Eat Those Onions!

Did you know that sulphur is in every cell in your body? I didn't, until this morning that is, when I was reading a Natural News article about it. It is one of those essential minerals, which do all the marvelous invisible things that contributes to your overall health.

Excerpt:
Sulfur is a mineral that is present in every cell of the body. It plays a key role in liver metabolism and the function of the joint cartilage and keratin of the skin & hair. It is also critical for metabolism and anti-oxidant defense systems that protect the aging patterns of the brain. Some of the healthiest cultures in the world have the highest levels of sulfur in their diet while the US has some of the lowest levels.
Industrial farming, that speciality of huge agribusinesses, depletes the soil of sulphur. Chances are, unless you are eating lots of a certain vegetable family, you may be sulphur-depleted.

And guess what vegetable family that is? Of course, the alliums! Onions, garlic, chives, leeks, shallots are all members of the allium family.

At our house, we eat garlic every day (or nearly every day--some days I forget until the Gruff Lord growls that he's being deprived of an essential health ingredient...). And I can't even imagine cooking without onions. I ran the dehydrator ragged last summer dehydrating onions, just to make sure we'd always have some around.

I have a wonderful cookbook, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Cookbook. If you think Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic is a bit garlicky, take a gander at this cookbook! All the recipes have lots of garlic: breads, soups, meat dishes and appetizers. All made with huge amounts of garlic. Here's one of my favorite recipes from the book:

Garlicky Tomato Saffron Soup
6 cans (10.5 oz. each) chicken broth (I use my homemade broth...)
1 cup boiling water
1/4 gram Spanish saffron threads
1 lb. Roma tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped in bits
1 bunch leeks (3 medium or 1 1/2 cups), white part only, well-cleaned
4 tablespoons virgin olive oil
5 large cloves fresh garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
6 whole fennel seeds
8 large fresh spinach leaves

Place canned chicken broth in the freezer so the fat will rise to surface for easy removal. (Personally, I like a bit of chicken fat in my homemade broth so I skip this step.)
Bring water to boil. Add saffron threads and let steep, uncovered, off heat.
Skin tomatoes by putting them in boiling water for 1 minutes. Skin, seed and chop.
Chop leeks fine. Heat olive oil in soup pot over medium heat. Do not let oil smoke. Add chopped leeks and saute until limp but not brown. When leeks are limp, squeeze garlic cloves through press into the leeks and mix over medium heat for 2 minutes. Remove from heat.
Remove chicken broth from freezer and remove fat clumped at the top. Add chicken broth, saffron water including threads, tomatoes, thyme and fennel to leeks in soup pot.
Simmer mixture, partially covered, for 30 minutes. Five minutes before soup is ready, add spinach leaves.
Serve hot, room temperature, or cold with hearty, crusty bread. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Sounds good, doesn't it? It's one of my favorite soups for when I feel like I'm coming down with a cold. Delicious and it will beef up your sulphur intake too.

Simple Home Medicines are Effective

I thought I'd let you all know how some ongoing projects are working out.

The Yellow Dock tincture:

The first is, I'd made a tincture of yellow dock root for a good friend of ours who has non-symptomatic hepatitis C. He's had it for years; doesn't have any of the symptoms, but it is there. I gave him the tincture about a month and a half ago. He recently emailed and mentioned this:

"I had a health evaluation done at work recently. Tell Patty that my Liver Enzyme levels have never been lower. Not once in all the years I've been getting them checked out. Not that they've been sky high, but they were all down in the middle of the normal range. Must be something to those drops. Tell her my Liver and I say, Thanks!"

Three cheers for yellow dock tincture for liver problems, then. And I'm happy that our friend's health is better.

The Horsetail tea:

If you follow the blog, you'll know that an 81 year old friend of ours, Fred, fell and broke his elbow a while back. The orthopedic doc casted his arm and we've been making do ever since. I'd brought over some horsetail chopped up fine and some comfrey leaves to make teas for him and he's been drinking a cup or two a day of each. Last time we went to the doc, his elbow has started healing. There wasn't much to show yet on the X ray, but I'm sure we'll see more improvement when we go back for more Xrays on the 2nd of January.

The Garlic/Weird Mole:

In early November, I'd read a book on garlic as Nature's Super Healer. One of the extracts I shared from the book was on using a slice of garlic on funny moles and melanomas. A few days after writing about it, we started using a slice of garlic on a weird mole of Michael's. When I first looked at it, it was gray and hairy/fuzzy and ugly/weird looking. That was November 6. We've been putting a fresh slice of garlic on the mole every couple of days.

