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Just posted this recipe for homemade toothwash over at the Purple House blog, and thought I ought to share it with the herbies. Check it out, and let me know if you have any tips or personal favorite recipes for tooth care…
I love oats (gluten free oats, of course). It is probably my number one comfort food. Even if I’m sick with low appetite, I can eat oats, but they’re also my breakfast of choice—they just soothe the soul, you know? I love them cooked, especially on weekends when time isn’t as much of an issue, but I also love to eat them uncooked, just mixed with some yogurt or water, a pinch of sea salt, some fresh fruit or agave syrup, a dash or two of cinnamon, let it sit overnight or for an hour and enjoy at room temperature. Oats are unique in that they can be eaten raw, with no special preparation necessary for our bodies to be able to digest them. You get the picture: I am awfully fond of oats.
Meanwhile, there’s this lovely set of herbs called adaptogens of which I’m a big fan. Adaptogens are wonderful because they are tonic to the adrenals (which is to say that they help our bodies to cope with stress), they can be taken daily and indefinitely, and they have no undesired, harmful effects. They are simply, deeply nourishing, and I don’t know about you, but my adrenals are very grateful for the help some days.
Usually in the past I’ve eaten my adaptogens in paste form, which is lovely, but recently I made a fabulous discovery. Astragalus, probably my favorite herb in this group, is not only “not bad” or “tolerable,” it’s downright delicious! I ran out of paste last week and didn’t have time to whip up another bowl before heading off to work, so I mixed half a tablespoon of powdered astragalus into my bowl of oats (soaked overnight) along with the cinnamon and agave nectar. I figured I could stomach the result in the interest of getting my herbal goodness in. I didn’t expect to never want to eat oats any other way! Astragalus gives a nutty, almost buttery or creamy flavor… you just have to try it.
I’ve also heard a few people say that they like to put larger chunks of dried astragalus in soup for herbal benefit and additional flavor. I haven’t tried this yet, but oh, I will be trying it very soon…
My name is Anna, and I am thoroughly and irrevocably addicted to chai. Traditionally an infusion of herbs in hot milk and water, chai is actually the word for tea in Hindi and throughout much of Asia. Here in the West, what we call chai actually more closely refers to “masala chai,” which consists of black tea, some form of sweetener, milk, and herbs such as cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and pepper. You can use whole or powdered herbs, mix up the combinations/ratios, add a little sea salt, make it your own. Oh! but it is creamy, spicy, sweet, bitter, and a little salty, all at once, and it leaves me sighing and blissfully rubbing my belly.
Usually chai is simmered for a long time for a good strong brew, but it’s summer, and I like to “cook” passively as much as possible to keep the kitchen from getting too hot, else my pitta self tends to overheat. So for this summertime version, I decided to try to do it as a concentrated sun tea, which you can then mix with milk for a cool chai treat! Also, though I wouldn’t recommend anything but real dairy for hot chai, for a cold chai, nut milks or oat milk are also quite tasty. Oat milk = yum.
Sun-Brewed Summer Chai
- 4 c. water
- 5 black tea bags
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 1/2 t. cardamom
- 1 t. cinnamon
- 1 t. ginger
- 6 cloves
- 1 t. pepper
- Pinch of sea salt
- 3 T. honey (or to taste)
- Milk
Place all herbs and tea in a quart (4-cup) mason jar. Add water to the top. Securely put the lid on and shake it all about. Put it in a sunny spot and let it steep all day. That’s what it’s all about!
I knew my “sunny spot” would only get sun for four or six hours and we want this tea strong, so I actually started it the night before and let it steep a full 24 hours. When it’s done, strain the liquid into a bottle or jar, add honey, and once more shake it up to dissolve the honey. The amount I used above is mildly sweet, but adjust to your taste. Store in the refrigerator, and when ready to use, mix with milk or oat milk or almond milk or whatever milk you prefer, usually a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio of chai syrup to milk. Enjoy cold as a summer morning treat, and pat yourself on the back for never turning on the stove!
My friend Robbie and I spent last Friday afternoon having a high time making lotion, body scrub, and body wash. The one thing we didn’t get to was this sun lotion—I was still waiting for cocoa butter to arrive from Mountain Rose. I promised her however that I would save her a jar. We’re both fair-skinned, and speaking for myself, I need all the help I can get.
