Edible Dallas & Fort Worth Spring 2022

edibles Notable Cassie Green Health Elderberry Syrup

The j ourney f rom g rocers t o e lderberry syrup g urus/What’s i n a be rry?

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They came to it by accident. The tiny fruit inks up: European black elderberry (Sambucus nigra) is the richest and most concentrated in antioxidants among elderberry species and sought for its general im- mune-support properties. Cassie Green and her husband Gary Stephens were not expecting to become elderberry syrup gurus when they opened their business Green Grocer in Dallas in 2013, with a holistic health coaching practice on the side. (The shop was open for five years.) “We sold it at our store. And we were just obsessed with it. Our whole staff loved it; my husband loved it. I didn’t get that cold I would previously get. My allergies went away,” Green says. The couple was getting the elixir made by a local family who moved to Maine, offering to let the Green Grocer duo take the reins. “We made about 60 different items in-house, and the one thing peo- ple asked about [obsessively] was the elderberry syrup,” Green says. So starting in 2016, when they cut back on the shop, they concentrat- ed on using the commercial kitchen to bottle the purple potion. “We just started calling our friends who owned juice bars, little [business- es], and it grew from there. I never ever thought that we could have the simplicity of dealing with just one product,” Green says. The inky dark berry is used as a supplement. Like turmeric or mat- cha, it’s part of a longstanding tradition to which people are latching on, in this case for its antiviral and antioxidant properties; it’s touted for shortening the length of colds and flu. Green appreciates the way it allows her to be “a hippie who likes science,” in her own words. “I love a good, traditional remedy for things, but I also love things that have clinical research behind it. The balance of something that has been used for centuries by so many cultures, but then it also has double-blind studies.” She mar- vels at “all these different benefits that people are still figuring out from this tiny little berry.” Her syrup is made with dried organic berries, harvested in the fall in Eastern Europe, which the team simmers and then cold presses, add- ing organic ginger and cinnamon, Texas lemon juice, and raw honey from a beekeeper in Burleson. The speck of a fruit was famously called out by the Greek Hippo- crates as a medicine chest of sorts. But it offers Green a way to be connected to local producers. During the early days of the pandemic,

Gary Stephens and Cassie Green

Find Cassie Green Health Elder- berry Syrup from $19.99 for 8 oz. at Burgundy’s Local in Dallas and Fort Worth, at Market Provisions at the Dallas Farmers Market, or online at cassiegreenhealth.com

6 | EDIBLE DALLAS & FORT WORTH SPRING 2022