We put another slice of garlic on it today. And today the mole has almost disappeared. It's much smaller--like I said, nearly disappeared. It is now tiny, tan and very pale. I expect it will disappear in another few weeks.

Was this mole a melanoma? I don't think so. It hadn't changed colors or grown larger or any of the other signs that might tell of that deadly skin cancer. It was just a weird thing on his skin. But the garlic is definitely making it go away! We'll have to keep checking on it to make sure that it stays away, of course.

The reason I'm posting about this is that these simple, easy things can be effective and useful. None of this stuff costs much, if anything. Yellow dock, horsetail and comfrey all grow here in the valley. We didn't plant garlic this year (dammit), but we easily could have and it too would grow here. For that matter, there's wild garlic all over the place and if I couldn't get commercial garlic, I'd certainly use wild. It'd probably be better.

This is a very good thing, as dark times draw near. Useful wild plants grow all around us, even in cities, and we can use them to our benefit. It is the medicine God intended for us, after all, and to my mind, much better than pharmaceutical synthetics. Get to know an herbalist or forager near you, or better yet, get to know herbs and wild plants yourself. Then you will always have medicine at hand.

None of these things work as fast as pharmaceutical synthetics, of course, but that's probably a good thing. It takes time to develop problems and imbalances in our physical systems, and we need time to resolve those problems as well.

Needless to say, I'm not saying that horsetail and comfrey tea is "healing" Fred's elbow. Fred's body is healing his elbow. But the horsetail and comfrey are supplying some of what his body needs to do just that. Same with the yellow dock tincture for our other friend, and the garlic for Michael's mole.

Good luck to all in resolving your physical problems as well.
HM

The Weird Skin Mole Treatment

I am sorry that I don't do pictures, or at least haven't yet developed the habit. I tend to prefer low-tech these days, since low-tech, 19th century is what I expect we'll be seeing a lot of in the future. Peak oil and all that. But a picture or two might have helped here.

Anyway, a while ago I was posting on the myriad uses for garlic, and I put up a long quote from a book called Garlic: Nature's Super Healer on using garlic for melanoma. And later I said that I'd try sliced garlic on my husband's weird mole.

This is an interim report. Michael has a small mole on his upper thigh. It was grayish, papery looking, pretty ugly. We have no idea if it is melanoma or what it is. For us, it's a weird mole. Three days ago I started putting a slice of fresh garlic I bought from the Amish farm I go to. I put the slice over the mole and then put a bandaid over that with some medical tape over it to hold it in place. I've changed the garlic each day.

The mole seems more tan now. Paler than it was before, and not papery-looking any more. It might be a tad smaller--I didn't measure. Is the mole disappearing? We'll see. Garlic can't hurt Michael, so this "treatment" can't harm the "patient." We'll see if it does any good.

I'll report again in a week or so. BTW, there is a very cool page on folk remedies that people use. It is called Earth Clinic and they have a huge database of home cures that people are using, reports both positive and negative if something worked for them. If you're interested, check it out. I find it fascinating and I'll be trying some of these myself. My thanks to Ra for sending me there!
HM

The Other Wonder Herb: Cayenne Pepper

You know, I've never been a real hot pepper fan--they've always been too hot for my tastebuds. I grew hot peppers, Scotch Bonnets, habeneros, jalapenos, tabascos, pimentos, you name 'em, I've grown them. And picked them, pickled them and made powerful hot sauces. But I've never quite developed the taste for the truly fiery peppers.

But now I'm determined to. Whether I like them or not, I'm going to be eating them and using them. The health benefits are just too good to pass up. I grew a bunch of cayennes this year, and the fruit is hanging in pretty ristas around the house.

I've been reading that cayenne pepper can stop a heart attack, or help a person fully recover from it. I've been reading that cayenne pepper can stop bleeding, even gushing blood. And it can regulate high blood pressure so that you never have high blood pressure again.

Yes, it sounds too good to be true to me too. Although I may not seem like it in my writings here, I'm pretty skeptical. "Prove all things," is what I've learned. What that means to me is that I will slice some garlic and put it over a weird looking mole on my skin to see if the garlic will make the damn thing disappear. Actually, my husband said he's got a weird mole, a "cancer spot" as he called it, and so we'll try the slice of garlic on him. If I get even remotely sickly with a cold or flu, I will chop up garlic and put it on the bottom of my feet and see what happens. Will Michael's "cancer spot" go away? Will I feel much better after the garlic on the feet attempt?