I really enjoyed Meghan Telpner’s blog on sun and sun protection, and had been wanting to make my own sun lotion. Using her recipe and a couple others as guidelines, here’s the recipe I came up with.
NOTES: If you don’t have a double boiler (I don’t), you can make your own easily enough by putting a canning ring or two inside a large saucepan, filling it partway with water, and resting a smaller saucepan inside of it, as shown in the picture above. The canning ring(s) will allow the water to flow around the smaller saucepan, just like in a double boiler. Also, I love using my immersion blender for the emulsifying process, but a powerful blender would do the job too, I imagine.
Also, use the purest ingredients that you can find—the borax is not your average store-bought borax, I get it from Mountain Rose and it’s cosmetic grade with no additional additives or surfactants. The oils are organic and unrefined whenever possible. And, should you happen to think, “Oh hey, cocoa butter wafers! Those’ll be easy to measure!”, you might want to order them in cooler weather, so you don’t get home to a melted bag of cocoa butter, which will become a brick once it cools from sitting in the sun on one’s front porch. Just saying. 
Homemade Sun Lotion
- 1/3 c. sesame oil
- 2 Tbsp. olive oil
- 2 Tbsp. jojoba oil
- 2 Tbsp. sweet almond oil
- 1/3 c. cocoa butter
- 2 tsp. vegetable based emulsifying wax
- 1/8 tsp. citric acid
- 1/4 c. distilled water
- 1/4 c. aloe vera gel
- 1 tsp. borax powder (pure cosmetic grade)
- 10 drops lemon balm essential oil (or other lemony or minty oils, for insect repellant actions)
Place the first seven ingredients in a double boiler and turn heat to Medium. Meanwhile, combine in a bowl or wide-mouth quart jar (my preference for the immersion blender) the distilled water, aloe vera gel, and borax powder. Stir or shake well to mix and set aside. Continue stirring the oils in the double boiler constantly while it melts. Once all oils have melted together, removed from heat.
Place your immersion blender into the jar or bowl with the aloe mixture, and begin blending. Slowly pour the oils from the double boiler into the jar or bowl while blending—this will emulsify the lotion. Be sure to scrape all the oil out of the double boiler, as the citric acid granules tend to stick in the bottom of the pan. Continue blending the mixture, thoroughly aerating/emulsifying it until it is quite frothy and light, at least a minute. Add your essential oils and mix in.
Pour lotion into jars and allow to cool—it will thicken as it cools to room temperature.
Makes about 2 cups/1 pint.
Do you have any favorite sun lotion recipes or tips?
As an aside, make sure that when blogging you don’t forget that you’re heating milk in the next room to make yogurt, else big boiling milky mess will ensue. Ask me how I know.
I just recently completed my first year apprenticeship with Sacred Plant Traditions, and we were fortunate enough to be exposed to a variety of herbal/healing traditions. Of these, Ayurveda in particular resonated with me.
Now I’m not going to go into a whole huge discussion here of Ayurveda—I feel like I’ve only just gotten my toes wet—so I suggest finding a teacher such as Mary Michaud and taking a class, or Perfect Health by Deepak Chopra is a very easy-to-read book that explains simply this very complex subject. There are also some great resources online for learning about the forces that make up our constitutions—check out ayurveda.com or chopra.com.
These forces are called doshas, and there are three of them: Kapha, Pitta, and Vata. Everyone holds in his or her constitution all three of these doshas, but different doshas may be dominant in certain people, and your dominant dosha may change depending on whether you are in a state of balance or imbalance.
Your original state, your state of perfect balance, is called your prakruti. Your current or changing state (the result of outside forces, weather, experience, emotion, etc.) is called vikruti. Often in our lives, our balance will be thrown when one or more of our doshas are aggravated. For instance, my prakruti is Pitta-dominant, and one of its many traits is a hot constitution. Long hours in the sunshine on hot and humid summer days tend to aggravate my Pitta dosha, my already warm nature.
