Belinda Kelly and Venise Cunningham’s dream of starting the Simple Goodness Sisters Soda Shop started with a simple concept: “from garden to glass.”

And with the release of their new book, that can turn into from your garden to your glass.

“Drink your Garden” is a culmination of the knowledge they’ve gleaned over the last decade, the sisters said — and not just of how to mix a drink, but how to create a drink from start to finish (spirits not included); think “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” but also with gardening tips.

“It’s very much an everyman book,” Kelly said. “This… is meant for people who like to garden, people who like to can or preserve things at home… [and] for people who want to make cocktails and mocktails, or a little bit of both.”

Speaking of mocktails, Kelly and Cunningham wanted to make sure non-drinkers find this book useful, especially because alcohol use among the younger generation is falling.

“A lot of times when you get people together, there’s bound to be someone who’s not drinking, Cunningham said. “So you can make yourself a cocktail… and also throw a mocktail in there with the one ingredient that you made at the end of summer.”

“Drink your Garden” can be ordered online or bought at Sweet Peas Mercantile in Enumclaw. Photo courtesy Simple Goodness Sisters

“And it’s going to be way more special than anything you probably were providing that was non-alcoholic before, like a soda,” Kelly added. “Anyone who doesn’t drink gets tired of the same options being presented.”

Here’s how the book walks you through the garden-to-drink process.

First, start a garden — large or small — and establish some easy-to-grow plants, like strawberries or lavender. (Mint is also a great choice, but you have to make sure it stays far away from any other plants you’ve got!)

Once you can harvest, you can take these ingredients and make them into a syrup; Kelly and Cunningham have recipes for lavender and honey or blackberry and mint.

Making a syrup can take minutes, but you can take more time to use those ingredients to make a strawberry, pepper, and mint shrub.

Add that to a plain seltzer, and you’ve got yourself a non-alcoholic shrub soda (“It’s the healthiest soda possible!” the book reads, adding that it “assuages a sweet tooth while balancing the stomach with naturally-fermented vinegar, aiding digestion.”)

Or you take more time to make a berry liquor, a good substitute for fresh berries in the Smash cocktail with rye whisky, lemon juice, the aforementioned blackberry and mint syrup, and a herb tincture.

The Smash, the book notes, is 23% ABV. This is important to note, Kelly said, because one of the Simple Goodness Sisters’ foundational philosophies is to drink with intention.

“Not everyone wants a[n]… 18% ABV cocktail,” Kelly said. “Different occasions call for something lighter, and if you have that knowledge… you can plug it into your day a little bit better.”

With the basics of drink making explained, Kelly and Cunningham hope that readers will also experiment — especially if they have an abundance of crops from their garden.

“A lot of our recipes are due to that,” Kelly said. “… I have this bumper crop of basil — what flavor pairings can I put together to use all of this basil?”

One year they had too much kale, so the sisters used it to create a kale and chard vodka for the Green Goddess drink.

“People don’t usually put kale in a cocktail,” Kelly said. “The resulting drink does not taste like a salad; it is not super vegetable or bitter or kale-tasting. It’s a really cool example of by using that, it’s going to add this fresh and green flavor to a drink… not unlike a French 75.”

Just don’t get discouraged if your first attempt at an original recipe goes sour. Or too sweet. Or bitter.

“It’s very rare for what is in my head and that first ingredient proportions that I come up with to be the final one,” Kelly continued.

As they say, if at first you don’t succeed, mix, mix again.

“Drink your Garden” can be ordered for $35 online at simplegoodnesssisters.com or bought at Sweet Peas Mercantile in Enumclaw or Northlight Interiors in Sumner.

Photo courtesy Simple Goodness Sisters “Drink your Garden” can be ordered online or bought at Sweet Peas Mercantile in Enumclaw.