That's what I mean by prove all things. I hope you will proceed the same way. I've had great luck with trying what my family and friends have considered "oddball" remedies. What I've tried doesn't always work, of course. Pharmaceuticals don't either--but I've had better luck with natural than chemical. I've found that overall, this is a good way for me to deal with my own health concerns.

So, on to cayenne pepper and why it is so good for you.

First of all, it is high in vitamin C, vitamin A, the complex of vitamin Bs, vitamin E, calcium, and potassium. It's a potent nutrititional powerhouse. If you eat a lot of it, as they do in southern climes, it will make you sweat, which will cool you off. Sweating is your body's way of releasing heat.

Recently I've been reading Dr. Christopher's Herbal Legacy, and what they have to say about cayenne made me very curious. If you've the time and interest, read the entire section about cayenne here.

I've read the "cayenne can stop bleeding" info here and other places as well. I have not yet had the occasion to see if this is so for myself, but I will try it next time I accidently cut myself.

I've been too timid to try cayenne tea (one teaspoon ground cayenne to a cup of hot water), but I did make a cayenne tincture. The tincture is almost too hot to take a direct eyedropper full, but I can get it down in a small glass of water. I expect my taste buds will adapt to the heat so that I'll be able to take it directly soon. Perhaps as I get better at this, I'll be taking 3 teaspoons a day, as Dr. Christopher did!

When my feet get cold in the winter, I have put ground cayenne in the bottom of my shoes. This works well. You'll get a nice warming heat from it for quite a while. I will also be making a cayenne salve for muscle aches and pains. There's lots of these on the market already, of course, but I've got lots of cayennes around and plenty of lard or coconut oil or olive oil or for that matter, vaseline around. Much less expensive than anything commercial, plus I know there's no other nasty chemicals in it.

If you keep two herbs in your house at all times, and even in your BOBs and BOVs, keep garlic and cayenne. These two are kickass powerful. Garlic is an antibiotic. Cayenne will stop bleeding. I know garlic works, and I'm going to find out more about cayenne. But they are both potential life-savers, which is important in survival situations.

There will be more on cayenne in this blog. Stay tuned.

HM

More on Garlic: Nature's Super Healer

This book is so good I want to share another item with readers.

This section, I'm supplying whole, from the book:

Melanoma . . . Can't Argue with Success

We said it before, we'll say it again. We're writers who do research. We have no professional medical background. We're reporting and not prescribing. We urge you to seek out, find, and work with a health professional whose approach to your well-being is in keeping with your own. You want a doctor who is not in the panic business--someone who can properly diasgnose the health challenge, then discuss the conventional, complementary, and alternative options for whatever ails you.

If you see a beauty mark on your body that has an irregular border and whose color seems to move beyond that border, or there's a nodelike dark patch of skin that's changing in size, we think it's very important that you show it to your doctor.

And now that we're on the record with our suggestion, we're reporting the experience of Bill Anderson, managing partner of Garlic Research Labs and Garlic Valley Farms, with what he thought may have been melanomas.

In the course of doing business, Bill Anderson comes into contact with lots of farmers. Here are Bill's own words:

One day, one of those farmers told me about a melanoma that he had on his lip. The farmer took a garlic clove, sliced it, and put it on the melanoma, then covered it with a bandage. From time to time, he'd change the garlic clove and put on a new bandage. Within two weeks the thing on his lip completely disappeared. Another time this farmer had a melanoma on the back of his neck. He did the same thing and sure enough, it also disappeared completely.

While Bill was leading up to his own experience, he shared this one too:

I had dealings wiht this ol' country lady in Little River, who worked in a feed store. She told me, "Oh yeah, that garlic is good for everything. Here we use it for skin cancer. We had this one farmer who had it on his arm. He drives a tractor and the arm is always out in the sun. The doctor said he couldn't do nothin' for him, so I mixed up some onions and garlic and made a mince out of it and rubbed it all over his arm, then I wrapped it up. In two weeks the skin cancer was all gone."