According to Ayurveda, when this happens, you can use diet, certain kinds of exercise, meditation, etc., to restore balance to the aggravated dosha. Again, this is much more complex than I’m making it for illustration purposes, but I have also found it to be very common-sense and intuitive.
One of the many ways of helping restore balance is through use of churnas, spice blends specifically chosen to balance the different doshas. There are a number of recipes for churnas available, but below are the ones Mary Michaud shared with us from the AyurBalance Web site. I love using them as you would a curry powder, sprinkling it over salad, mixing it with lentils and rice, pretty much anything. I’ve broken it down into a table for you, showing how many parts of an ingredient to use for each respective dosha’s churna. All the herbs and spices are powdered.
Churnas
| Ingredient | Kapha | Pitta | Vata |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fennel | — | 6 | 3 |
| Turmeric | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Cumin | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Ginger | 2 | — | 1 |
| Black pepper | 2 | — | 1 |
| Cardamom | 1 | — | 1 |
| Sea salt | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Turbinado sugar | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Fenugreek | — | — | 1 |
| Mango powder | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Paprika | 1 | — | — |
Actually, “salt free” isn’t entirely true. More accurate would be to say that this seasoning blend only contains the naturally-occurring salts found in the herbs—no salt is added.
A gomasio is a traditional Japanese seasoning blend made of unhulled sesame seeds and salt. My challenge was to come up with an herbal gomasio that was “salt free” and highly nutritive. Many of us eat far too much salt in our diets, but we still crave the flavor, and especially now in the grand season of a fresh food bounty—farmer’s booths at the market overflowing with greens and reds and yellows and purples—it’s simply divine to be able to put raw greens and veggies on a platter, drizzle on some oil and a sprinkling of this gomasio. I don’t know about you, but this time of year I have trouble keeping salad dressing around, we go through it so fast.
My other challenge is that I don’t particularly like the taste of seaweeds, which are a major component in most other saltless seasonings.
You may also be aware that much of the salt we get at the store is “iodized,” that is to say iodine is added as a supplement to ensure that we get enough of it in our diet. Well, both sesame seeds and nettles are good natural sources of iodine. On the whole, this blend boasts myriad beneficial vitamins, minerals, and proteins. It’s good medicine for the whole body.
And my favorite way of taking my medicine is always by eating it in ridiculously tasty dishes. Hands down. Food is good.
Salt-free Herbal Gomasio
1 part nettle leaf
1 part celery seed
1 part sesame seed
1/2 part milk thistle seed
1/2 part fennel seed
1/2 part onion or garlicMix all the above in a small bowl. Place in an herb mill (or an empty salt or pepper grinder).
Other variations: try some dry citrus rind, pepper, or a small amount of mustard seeds. If you like seaweed, give it a whirl.
Feel free to post your own variations and ideas in the comments!
We’ve been a bit dandelion crazy around here, and working on a couple posts celebrating the willful golden “weeds.” For starters, I’d like to share the process of making t’ej, an Ethiopian honey wine that is so simple to make and such a delightful way to celebrate your in-season herbs, soon your countertops will be as cluttered with bottles and jugs as mine are!
This is the process as I was taught by Suzanna Stone, a wonderful guest teacher at Sacred Plant Traditions, with my own notes added in.
Equipment:
2 quart jar
2 quart jug with airlock (or balloon)
Long wooden spoon
Cheesecloth / fine mesh sieve / coffee filters
Funnel
Ingredients:
Distilled or boiled water (to ensure no chlorine or other contaminants
1 1/2 c. raw local honey
Several handfuls fresh herb(s)
- If using tap water, bring 2 quarts of it to a rolling boil, then allow it to cool to room temperature.
- Collect fresh herbs. Wash gently or brush off dirt etc. Chop and place several handfuls in the 2-quart jar (most recently we made a batch each—dandelion blossoms and violet blossoms).
- Pour honey into the jar.
- Add water (room temperature) to fill the jar the rest of the way, leaving an inch or two of space at the top for easy stirring.
- Stir this mixture well with a wooden spoon until the honey is dissolved, and then some more. Traditionally, an Ethiopian household has their own tej spoon which is not washed between uses so it accumulates it’s own “good” fermenting bacteria and particular flavor. Between stirrings, the spoon is laid across the top of the jar or crock.
