First of May today!

And among the wishes for the new month I gave and I got, a good friend of mine said something funny: Be careful Yanni, he said, do not eat any flowers today because it is their special day :-) 

He was right I guess and so I did not publish the recipe for this dessert today but on the 2nd of May, even though I had the dessert on the 1st.

It is a very interesting recipe as it contains one of my favorite plants, lemon verbena. I really love the aroma of it, I have made many recipes using it and I even made a ASMR video last year about it. 

It is now starting to produce it's first leaves so I decided to make a dessert using them.

I flavored the Jelly with it as well as the cream for the mousse.

Light textures, I serve it in small wine glasses. I advise you to dip the spoon to the bottom so that you will take some jelly as well as some mousse in the same spoonful to feel the difference in texture between them. 

I serve it with Greek yogurt.. Actually sheep yogurt, that it is a lot more tart than the usual greek style yogurt you are accustomed to. I find that its acidity cuts through the sweetness of the chocolate and goes well with the lemon juice in the jelly. 

A recipe for grown ups but I feel that kids will like it as well. 

Let's see what we will need:

ASMR or autonomous sensory meridian response is a state that is characterised by a tingling sensation that starts from the back of your head and travels through the back of your neck to your shoulders and arms and your spine.

It makes you feel almost like you have the goose bumps and it is created when you receive the right stimuli. 

It gives you a light Euphoric sensation and if it lasts a long time it makes you relax so it is a technique some people use to get to sleep, especially people with some sleeping disorders. 

From 2007 when it was first brought to the spotlight till 2010 many names had been given to this state and many of them derived from an erotic side to it and today being the international orgasm day I guess it is a great subject to talk about.

There are some ASMR videos made with that erotic twist in mind and you can find them under the name ASMRotica.

The stimuli that are in charge of the ASMR state are varied and can be some of the following:

Listening to a voice that is speaking with a low tone

Listening someone eating and munching

Hearing sounds that things create when rubbed together, grinded together, like tapping on a table, the sound of nails on surfaces, even the sound of the cicadas. 

There are many things to be told about all this and probably I will come back with another post about it all but maybe I should tell you how I first became interested in this whole thing.

There are many ASMR videos out there especially on youTube. Mostly videos with girls  and boys  that speak in low voices and tap or caress things with their fingers. 

But there are wonderful artists that are incredible even in a simple thing as a video recipe for a particular dish. 

So, in these cases instead of having a celebrity chef talking and animating all the time in these videos there is no need for a voice or even music. 

The only thing you can actually hear is the sound from food inside packages, boiling water etc. My favourite channel that has a lot of ASMR videos but not only is Peaceful Cuisine  with Ryoya who has a great aesthetic and his videos are just incredible.

Ofcourse you need expensive cameras and microphones for these kinds of videos but even apple lately came up with some videos that show the various angles of the ASMR trend and supposedly only use the phone for producing them. 

And a few things about me now. In the garden I have a small lemon verbena bush that was a bit overgrown so it needed some trimming. I did that about 2 weeks ago but I kept the branches and let them dry naturally under dappled light in order to use it’s leaves as a herbal tea this coming winter when the fresh ones would have fallen from the bush.  

So Yesterday I saw that the leaves and ready and I started removing them from the branches. The day was beautiful, there was a lovely breeze, the cicadas were screaming their heads off and it was a typical brilliant summer day in Greece. As I started removing the leaves from the branches I thought about making a little video trying to capture the essence of summer in Greece at least by sound. I wanted to hear that video in the winter months and to warm my heart. 

So I present you with my first ASMR video just by using my phone. Watch it with headphones if possible. Works better that way.

I also have thyme, Oregano and Salvia in the garden. Do you think I should continue with those? :-) 

I also have thyme, Oregano and Salvia in the garden. Do you think I should continue with those? :-)