The time had come for Bill's own personal story:

I had this black mole on my neck for a couple of years. It kept getting bigger. When it was about the size of a penny, only fatter--that thing was real ugly--I got to thinkin' about the success the farmers had getting rid of their problem, and said, "Hell, I'll put some of my own garlic juice on there." [Bill's company, Garlic Valley Farms, bottles and sells 99.3 percent pure garlic juice.] I dipped my finger down into the bottle and smeared it on, just that one time. In a little over a week, maybe closer to two weeks, the thing on my neck disappeared. Then I got the same thing on my right temple. I put the garlic juice on it and it also disappeared. It's the God's truth.

In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur recognized garlic's ability to kill bacteria. More than a century later, biochemist Sidney Belman of New York University Medical Center reported that by painting garlic oil on the skin of laboratory animals, he could inhibit the development of skin cancers. Extensive research continues, with extremely encouraging results.

***************** end of book section*******************

Now that is interesting. I too, would advise seeing a health professional if you ever see a funny bit of skin turning strange on you. However, in the bizarre world we live in, if a health professional isn't there to be consulted, you might keep this bit in mind . . . and keep some garlic on hand as well.

This is all for information and entertainment only, of course. Medical advice is beyond my purview and my calling.
Onwards,
HM

Field Garlic

What to do when the S has HTF and there's no store around that is open and has garlic? Chances are, and depending on where you live, it probably is growing somewhere near you. Yep, even in cities. It likes lawns, gardens, backyards, disturbed soil, open woods, and roadsides, at least in the East, from north to south.

This one pictured is allium veniale (veniale meaning it also likes vinyards, say Wildman Steve Brill). The neat thing about the allium family is that they all smell like garlic and onions. There are poisonous lookalike lillies, but they don't smell. If you find any wild onions, garlic, chives, and they smell like onions and garlic, then they are edible. If it looks like field garlic, but doesn't smell like garlic, then don't eat it.

But this family is pretty easy to identify, and once you're seen it, you'll know it. Here's a neat video of a cooking show host who needed some garlic for a recipe and went out and found some in her garden.

Allium veniale and allium canadense are available from late fall to early spring. This time of year, when foraging is getting a bit scarce, I can still find wild alliums--chives that got loose from a neighbor's garden and now clumps of them grace a hillside near me, and field and wild garlic. I hope they will be available all winter, and that I can see them over the snowfall. In the spring they will grow up to 3 feet tall, but I think these new shoots are not quite so big. Still, they're upright and green and in a barren field, that will definitely help!

The field and wild garlic have the same medicinal properties as cultivated garlic, so feel free to find them and use them liberally. They will add a lot of flavor to your food, and is a great addition to a stored-food diet.

Enjoy,

HM

Garlic is Better than Ten Mothers

Garlic: Nature's Super Healer
by Joan Wilen and Lydia Wilen

What a neat and informative book. It's available from Amazon as a hardcover for $30, or it starts at $.75 used. Guess which I would buy. :) I love Amazon, but not that much.

I got this copy from the library, one of my favorite places. It was written by the Wilens, who are not food writers per se, but researchers, writers and television hosts, as the back book cover says. They write on folk healing and remedies, which is currently an interest of mine. This is a terrific book to have as a resource, for it turns out that garlic has many more uses than I have ever considered, and I've used garlic as a home remedy for many things--but not athlete's foot, nightmares, lyme disease or melanoma. Now, however, after reading the Wilen's book, I think I would use it. You bet.

Garlic is something everyone should have in their home, for both food and medicine. If you can't stand it as food, then I pity you truly. Some folks can't eat it or maybe even shouldn't, if they have a medical reason. . . . Even so, you should still keep it for medicines. It's been used for centuries upon centuries by every culture that has ever become aware of it. I consider garlic super-food and super-medicine. In our home, garlic goes into everything except desserts. We eat it raw daily. Michael likes his clove through a garlic press, followed by a teaspoon of jam or jelly, but he's civilized. I chew mine and swallow it (as quickly as possible!) with water.

Garlic: Nature's Super Healer has the following chapters:
No Matter How You Say It . . . Garlic in 45 languages
Garlic's Believe It or Not (vampires, etc.)
Garlic as Medicine (general doses, supplements, raw, suggestions on other foods to take it with)
Remedies (a list of illnesses and complaints and garlic's uses in them)
Garlic Remedies for Your Pets
Health-Giving Garlic Preparations (garlic oil, baths, enemas, formulas, juice, syrups, etc.)
Growing Garlic
Garlic as Food
Recipes (some incredible kick-ass recipes!)
Appendices with Garlic Festivals and Resources
Bibliography
Index

Pretty much everything you'd want to know about this godsend to mankind. I'll include a few excerpts here for your entertainment (the authors have a great sense of humor) and information.

