Almond flavours but, once a year, we go crazy and make Hibiscus. It’s that time of year. We’ll keep them going to the end of the month.

Also featuring this week are our Hibiscus glazed ginger scones served with hibiscus spice jelly and clotted cream, the hibiscus mango chutney I’ll be serving next to this week’s Chicken Curry Korma (as long as it lasts, recipe coming soon), hot or iced Hibiscus Celebration tea and who knows what else. And just to prove that you can do just about anything with hibiscus I’m leaving you today with two recipes I came across for “all natural Hibiscus lip balm and hibiscus blush”.

These are not my recipes. What’s worse, I haven’t even tried them out but, I came across them on www.thankyourbody.com and felt you’d want to know you can use hibiscus not just in food and drinks, but also in your cosmetics.

All natural, tinted lip balm

2 tbs coconut oil

2 tbs jojoba oil or avocado oil

2 tsp grated cocoa butter

1 tbsp grated beeswax

1 tsp vitamin E

½ tsp of your favourite essential oil

1-2 tsp powdered Hibiscus

4 to 6 half ounce containers

Melt coconut oil, jojoba oil, cocoa butter and beeswax in a small pot over low heat (do not boil). Remove from heat and add  vitamin E, essential oil and hibiscus. Mix well and quickly poor in prepared containers. Let cool until hard.

All Natural Hibiscus Blush

Arrowroot powder

Hibiscus powder

Cinnamon

Start with 1 tbsp of arrowroot and mix in hibiscus 1 tsp at a time until you get the desired  shade. Add cinnamon for depth and glow.