- Cover the top of the jar with cheesecloth and allow to sit on the counter, out of direct sunlight, stirring 2 or 3 times daily until a froth starts to appear on the top of the liquid. Generally this will take a week or so, but my dandelion batch was frothing abundantly after only three days.
- Using a funnel with cheesecloth, sieve, or coffee filters, strain the herb out of the t’ej, pouring the remaining liquid into the jug—seal the jug with the airlock. Airlocks can be purchased for 1 or 2 dollars at specialty kitchen or brewing stores, and make sure to follow the directions and use the requisite amount of brandy or vodka in the airlock. If you opt to use a balloon instead of an airlock, remember to “burp” the balloon occasionally.
- Allow the t’ej to continue fermenting in the jug until the airlock stops bubbling—this means that the naturally-occurring yeasts are no longer consuming sugars and producing gases. At this point, your tej is ready—bottle it, label it, and enjoy!
Note: These are the proportions I used, but if you want to make a larger amount, just be sure to keep the proportions the same. Doubling all the portions would make a gallon batch.
A good friend of mine has rheumatoid arthritis. She’s been having a heckuva time, to say the least, taking the pill form of chemotherapy and hence dealing not only with the pain of R.A., but also the pretty nasty effects of her chemo treatment.
Last week was a rough patch for her, and she asked if I would put together an anti-inflammatory tea to help relieve some of her symptoms. Having gotten permission from her doctor to do so (I don’t want to interfere with anything he’s trying to do), I set about preparing this infusion for her. My goals were not only to relieve her symptoms, but also to make it tasty for her so she’d actually want to drink it. For instance, although dandelion root is excellent for removing uric acid from joints, I opted for the tastier analog of celery seed. The proportions are below, followed by simple instructions and the purpose of each herb in the blend. If you have any insights or suggestions of your own, please feel free to share in comment form – I’d love to hear from you.
Rheumatoid Arthritis Tea
1 part sarsaparilla
1 part celery seed
1 part licorice root
1/2 part ginger rootEach part refers to a volume measurement in proportion. For one serving of tea infusion, use about a level tablespoon of herb (or less). Add boiling hot water, cover, and steep for at least 12 to 15 minutes. You can re-steep this same batch two or three times for additional servings, if desired.
Actions:
Sarsaparilla: anti-inflammatory (feverfew would also be good)
Celery seed: clears uric acid from the joints (or dandelion root)
Licorice root: has a cortisone-like effect in the body
Ginger root: promotes blood flow, relieving pain and swelling
Coming out of Winter and into Spring, you are in one moment marveling and giddy at the upward spokes of thrusting crocus, tiny fragile leaves huddling together on the muddy ground, and even (!!) some miraculous delicate blue and white blossoms no bigger than the tip of your pinky… and a moment later belligerently grumbling, dragging yourself out of the dark womb of home and hearth, hungry from a long winter, ready to eat, ready to be warm, ready to be ready already! I always am reminded that spring is that pushy season of rebirth—we are all infants again, once more learning to walk in the world, for the first time all over again, with all the ecstatic moments of bliss and crankiness of re-finding our feet.
Winter is not only a time of shorter days and longer nights, of huddling under layers of warm wool, wrapping your hands around warm mugs and bowls of savory rooty stews—it’s also a time of digesting mentally, sorting through the lessons of the year prior, mending and washing and folding our emotional laundry, which has been well-worn by hard work and good fun, and sometimes soiled with sadness, tinged by anger.
There’s a cathartic courage in stepping into spring, having done one’s dark-time homework, and facing bravely the wide world once more, inviting new experiences. With inspiration and input from my teacher and classmates at Sacred Plant Traditions, here is the infusion that I’ve put together—heartening, encourage-ing, nourishing, and soothing for the springing self.
A heartening spring tea blend
1 rose petals
1 chamomile blossoms
1 motherwort
1 skullcap
1 1/2 nettle leaf
1/2 orange peelUse the above proportions to make whatever amount you so desire. Steep tea for at least 10 minutes. Inhale. Enjoy.
Happy spring, everyone.