How/Why Does Garlic Work:

The Wilens quote William Blot, chief biostatistician of the National Cancer Institute: "Every time you slice or crush a clove of garlic, you initiate a complex sequence of biochemical events. The merest bruise unleashes an enzyme called allinase, which goes to work converting another molecule, alliin, into allicin. That the reaction is instantaneous is obviously because at precisely this moment, garlic begins to smell like garlic.

"Allicin spontaneously decomposes into a group of odoriferous compounds which provide much of garlic's medicinal punch. Those compounds quickly form still others--dozens of them--depending on whether the bulb is fresh or aged, raw or cooked, natural or processed in pills, extracts, and capsules.

"Garlic's quicksilver nature creates problems for researchers. No one really knows which form delievers the greatest benefit."

I'm glad "researchers" have problems, aren't you? Keeps 'em busy and off the streets. At least, in studying this, they are not studying what makes dogs bark or why men are attracted to busty women....

In the Believe It or Not Section, there's a bit on how vampires became associated with (and repelled by) garlic:

Everyone knows that you repel a vampire with garlic. But do you know how the legend came to be? Dr. James Scala explains: "Porphyria is a hereditary disease that occurred in isolated areas of central Europe, especially Romania, where Transylvannia is located. People with porphyria need iron in the form of hemoglobin from blood. They must avoid sunlight or any strong indoor light or their skin becomes inflamed and produces toxins that make them very sick. They are exceptionally hairy, have large teeth, and very light skin. Most importantly, diallyl sulfides make them violently ill. Garlic is the best source of diallyl sulfides. Therefore, whoever has hereditary porphyria looks and acts like a vampire and will avoid garlic like the plague."

I would never have known this (and don't really need to know it now) but I find this kind of information fascinating.

Here's a cold remedy I'm going to definitely going to try:

If garlic is rough for you to take, even though you have a cold and may not be able to taste anything, then peel and crush 6 cloves of garlic and mix them into 1/2 cup of white lard or petroleum jelly. Spread it on the soles of the feet. To keep the feet warm and to prevent messing up the bed linens, put each foot in a plastic bag, secure the bag by tying ribbon or cord around the plastic (not too tight, you don't want to stop your circulation), and leave it on overnight. It should help bring down a fever and clear up the cold.

Or chop it up and put in your socks before you put them on. Seems like that might work too.

Here's something you can do for gangrene, if there is no doctor or other medical professional around. The authors consulted Lalitha Thomas, an herbalist, for this suggestion:

To prevent or possibly retard gangrene or blood poisoning, pack the entire area thickly with pulverized garlic directly in and around the wound. Clean out dead tissue and any pus, etc., with strong garlic water (see Preparations chapter). One way to do this is to soak the area for 10 minutes and then repack it with a fresh garlic poultice (see Preparations) at least 3 times a day. In some cases the red lines of blood poisoning actually begin retracting within a few hours, or at least by overnight. At this point in the process the dead gangrenous flesh may start cleaning out of the wound. With that the re-infection cycle is stopped, and the wound begins healing normally.

I've read of treating gangrene with maggots--I would certainly try the garlic first!

The Wilens also include a section on how to get rid of garlic breath--fenugreek seeds, cloves, cinammon, wine, milk, coffee bean, but the best way they've found to take raw garlic is to crush up the clove, mix it into a dollop of yogurt and swallow it down. Avoiding garlic breath is a noble thing to do for your friends, I guess.

There is a lot of information here useful for just about everyone.

Next time you're feeling sickly, try a garlic footbath. "The footbath will draw toxins from the entire body, soothe tension and anxiety, rejuvenate sore or tired feet and legs, help treat athlete's foot, speed recovery from colds and flu, relieve toxic buildup from a daily job environment that may be physically or emotionally polluted or stressful, and much, much more."

The Preparations chapter includes Lalitha Thomas's Enhanced Garlic Formula. It is well-known that garlic is an antibiotic and the authors report that this formula doubles or even triples the "strength and effectiveness of garlic alone, while it helps the body to more quickly assimilate the garlic and thus put it to work." Here it is:

Enhanced Garlic Formula

Ingredients
1 part garlic powder (bought in bulk at health food or herb store)

1/4 part cayenne powder
1 part powdered calcium ascorbate (a form of Vitamin C that's available at health food stores and has a potency of 1/4 teaspoon = 1 gram vitamin C)

Depending on the amount of the formula you intend to make, 1 part can equal 1 pinch, 1 tablespoon, 1 ounce, and so on.

If you prefer, you can mix only the garlic and cayenne together as powders and take 1 gram of vitamin C in tablet form with each dose as needed.

It is advisable to make a large enough quantity so you always have extra on hand for emergency use. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place for best shelf life.


Well, hopefully this will be enough to get you going with garlic. Keep some at home, handy in the kitchen, and you'll always have one of God's best medicines available to you.

Note and Disclaimer: This information is for entertainment and information only. It should not be taken as medical advice.

Have to get that nonsense out of the way. Keep in mind when reading here, OK?


Next post: Where to find garlic outdoors for when the stores close. :)

Liquid Vitamin C: Dandelion Greens and Pine Needle Tea

(Dandelion pix from www.foragingpictures.com, a companion site to Wildman Steve Brill's foraging page.)

Urf. I've been feeling pretty lousy the past couple of days. No energy, an excess of mucus in my system (most of it in my nose), tired, achy feeling, like a bad allergy time or starting a cold.

Yesterday I ate a bunch of garlic--good antibiotic properties and kicks the immune system into line. Since I was peeling garlic cloves anyway, and had a good store of garlic and had just seen a recipe for garlic syrup in a book called Healing Teas: How to Prepare and Use Teas to Maximize Your Health by Marie Nadine Antol, I decided to make garlic syrup. Here's the recipe from the book

****

Garlic Syrup

Garlic does "brew" into a quite marvelous syrup. The effectiveness of this natural medicine is so powerful, that it simply had to be included here in some form. Accordingly, here's a very old recipe for Garlic Syrup.

1 pound peeled and crushed garlic cloves [I used a half pound plus a few other heads]

apple cider vinegar

pure water

1 cup glycerine (available at pharmacies)

1 cup honey

1. Put the peeled and crushed garlic cloves in a wide-mouthed 2 quart jar [I used my 1 qt jar]

Add equal parts apple cider vinegar and pure water until the jar is 3/4 full. Cap the jar loosely and let the mixture stand in a warm place for 4 days. Shake the jar several times a day.

2. Add the glycerine. Shake to blend. Allow the mixture to stand in a warm place for 1 more day, shaking several times.

3. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth or muslin, squeezing to remove all the exhausted bits of garlic. Return the mixture to the jar. Add the honey and stir until thoroughly mixed. Store the garlic syrup in a cool, dry place.

Great-grandmother's directions:

For coughs, colds, sore throats, bronchial congestion, high or low blood pressure, heart weakness or nervous disorders, take 1 tablespoon of the syrup 3 times a day before meals.

****

It'll be ready in a few days. Can't wait to try this!

Since I have a tough time taking pills, I wanted to boost my immune system further by taking echinacea and goldenseal and Vitamin C with rose hips. But I keep gagging on the the Vitamin C tabs. So I went out and gathered dandelion leaves and pine needles. The power guys had been by yesterday cutting off tree limbs to keep the power lines clear, and there were many white pine boughs just lying there for me to use. The dandelion grows all over the place on the lawns by our pond, which are not sprayed with anything. I boiled water, added the dandelion leaves and pine needles, adding a handful of lemon balm for flavor, and let it steep for half and hour.

I expected my tea to be quite bitter, as dandelion leaves are bitter until the first fall frost, or so I had read, but it isn't bitter at all! It tastes good--piney and rich.

Both dandelion leaves and pine needles are rich in Vitamin C. Dandelion greens also have Vitamin A, Potassium, Phosphorus, calcium, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin. Check out their nutritional portrait here. Liquid vitamin C tea!

So if the SHTF, and you can't buy your vitamins, remember where those vitamins came from in the first place: green plants. Gather up a bunch of vitamin C rich plants and brew yourself a quart or two of tea. In my opinion, it is far better to get your vitamins and minerals from a plant source than from a pill anyway--you get the benefit of the synergy of the whole plant thataway.

Making your own medicines doesn't have to be hard or complex. Just go out for a walk and make friends with your common weeds.

Hopefully, this cold/bug/whatever will leave me in a day or so. I can't abide feeling sick.

Onwards, the only direction there is,

Handmaiden